Covid critique

1. Critique article # Week 1
Human Resources is the crucial part of an organization to run efficiently and successfully.
Profitability is one of the primary reasons why human resources management should be a
strategic business partner. In the article “On becoming a strategic partner: the role of human
resources in gaining competitive advantage” Jay B. Barney and Patrick M. Wright (1998)
examined the importance of the partnership of the human resource department to the success of
organization and its workforce. While this article produced significant results showing that there
are far too many HR executives who view themselves as Human Resource people who happen
to work in a business, rather than as business people who happen to work in the Human Resource
function.
Jay B. Barney and Patrick M. Wright (1998) used the Resource-Based View of the Firm (Barney,
1991; Wernerfelt, 1984) and examine the value, rareness, imitability, and organization (VRIO)
framework for analyzing sources of competitive advantage. The researchers collected
demographic information of Alcon Laboratories that exemplifies the role of HR practices in directly
decreasing costs. The researchers also used HR date from MetLife, Nordstrom’s, Continental
Airlines, Southeast Airlines, United Airlines, DuPont and FedEx.
The HR executive must attempt to develop and Nurture characteristics of the firm’s human
resources that cannot easily be imitated by competitors. However, both the quantitative and
qualitative data for the industry has not been conducted simultaneously in this paper. Jay B.
Barney and Patrick M. Wright (1998) also has not focused on how a firm can capitalize the aspects
of human resources that are valuable, rare, and not easily imitated, and can be sources of
sustained competitive advantage to be turned into a successful firm. This lack of detail would
make it difficult to replicate their technique of capitalizing the aspects of successful human
resources.
Significant results were noted in the results of this study, but there are limitations to these findings.
First, the sample size was small. Out of thousands of existing firms who were supposed to
participate, only 13 firms’ data compiled here. With such a small sample size it is difficult to
generalize these findings to the larger firm’s population. Also, all the participants are this study
were from North American belt; this also limits the generalizability of these findings to the larger
global population. While Jay B. Barney and Patrick M. Wright (1998) stated that the study should
be replicated with a larger population and at other firms, the authors did not discuss how these
factors of their study were limitations.
This article focused on an important topic, that the HR function, through either directly
controlling or strongly influencing the characteristics of human resources in organizations, plays
an important role in developing and maintaining a firm’s competitive advantage. On the other
hand, the exploitation of the synergistic value from a large number of individuals who work
together is quite costly if not impossible for competitors to imitate. Jay B Barney and Patrick M.

2. Wright (1998) stated that the challenge for HR is to develop systems of HR practices that create
a synergistic effect rather than develop a set of independent best practices of HR. However, they
did not figure out the solutions for overcoming this challenge of HR. This study did not adequately
describe HR training programs so that future researchers can replicate this program in other
samples. Furthermore, the small sample size and lack of diversity among participants limits the
generalizability of these findings.
Future research on HR programs with a clear description of the developing program
among a larger more diverse sample is necessary to provide evidence of the impact of vast
majority sample with geographic and demographic distinctions.
References
Barney, J. B., & Wright, P. M. (1998). On becoming a strategic partner: The role of human
resources in gaining competitive advantage. Human Resource Management: Published
in Cooperation with the School of Business Administration, The University of Michigan and
in alliance with the Society of Human Resources Management, 37(1), 31-46.