XXIII Conférence Internationale de Management Stratégique Rennes, 26-28 mai 2014 1 Alliance, strategic transferable knowledge and human resource management: An example in the Luxury Hotel Industry Ferrary Michel HEC Genève, Professor of Management UniMail, 40 Bd du Pont d’Arve, 1211 Genève michel.ferrary@unige.ch Mozgovaya Evelina HEC Genève, Management PhD Student, UniMail, 40 Bd du Pont d’Arve, 1211 Genève evelina.mozgovaya@etu.unige.ch Abstract: This paper on the employment systems examines the nature of human capital deployed through alliances. It stipulates that human capital is characterized by replicability in addition to heterogeneity and immobility features of resources outlined in the Resource-Based View, which influences the strategies of investment in human capital. The degree to which employees’ knowledge is transferable and redeployable defines how well the human capital may be used in a firm that is not its current employer and user. By consequence, high replicability can become a source of optimization for strategies of investment in human capital. An employment system based on an alliance between firms can, therefore, be an alternative to internal employment for redeployable strategic human capital with transferable knowledge. This paper outlines the human resource practices in alliance employment system specific to alliances and illustrates the statements by examples from luxury hotel industry. Key words: alliance, knowledge, human capital, employment