Realising competitive advantage through HRM in New Zealand service industries

Abstract

An emerging source of competitive advantage for service industries is the knowledge, skills and attitudes of their employees. Indeed, achievement of a ‘service quality’ culture, considered imperative for competitive advantage in service organisations, supposedly results from the use of best practice human resource management (HRM), and from a strategic approach to their implementation. This paper empirically explores the use of these dimensions of HRM as a source of competitive advantage. It finds high-performing service organisations actively engage best practices across the areas of recruitment and selection, training and development, communication and team working. Evidence of a strategic approach to the implementation of these practices is also found.

Keywords:

• best practice
• human resource management
• service industry
• competitive advantage
• service culture

Acknowledgements

The comments of Dr John Farnsworth, Department of Management, University of Otago, on the final draft of this paper are gratefully acknowledged.