Can human capital be transferred efficiently? Evidence from the F&B companies

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate publicly traded restaurant companies and food & beverage companies from 2014 to 2019 in Taiwan to explore their human capital efficiency. Design/methodology/approach According to the theoretical framework of human capital in micro and macro perspectives, the empirical model is built with two stages; the first stage is to examine the perspective of micro-level human capital theory through determining whether knowledge ability and working experience (proxies for micro-level human capital) can efficiently convert to employee-level output such as salary. The second stage is to test macro-level human capital theory through checking whether company inputs such as salary expenses and benefits expenditures can be efficiently transferred into enterprise annual revenues. Findings The results of this research reveal that the average efficiency score of stage 1 is 73.6% while that of stage 2 is 75.1%; this indicates that micro-level human capital has more room to improve than macro-level human capital. Meanwhile, the findings also demonstrate that there is negative relationship between efficiency score from stage 1 and turnover rate; this implies that companies with higher micro-human capital have lower turnover rates. Furthermore, there is significantly positive relationship between a company's efficiency score from stage 2 and its return on equity (ROE). Originality/value This study contributes to both academia and industry. From a theoretical perspective, the theory of strategic human resources management is applied through the methodology of production theory to examine human capital management efficiency in the restaurant and food and beverage industry. From a practical perspective, this study identifies the factors that assist the restaurant or food and beverage industry retain employees and gain a solid workforce, because manpower is the core resource for an industry and a country to grow sustainably.