Human capital resource emergence and leadership

• Author: Eung Il Kim,Danielle Dunne,Rory Eckardt,Chanyu Hao,Minyoung Cheong,Seth M. Spain,Jie Guo,Jin Won Park,Jayoung Kim,Shelley D. Dionne,Chou‐Yu Tsai
• Date: 01 February 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2446
• Published date: 01 February 2021

THE JOB ANNUAL REVIEW AND CONCEPTUAL

DEVELOPMENT ISSUE

Human capital resource emergence and leadership

Rory Eckardt

1

| Chou-Yu Tsai

1

| Shelley D. Dionne

1

| Danielle Dunne

1

|

Seth M. Spain

2

| Jin Won Park

1

| Minyoung Cheong

3

| Jayoung Kim

4

|

Jie Guo

1

| Chanyu Hao

1

| Eung Il Kim

5

1

School of Management and Bass Center of

Leadership, Binghamton University, State

University of New York, Binghamton,

New York, U.S.A.

2

John Molson School of Business, Concordia

University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

3

School of Graduate Professional Studies,

Pennsylvania State University, Great Valley,

Malvern, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.

4

College of Business, Purdue University

Northwest, Hammond, Indiana, U.S.A.

5

School of Business, Yonsei University, Seoul,

Seodaemun-gu, Korea

Correspondence

Rory Eckardt, Binghamton University, State

University of New York, Binghamton,

New York, U.S.A.

Email: reckardt@binghamton.edu

Summary

Drawing on multilevel theory of human capital resource emergence (HCRE), this

paper reviews existing empirical research to better understand the effect of leader-

ship on this emergence process. Specifically, we summarize the current literature per-

taining to how leaders may impact the process through which individual-level human

capital—the knowledge, skills, and abilities of individuals—emerges into a valuable

unit-level human capital resource. We review 132 empirical articles and examine

how leadership research on task- and relational-oriented factors at different levels of

analysis affects the important task and social environment enabling factors of HCRE.

Our paper makes important progress towards integrating leadership research with

extant theorizing on HCRE and identifies areas in both literatures where additional

research is needed.

KEYWORDS

human capital resource emergence, leadership, multilevel

1|INTRODUCTION

The microfoundations perspective in strategic human capital seeks

to understand the origins of valuable unit-level human capital

resources (Nyberg, Moliterno, Hale, & Lepak, 2014; Ployhart,

Nyberg, Reilly, & Maltarich, 2014). As part of this perspective,

researchers have drawn on extant multilevel theory to explore the

process and mechanisms through which individual human capital

emerge to a unit-level resource (e.g., Ployhart & Moliterno, 2011).

In this work on human capital resource emergence (HCRE), it is

noted that a unit-level human capital resource is not a mere collec-

tion of individual human capital but rather a higher-level resource

where individual human capital is transformed and amplified over

time through interactions among individuals in the unit and the

influence of contextual factors. The contextual factors are the crux

of the emergence process and relate to the characteristics of the

task environment and the presence and interplay of various behav-

ioral, cognitive and affective emergence-enabling states.

While existing theorizing on HCRE significantly advances schol-

arship on the microfoundations of unit-level human capital

resources, there is much to be learned about the multilevel pro-

cesses associated with the emergence of these vital resources

(Nyberg et al., 2014; Ployhart & Hale, 2014). To improve our

understanding of these processes, scholars have called for a

greater integration with micro-oriented management research

(Eckardt & Jiang, 2019; Ployhart, 2015). Individual, dyadic, and

group phenomena, which are squarely in the purview of micro-

oriented researchers, are central to the HCRE process (Ployhart

et al., 2014; Ployhart & Hale, 2014). Leveraging existing work from

micro-oriented studies and engaging micro-oriented researchers is

therefore suggested to be critical to the advancement of work on

HCRE (Eckardt & Jiang, 2019; Nyberg, Reilly, Essman, &

Rodrigues, 2018).

