Human Resources and Competitive Advantage: A Detailed Report

This report delves into the concept of competitive advantage, focusing on the resource-based view and its application in human resource management. It explores how organizations can leverage both tangible and intangible resources, such as skills, knowledge, and employee contributions, to gain a competitive edge. The report analyzes the four key attributes of strategic resources—value, rarity, inimitability, and non-substitutability—and how they contribute to organizational success. Furthermore, it examines the role of human resource management in enhancing employee performance, fostering teamwork, and attracting and retaining top talent. A case study of Tesco is included, evaluating the threats and challenges faced by the company and their impact on HR management. The report provides valuable insights into how HR strategies can be used to mitigate risks, improve efficiency, and drive organizational growth.

Managing Human Resources

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Task 1
The main aim of this report is to understand the concept of competitive advantage through
various framework and policies. In this report, the discussion is made on the resource based
view that helps to evaluate the nature of asset.
Resource based view
Resource based view is a managerial framework which is used to determine the strategic
resources that can deliver to gain the competitive advantage. The resources can be exploited
by the firm to achieve the competitive advantage. The concept of resource based view has
various types of tangible and intangible resources such as skills, information, assets,
processes, knowledge, etc. The tangible and intangible assets are combined to create the
Business capabilities. It can be said that these resources makes the company different from
the others. It is an inside approach that helps to analyse the firm internally and outside the
organisation (Alexy, West, Klapper, and Reitzig, 2018). All resources are not capable of
delivering the strategic services to companies. That is why; it is required to analyse the
strategic resources that helps to gain the competitive advantage.
The resources are evaluated on the fours attributed basis that provides the potential to gain
the competitive advantage. A resource required the four attribute for considering as the
strategic resources and these are value, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable. Valuable states
those resources that bring the value to firm to gain the competitive advantage. Rare refers a
unique strategy that provides competitive advantage to the firm as compare to its competitors
(Lonial, and Carter, 2015). Inimitable refers to those resources that cannot be able to copy by
the other firm; it also helps to gain the competitive advantage. Non-substitutable refers the
capability of the resources that cannot be replaceable by the other firm or the other resources.

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This also helps to gain the competitive advantage in the market (West, Ford, and Ibrahim,
2015).
Organisation gain competitive advantage
The company should gain the competitive advantage by using these types of resources. It has
been seen that there are many ways from which the company can gain the competitive
advantage.
Unique Strategy
It is observed that the consumers always attracted towards those things which is unique and
attractive. The demand of people is always high towards the rare and non-substitution goods
as compare to the others and normal goods. As discussed the resources are categorised on the
basis of four attributes and these are value, rare, inimitable and non-substitutable. The
organisation can use the rare strategy means the use the unique capability of its own
resources to gain the competitive advantage. The brand image, customer loyalty, employee
contribution are the example of rare resources because these are rare in the market and the
company can earn the high competitive advantage in the market. Resource bases view plays
the major role in analysing and evaluating the asset of the organisation in order to understand
its nature.
Selling the product with the high brand image helps to earn the high profits to the
organisation. The high contribution of employee towards the organisation helps to improve
the quality of product and services. High quality of services always has the high prices and
the high customer loyalty. It is observed that the company gain the competitive advantage by
becoming the first preference of the consumer ( Hitt, Xu, and Carnes, 2016).

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Inimitability and mobility
It is observed that the mobility resources of the organisation help to gain temporary
competitive advantage. Inimitability resources of the organisation helps to gain the high
competitive advantage as there is no other company can copy the resource. The competitive
advantage is based on the strategic assets that are superiors to the other competitors. These
inimitable resources should not be copied by the others and the efforts of the organisation
should also be considered in order to attain the advantage of competition. Resources based
view framework helps to evaluate the nature of products and services so that the company
can use it as imitable resources and gain the advantage (Madhani, 2009).
Valuable resources
The valuable resource of the organisation also helps to attain the competitive advantage in the
market. The valuable resources of the organisation are skills of the employees, efforts of
employee, distribution channel and many others. If the organisation has the strong
distribution channel then the valuable resources can be transfer easy to the other place. The
consumers can also get the services easily and become the first preference. If the company
also deliver the services in the limited number then the chance of competitive advantage is
becoming stronger because rare resources have the high price as compare to the others. Rare
resources considered as the superior products and it is a fact that the rare resources have the
high demand in the market due to which the consumers prefer to pay high amount.
Considering the product as the rare product helps to earn the high profit as compare to the
other competitors in the market.
These are the ways that how the company can gain the competitive advantage in the market.
The whole scenario of gaining the competitive advantage is based on the resources and its
capabilities. The resources should contain the four attributes such as value, rare, non-

