Radical HRM innovation and competitive advantage: The Moneyball story

Abstract

Moneyball (Lewis, 2003), a New York Times bestseller, is a book about baseball. When read through a broader lens, however, Moneyball is also a book about innovation, resistance to change, competitive advantage, achieving excellence, and, of most relevance here, human resource management. While many would agree that the radical innovation described in Moneyball represents a “new vision of management” in baseball, this article describes how Moneyball lessons might contribute to a “new vision of HRM” in various types of organizations. The focus of the article is on what HR executives and scholars can learn from the Moneyball phenomenon. More specifically, the authors address a number questions related to the Moneyball story that have relevance to successfully implementing HRM innovations; these questions have to do with overcoming resistance to the implementation of radical innovation and how HRM innovation can contribute to sustainable competitive advantage. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.