This research aims to investigate the extent to which media organisations in Taiwan apply human resource management strategies and policies to sustain their competitive advantage in a threatening environment. This study argues that human capital is the most valuable resource of media companies. As long as the human resource is optimally allocated and managed, it can facilitate media companies to outperform their competitors, and thus, enable media companies to achieve sustained competitive advantage. The first stage of this research analyses the Taiwanese media industry from a broad perspective. During the development of Taiwan’s media industry, the government and political parties played important roles. The key factors involved in the changes in the environment are examined from political, economic, social, and technological points of view. In addition, this research analyses the human resource management practices adopted by the two leading media groups in Taiwan. One of the groups is the United Daily News group, an old established media company with its interest in newspapers, and a newly established Eastern Broadcasting Corporation (EBC) group which is a multi-media company. Qualitative research approach was adopted as the framework for this research and also to explore and understand the links between specific human resource management indicators and media organisations’ sustained competitive advantage. Two Taiwanese media groups were selected as case studies. The case study approach involved in-depth interviews conducted with management staff and non-management staff, in order to understand the two companies’ human resource management policies and practices. Connecting the study as a whole, there are three important findings: (1) The deregulation which began from the late 1980s has transformed the Taiwanese media industry from a party-state domination to a fiercely competitive marketplace. (2) Consequently, Taiwanese news organisations have shown a greater propensity to pursue commercial performance. As such, in addition to journalists, advertising sales personnel were included in the talent pool by news organisations. (3) The view of human resources as a pool of capital implies a change in the perception of costs in media companies’ human resource management practices. HRM is practised by the two companies in different degree. Taiwanese media companies should pay attention to the different characteristics of their core workers, and maintain their core workers to convey their organisational culture, and achieve their companies’ SCA. In Taiwan, the HRM function had been ignored for a long time due to decades of regulation on new competitors. However, when the media proprietors spent a majority of their capital on the payroll and emphasized that ‘human capital’ is their most important asset, to some extent, Taiwanese media companies perceived HRM as a means to achieve their companies’ SCA. In this regard, Taiwanese media companies should make more effort to develop and nurture the HRM practices and policies which are suitable for the organisation’s unique culture, in improving the outcomes of their human resource investment and in turn providing sustained competitive advantage.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/254108 |
| Creators | Pei-ying Tsai |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Detected Language | English |
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