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substantial, and inimitable. It is required to analyse the resources to categorise the resources
in which they can attain the competitive advantage. Resources based view helps the
organisation to evaluate the resources in the strategic way (Barney, 2015).
Human Resource Management
Human resources management is the strategic approach to the effective management in an
organisation so that the organisation can gain a competitive advantage. This strategic
approach is developed by the organisations to enhance the employee performance in a service
of employer strategic objectives. Human resource management is the primarily concerned for
the people of the organisation. In this approach, the focusing is given on the policies and
system related to human resource. The responsibility of seeing and focusing on the human
resources is human resource department of the organisation. HR department of the company
is responsible for overseeing the employee benefits designs, training and development,
employee recruitment, performance appraisal, and reward management. It is also necessary to
consider the organisational change and industrial relation while developing the policies and
benefits for the organisation. The main purpose of the organisation is to achieve the success
through people. HR professional manage the human capital so that they perform well and the
make the organisation differ from the other companies (Bratton, and Gold, 2017).
Human resource helps to gain competitive advantage
It has been seen that the company get the competitive advantage with the help of human
resource management. The skills and efforts are the main asset of the organisation that makes
it different from others. In this section, the discussion is made on the topic that how the
employees gain the competitive advantage.
Improve Performance

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It has been seen that the human resource management approach of the organisation provides
the facilities and benefits to employees. Providing the facilities to employees as per their
requirement makes them happy and satisfied due to which the performance of employee will
improve. Motivation is also a technique to enhance the employee’s performance so that they
can perform well in their services. It is a fact that the motivated employee perform well in
their services as compare to the other employees. There are various techniques to motivate
the employees such as incentive, rewards, and many others. These techniques encourage the
employees to perform well to contain the incentives and rewards. This technique helps the
manager to stay connected with the organisation for long time. The techniques and methods
of motivation improve the performance that helps the organisation to grab the market share.
The quality of services provided by the organisation to consumers helps to become their first
preference. First preferences means the high demand as compare to its competitors.
Efficiency in performance of employees also improves the performance of an organisation
(Namada, 2018).
Right people at the right place
It has been seen that the employee’s ability and capability is shown in those areas in which
they have interest or they have experience. Recruitment and selection is the main function of
HR department in which the people are hiring for the organisation as per the vacancies. It is
essential for the organisation to hire the employees who are highly qualified and high skills to
perform the activity so that their ideas and strategies to do the work. The new ideas and
strategies help the organisation to become different from others. Ideas and strategies of
human resource management help to gain the competitive advantage in the organisation
(Madsen, and Walker, 2015).
Team Work

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Organising the events to develop the positive environment also encourage the employee to
perform well in their performances. It is observed that the new ideas and strategies will
develop by people of organisation while interacting with others. Human resources is the main
asset of the organisation because the contribution and efforts of employees helps to achieve
the all objective of an organisation (West, Ford, and Ibrahim, 2015). It is observed that the
personality of an employee is developed and the new ideas will also come from which the
organisation can achieve the success in the market. High qualified and skills employees are
considered as the valuable, rare and non-substitution resource of the organisation. These
types of resources are considered as the strategic resources that the helps to gain the
competitive advantage in the market (Ahmad, 2015). Learning and personality development
is always the first preference of an employee while joining the organisation that is why; it can
be said that human resources management is helps to gain the competitive advantage.
Task2
In this task, the discussion is made on the human resources management of the organisation
in order to evaluate their ability to do the work. Tesco has been taken into consideration to
analyse the threat and its impact on the human resource management. Tesco is the British
multinational groceries and general merchandise retailer. Human resources is the main asset
of the organisation as the whole work is done by them.
Threat for an organisation
There are major two threats which affect the human resource management of the
organisation. These threats are discussed below:
The first threat of the company is the rising cost of raw material. It has been seen that the cost
of raw material is arises due to which the amount of profitability is reduces. As the time
passage, the organisation also wants to expand the business at the international level due to

