某公司的用人難題自產VS外聘(pdf 35頁)(英文)

1. Introduction
As the pace of technological change has quickened, and as global competition has
shortened product life cycles, firms have had to rethink their technology investment
strategies and their human resource management practices in order to remain competitive.
This paper examines the relationship between firm-level research and development
investment (R&D) and firms’ human resource management (HRM) practices in a hightech
industry.
There are several channels through which firm R&D and HRM decisions may be
related. If technology and labor force skills are complements in firms’ production
functions, and if HRM systems impact the cost of acquiring, developing, and retaining
the portfolio of skills in a firm, then firms’ choice of HRM system affects their ability to
adjust worker skill levels to maximize the value of their technological investments. For
example, if firms need to augment the skill of their workforce to complement an
investment in technology, they face a traditional “make versus buy” problem. Firms can
structure their HRM system to develop the necessary skills in-house or they can structure
their HRM to attract workers with the necessary skills on the external market. Also,
workers gain skills directly from learning-by-doing in their R&D activities, which
triggers the firm to enact HRM policies that retain the increasingly productive knowledge
workers. Additionally, firms’ product strategies directly affect both their R&D choices
and their HRM choice (Lazear (1998) and Baron and Kreps (1999)).
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