If you snooze you lose : human resource pivotal to competitive advantage of an organization

Abstract

This research study is focusing on two very important and modern day business concepts: the human resource of an organization and the competitive advantages an organization has. The paper starts off by an elaborate explanation of both the concepts. Various theories and prior researches done on these areas have not only been highlighted but arguments on them have also been made. The concept of HR has been elaborated using four dimensions: recruitment and selection, training and development, employee compensation and employee retention policies whereas the dimensions of competitive advantage up taken for this study include employee productivity, citizenship behavior and employee effectiveness. Emphasis has been laid on the tobacco industry of Pakistan and PTC has been taken as the sample organization for the purpose of gathering data. The trend in Pakistani industries has been analyzed with respect to the dimensions and gaps have been identified in between Pakistani and international practices. The study then narrows down to the establishment of a link in between the two variables and this link is proved via various work place instances in the literature review section. The later part of this paper is entirely dedicated to proving a direct proportionality among the HR and the competitive advantage. Various dimensions have been selected for both the variables. The research design elaborates the dependence of competitive advantage on the HR of an organization thus making HR as the independent variable of the study and the competitive advantage as the dependent variable. Four hypotheses have been proposed each showing a direct relationship among the dimensions of the two variables. The methodology section elucidates the nature of the study. It is a quantitative research which is why a closed ended questionnaire is being used to gather the data from the respondents. This data is then analyzed through the SPSS 16 software where various statistical tools have been used to prove the hypothesis. The scores are then analyzed and interpretations have made in the findings section. The results indicated that majority of the employees believe in the fact that they could be an ultimate source of competitive advantage to their organization once they are kept fully satisfied and well trained.