Author(s)

Yabin Liu ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ School of management, Wuhan University of technology, Wuhan 430070, China

Corresponding Author

Yabin Liu

ABSTRACT

Strategic human resource management emphasizes on improving the human resource management of an organization from the perspective of strategic thinking. In the face of the VUCA era, the allocation and management of human resources within an enterprise should be highlighted as critical, and where there is competition, there must be the underdog. The underdog effect is not the negative effect shown on the surface, but the reasonable use of incentives can produce unexpected gains, such as a higher level of work performance. Based on previous research and the concept of self-enhancement, this paper presents insights on the underdog effect from the perspective of employees in strategic human resource management and suggests the direction of future research. It also suggests how companies’ managers should take measures for the corresponding scenarios to promote the improvement of their core competitiveness and enhance the performance of innovation, etc.

KEYWORDS

Underdog, underdog effect, self-enhancement theory, strategic human resource management

CITE THIS PAPER

Yabin Liu, Underdog Effect: A Resource to be Tapped in Strategic Human Resource Management. Industrial Engineering and Innovation Management (2021) 4: 8-17. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/ieim.2021.040302.

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