Resource-based and institutional perspectives on strategic human resource management

This chapter examines how the application of one theoretical framework in particular, the resource-based view (RBV), led to a shift in research and thinking in the SHRM domain. It also considers how debates have moved on beyond the RBV to incorporate ideas drawn from new institutionalism and resource-dependence theory to shed more detailed and nuanced light on how SHRM ‘works’. First, it presents the origins of the RBV and its underlying propositions. Second, it looks at the usefulness and limitations of the RBV as a framework for theorizing in strategic human resource management (SHRM). Finally, it considers the contributions made by new institutionalist and resource-dependence perspectives to extending the RBV.