This paper is aligned with these calls in that it reviews and inte-

grates extant research on a key area of micro-oriented research, lead-

ership, with the developing research area on the emergence of human

Received: 14 November 2017 Revised: 6 March 2020 Accepted: 29 March 2020

DOI: 10.1002/job.2446

J Organ Behav. 2021;42:269–295. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 269

capital resources. In what follows, we assert leaders can be key

orchestrators of the HCRE process. Specifically, we suggest that

because leaders have important influences on task design and how

employees act, think, and feel (Bass, 1990), they are likely to have an

impact on the contextual factors highlighted in the strategic human

capital literature as important considerations and mechanisms associ-

ated with the emergence of unit-level human capital resources. To

take stock of the potential influence of leadership on HCRE, we

review the extant leadership literature pertaining to the contextual

factors research suggests influence this emergence process. Specifi-

cally, we use Ployhart and Moliterno's (2011) theoretical multilevel

model of HCRE as a lens through which to review the extant leader-

ship literature.

This review makes three important contributions. First, we

contribute to research on strategic human capital by leveraging

existing micro-oriented research to provide additional insight into

factors that can impact the process mechanisms central to the

emergence of human capital resources. A review format is a partic-

ularly appropriate approach for this integration as there can be a

tendency for researchers to “reinvent the wheel”when crossing

levels of analysis (Eckardt & Jiang, 2019; Nyberg et al., 2018).

Thus, by systemically reviewing existing work on leadership, we

provide a parsimonious framework and summary of existing work

that can be leveraged and used by strategic human capital

researchers.

Second, we contribute to extant work on strategic human capital

by highlighting that the emergence of human capital resources is an

important outcome to focus theorizing and empirical research. Strate-

gic human capital scholars often consider HCRE as an unmeasured

part of the process linking employee human capital to unit-level out-

comes (Kryscynski & Morris, 2019; Nyberg et al., 2014; Ployhart &

Moliterno, 2011). Such a view glosses over the multilevel complexity

inherent to the emergence process (Kozlowski, 2019) and negates the

criticality of explicitly understanding HCRE as an important outcome

itself. Specifically, it is highly likely that if we do not understand what

HCRE is and how it is developed, then we may have difficulty under-

standing what it can and cannot accomplish in organizations

(cf. Eckardt & Jiang, 2019; Kozlowski, 2019; Nyberg, Ployhart, &

Moliterno, 2019; Ployhart & Chen, 2019). By focusing on the complex

and important ways that leadership influences the HCRE process, we

thus highlight the inherent need to focus on HCRE as an outcome and

the value of considering and leveraging micro-oriented research in the

development and ultimate impact of these resources on higher level

outcomes.

Lastly, we make a contribution to the leadership literature by inte-

grating prior research on various leadership models, behaviors, and

practices with advances in strategic human capital research. Specifi-

cally, we offer a new lens through which leadership scholars can view

the organizational impact of proposed leadership processes. In doing

so, we identify a number of areas where future leadership research is

needed and provide a theoretical foundation for future leadership

studies that explicitly focuses on the intersection of leadership

and HCRE.

2|THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

2.1 |Human capital resource emergence

HCRE refers to the process where the knowledge, skills, and abilities

(KSAs) of individuals (i.e., individual-level human capital) are trans-

formed and amplified into a valuable unit-level resource (Nyberg

et al., 2014; Ployhart & Moliterno, 2011). This emergence process

involves modifications to the stock of KSAs through knowledge shar-

ing among unit members and learning from the external environment

and contextual factors that provide cognitive and motivational bene-

fits to increase the value derived from a given level of KSAs

(Eckardt & Jiang, 2019). In short, HCRE pertains to the process

whereby an initial endowment of individual human capital is aug-

mented and made more valuable as it evolves into a unit-level

resource.

Prior work on the HCRE process has focused on the nature of

the task environment and considered several behavioral, cognitive,

and affective enabling factors. The overall suggestion is that these

factors influence the HCRE process by encouraging knowledge

sharing and learning and enhancing the performance realized from

unit-member KSAs (Eckardt & Jiang, 2019) (see Figure 1). In the

below sections, we briefly outline these emergence-enabling factors

and the manner in which they can impact these underlying mecha-

nisms of HCRE. Detailed overviews of the emergence-enabling fac-

tors and their links to the underlying mechanisms are available in

Ployhart and Moliterno (2011) and Eckardt and Jiang (2019),

respectively.

2.1.1 |Task environment

Although there are many ways in which a task environment can be

characterized, Ployhart and Moliterno (2011) suggested task

interdependence, which refers to the degree of and manner in

FIGURE 1 Overview of task and social environment influence on

human capital resource emergence

270 ECKARDT ET AL.