MGMT 8725M Week 4 Supply Analysis Example

Owned, Contested or Rented: A Supply Analysis Mapping Every Source of Store Leadership Capability for a Southeastern Grocery Chain by Size and Rival Demand, and Arguing That Its Premium Spending Targets the Pool It Can Least Hold

Student Name

Walden University

MGMT 8725M: Human Resource Talent Management

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Owned, Contested or Rented: A Supply Analysis Mapping Every Source of Store Leadership Capability for a Southeastern Grocery Chain by Size and Rival Demand, and Arguing That Its Premium Spending Targets the Pool It Can Least Hold

The Capability and Its Pools

The capability in question is store leadership at Fenwick Markets: running a grocery store of 60 to 120 staff against sales, shrink and labor targets. Fenwick expects about 22 store manager vacancies over the next two years, from openings and retirements. Five pools could supply people with that capability: store managers employed by direct grocery competitors, managers at other large retailers such as pharmacy and discount chains, graduates of retail management and business programs, interim managers available through staffing firms, and Fenwick's own assistant managers who are not on its high-potential list.

The Pool Map

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Pool sizes are estimates from Fenwick's recruiting team and applicant tracking records, not counts from public data; spend per hire comes from Fenwick's finance records for external hires and its training budget for internal development.

Table 1

Sources of Store Leadership Capability, Fenwick Markets, Next Two Years

Where the Money Has Gone

Between 2023 and 2025, Fenwick filled 19 store manager vacancies: 11 with competitor store managers, 3 with other retail managers and 5 from its own high-potential list. It spent about $340,000 in sign-on bonuses and search fees on the competitor hires, against roughly $108,000 on development for its entire assistant population. Of the 11 competitor hires, four left within two years, three of them to another grocery chain.

Value That Walks Out

Coff (1997) argued that human assets create a dilemma for resource-based strategy: the employees whose knowledge creates value can leave, and because they can, they are able to bargain away much of the value their capability produces. The capability least tied to one employer is the most contested and therefore the costliest to hold. Store leadership in grocery is highly portable: a competitor's store manager already knows the work, and a rival can hire that manager back with the same sign-on bonus Fenwick paid. Fenwick's spending on competitor managers buys capability the market prices fully, and the four departures suggest the purchase is often temporary.

The Star Premium and Its Evidence

The case for paying the premium holds that proven performers justify it. Michaels et al. (2001) argued that companies should recruit and invest heavily in their strongest performers. Groysberg et al. (2008), however, studying star equity analysts who changed firms, found that their performance fell after moving, and that the decline persisted for several years. They attributed this partly to the colleagues, systems and relationships stars left behind. Store managers, whose results depend on a store's staff, suppliers and local customers, may lose more in a move than analysts do.

The Claim

Fenwick has concentrated its premium spending on the most contested pool and has invested little in the one pool almost no rival recruits from: its own 180 unlisted assistants. The internal pool is not free to develop, and some assistants would never be ready, but it is the only source whose capability Fenwick builds rather than rents, and the Week 3 audit suggested that rated-strong assistants performed nearly as well as listed ones when given acting responsibility.

What Would Reverse the Claim

The claim would be reversed by evidence that the internal pool cannot reach readiness in time: if, after a year of acting assignments, rated-strong assistants missed targets at a much higher rate than competitor hires, or if the 22 vacancies arrive faster than any development route can produce candidates. It would also weaken if competitor hires stayed longer than the four early departures suggest once their sign-on terms expire.

Limits

The pool estimates are rough, and the cost of developing an internal assistant to readiness is not yet known, since Fenwick has never done it at scale. Nor does the map capture quality differences within pools: a few competitor managers may be far stronger than any assistant, and paying for them could be worthwhile for the hardest stores. The next step is a sourcing plan that prices that route.

References

Coff, R. W. (1997). Human assets and management dilemmas: Coping with hazards on the road to resource-based theory. Academy of Management Review, 22(2), 374-402. https://doi.org/10.2307/259327

Groysberg, B., Lee, L.-E., & Nanda, A. (2008). Can they take it with them? The portability of star knowledge workers' performance. Management Science, 54(7), 1213-1230. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.1070.0809

Michaels, E., Handfield-Jones, H., & Axelrod, B. (2001). The war for talent. Harvard Business School Press.