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which it requires the large amount of raw material so that they can provide the effective
services to consumer (Tesco, 2018). Increasing the cost of raw material reduces the
profitability of the company. It is observed that the company requires expanding the supplier
network in order to get the best deal in pricing in raw material. The company also invest the
amount in developing the strong network to get the better prices due to which it can be said
that the amount of expenses is high.
The other threat of the organisation is the threat of ineffective services and decreasing profit.
It has been seen that the Tesco change the management and system with the motive of
effective services provided by the organisation (Personnel today., 2010). It is observed that
the organisation is required to change the management in order to gain the competitive
advantage. The threat of competition is also reduces by implement the change management
approach in the organisation (Cascio, 2015).
Impact on HR management
It has been evaluated that the Tesco implement the approaches and techniques to reduce the
threat due to which directly affects the human resource management. The human resources
face the challenges due to adopting the recommendations and approaches to do the work
(DeCenzo, Robbins, and Verhulst, 2016).
It has been seen that the Tesco implement the change management approach in organisation
for the effective results. But it is observed that the HR team of Tesco face the challenges
related to change management. The company appoint the new leader will bring his own brand
of leadership to the 500000 staff worldwide with 250000 in the UK. Tesco needs to be an
effective handover that helps to achieve the objective. The reward system, training system
and the other HR policies has been changed due to the human resource management of the
organisation is suffered with the heavy amount of loss and they also getting demotivated. The

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change management approach causes the conflicts among the members that affect the
performance of employees as well. It has been seen that the CEO of the organisation also
changes due to which the environment of workplace is also changed. It was a biggest change
in the organisation as the top management to guard. It is essential for the organisation to the
excellent nature of HR department so that they can handle all the activities of human resource
management (Smith, ]2018).
As discussed above, it is observed that the organisation has high threat of raising the cost of
raw material. Rising cost of raw material increases the expenses due to which the profitability
of the organisation is decreases. Tesco provides the less amount of salary to employees in
order to reduce the expenses. Different countries have the different wage rate due to which
the organisation also faces the issue. The company differentiate in employees in terms of
wages. The people who work in stores get the more wages as compare to the employees who
work in the operation departments. The decision to provide the partial amount to employees
is ineffective. It reduces the wages amount in order to balance the amount of expenses and
selling prices so that the organisation earns the profit. The brand image of the organisation is
also decreases because employee claim for their money and they also leak the information in
news. The CEO of the organisation apologises for their mistake and promise to pay the
amount.
HR reduce these threats
The organisation has to adopt techniques and strategies so that the impact on human resource
management is reduce. The human resource management of the organisation has to adopt the
approaches and framework so that the threat of organisation is reduces. It is observed that the
human resources management is the best source for the organisation in order to reduce the
threat of an organisation. The different function of human resource management helps to
reduce the threat and these are discussed below:

Managing human resources 9
Planning is the main function of human resource management. It is essential for the
organisation to develop the plan so that the work will perform as per the plan. The plan
should be developed as per setting the goals and objective. The impact of change in
management on human resources and the other activities will be prevented by developing the
plan as per the goals and objective. The company implement the change management
approach in the organisation to gain the competitive advantage. The human resources
department can develops the plan by forecasting the data of future and past. It also develops
the policies and system in the favour of employees so that the negative impact of threat on
employees is also reduces. It is observed that the effective plan improve the performance of
the organisation due to which the company can easily achieve the success (Noe, Hollenbeck,
Gerhart, and Wright, 2017).
Promotions and non-monetary benefits are the other function of human resources
management. As discussed the organisation have the threat of rising the cost of raw material
due to which the amount of profitability is reduces. It is observed that the cost of raw material
is not able to reduce by the organisation but the company can reduces the other expenses in
order to maintain the balance between the expenses and price. The human resources
management helps the organisation to maintain the balance in it. It is observed that the
organisation reduces the wage cost with the motive of reducing the expenses. But the
employee getting demotivated and also they claimed for their wages and rights. That is why;
the human resources management function of performance appraisal and the promotion helps
to reduce this threat. HR department of the organisation can develop the policies in a
systematic ways in which the expenses of the organisation is reduces and the employees are
also satisfied with wage amount. Human resource department can implement the non-
monetary policies for employees so that they satisfied with their job. Quick promotions and
the other facilities for them and their families are the best techniques to satisfy the employees.

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The non-monetary policies are used for the employees to encourage helps to improve their
performances. The other advantage of this step is that the expenses of the organisation will
also reduce as the non-monetary policies are adopted. It helps to maintain the accurate
balance between expenses and selling prices of the produces and services due to which the
amount of profitab ility is increases (Gutierrez-Gutierrez, Barrales-Molina, and Kaynak,
2018).

Managing human resources 11
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