한국 기업의 전략적 인사관리: 조직역량 구축을 중심으로

The rise of Korean companies in global markets is truly remarkable because they were relativelyunknown and their competitiveness was quite low just 20 years ago. In order to change the companyand boost its competitiveness, Samsung Electronics Company announced ‘New Management’initiatives in 1993 and Chairman Lee Kun-hee called for complete changes of employees andorganizations. New Management was followed by ‘New HR (Human Resource Management)’,which emphasized developing and acquiring top talent as well as performance-based evaluationand compensation systems. These all-out efforts transformed the company and, in 2013, SamsungElectronics Company became the biggest technology company with sales revenues topping $210billion. Hyundai Motors Company followed a similar route by transforming its company from arelatively unknown car maker to one of the top five players in the global auto industry. Naturally much research has tried to identify the means by which these Korean companies havetransformed themselves. Most of these studies found that Korean companies had unique organizationalcapabilities such as strong execution, agility, and technical competence that allowed them to excelrapidly. First, in terms of execution, Korean companies showed the ability to achieve what theyplanned to. Strong execution of Korean companies was possible because they strongly emphasizedperformance-based evaluations and compensation. It was also possible because Korean companiesdiligently developed and acquired global talent either through global talent development programsor global talent recruiting programs. Second, Korean companies are known for their agility whichis considered highly important in this ever-changing competitive environment. Agility is the abilityto swiftly reconfigure and adapt organizational resources and capabilities so the organization canbetter meet competitive challenges from markets and the environment in general. Sources of Koreancompanies' agility include intentionally loose definition of jobs which allows employees to tackle any problem in the team instead of just taking care of their own individual jobs. In fact, fewKorean companies use job descriptions, allowing them to flexibly utilize employees accordingto the changing demands of markets. Third, Korean companies were able to catch up with companiesin the advanced countries in terms of technical competence in a rather short period of time. Koreastarted quite late in terms of industrializing the nation because of colonization and the KoreanWar. However, companies such as Samsung Electronics Company and Hyundai Motors Companytransformed themselves into technology powerhouses by aggressively investing in research anddevelopment and providing generous compensation packages to their scientists and engineers. Alsothese companies established dual-track career paths for their research and development staff sothey could concentrate on their expertise throughout their careers and be amply rewarded in termsof promotion and accompanying compensation. One of the characteristics of Korean companies' human resource management (HRM) is thatit helped companies to build organizational capabilities such as strong execution, agility, and technicalcompetence. Researchers in strategic HR have tried to understand how HR contributes to theperformance of firms by looking at the mechanism that link HR and the performance of firms. However, few researchers have studied the impact of HR on organizational capabilities. Studyingthe impact of HRM on organizational capabilities will provide valuable addition to better understandingthe mechanism through which HR contributes to the performance of firms. Finally, in this paper, we discuss in detail the concepts and significance of organizational capabilities. We also discuss issues and challenges in studying the impact of HR on organizational capabilitiesand suggest future research agenda.