Strategy and the Human Resource: Ford and the Search for Competitive Advantage

How do firms respond when the ground shifts and their existing knowledge and skills base becomes obsolete? Strategy and the Human Resource analyses the experience of one of the world's leading corporations during a period of profound strategic change. Ford Motor Company has been synonymous with a particular approach to management, Fordism, which analysts have seen as the quintessential Western Approach.

Strategy and the Human Resource is an examination of contemporary changes in human resource management, strategy, structure and management processes. Starkey and McKinlay

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• Trace the link between strategic analysis and HRM
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• Examine the relationship between corporate strategy and HRM in a number of companies
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• Explore these changes in an in-depth analysis of Ford.

Starkey and McKinlay demonstrate that competitive advantage is now defined in terms of high quality rather than low cos, technical innovation and design leadership rather than emultion and conservatism, flexibility rather than specialization.

This book is unique in its in-depth analysis of the experience of managers in negotiating a period of profound and dramatic strategic change. It challenges quick-fix approaches to management while emphasizing the opportunities and difficuties of reconfiguring Western organizations in the light of Japanese management practices.

Ken Starkey is Reader in Organizational Analysis, University of Nottingham, UK

Alan McKinlay is Colquhon Lecturer in Business History, University of Glasgow, UK