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The chapter examines the relationship between innovation and HRM, through the literature on recognising, leveraging and releasing the creative and innovative behaviours of employees across specialisms, and across levels of the hierarchy. It develops a four-stage conceptualisation of innovation: problem identification; idea generation; idea evaluation; and implementation. It identifies two areas that would benefit from more focused research. First, distinguishing between environments where creativity and innovation is overtly required, as opposed to job roles where creative outcomes, while valuable, are not expressly called for as part of the job. Second, examining the effect that HRM has on individual creativity (idea generation) and the more collective process of innovation implementation. It examines the process of bottom-up emergence, and the ways in which HRM can support and underpin employees’ efforts not just to generate ideas, but also to work with others to foster their implementation.

Studies are starting to explore the role of HRM in fostering organizational innovation but empirical evidence remains contradictory and theory fragmented. This is partly because extant literature by and large adopts a unitary level of analysis, rather than reflecting on the multi-level demands that innovation presents. Building on an emergent literature focused on HRM’s role in shaping innovation, we shed light on the question of whether, and how, HRM might influence employees’ innovative behaviours in the direction of strategically important goals. Drawing upon institutional theory, our contributions are three-fold: to bring out the effect of two discrete HRM configurations- one underpinned by a control and the other by an entrepreneurial ethos, on attitudes and behaviours at the individual level; to reflect the way in which employee innovative behaviours arising from these HRM configurations coalesce to shape higher-level phenomena, such as organizational-level innovation; and to bring out two distinct patterns of bottom-up emergence, one driven primarily by composition and the other by both composition and compilation.

Although scholars are starting to reflect on the way in which human resource management (HRM) might enable or impede innovation it is still not clear exactly what practices or combinations of practices stand out, why this might be so, and what this means for managers in practice. Employees contribute to organizational innovation via their innovative behaviors, both devising creative ideas and working collaboratively to implement those that make sense in a given context. Creativity stands at the start of an innovation, and plays its part in transforming the idea into reality. Given the challenges involved, the innovative behaviors that lie behind innovation may remain dormant and excellent opportunities be missed. In this chapter, we suggest that high-commitment HRM prompts innovation by supporting, guiding and facilitating the exchange and effective combination of knowledge. We refer to HRM implementation, arguing that what matters is not the existence of practices per se, but how they are interpreted and enacted by line managers, and perceived by employees.

This study investigates the effects of two internal factors, performance-based rewards and employee perceptions of HR strength, and one external factor, country-level uncertainty avoidance, on employee innovative behaviors. Drawing on situational strength theory, we first hypothesize that performance-based rewards will positively relate to innovative behaviors, and secondly, that this relationship is stronger when employees understand the wider Human Resource Management (HRM) system as intended by management, referred to as HR strength. Finally, we assess the effect of uncertainty avoidance on the relationship between performance-based rewards and innovative behaviors. Three-level data from 1598 employees and 186 managers in 29 organizations across ten countries showed that both employee perceptions of HR strength and uncertainty avoidance of a country differentially influence the relationship between performance-based rewards and innovative behaviors. However, a significant relationship between performance-based rewards and innovative behaviors was not found. The study offers novel insights into how organizations can use internal factors in a systematic manner to promote innovative behaviors in their workplace and highlights the limitations of sustaining innovative behaviors in countries characterized by high levels of uncertainty avoidance.

Drawing on the organizational capabilities literature, the authors developed and tested a model of how supportive human resource management (HRM) improved firms’ financial performance perceived by marketing managers through fostering the implementation of a customer‐oriented strategy. Customer‐linking capability, which is the capability in managing close customer relationships, indicated the implementation of the customer‐oriented strategy. Data collected from two emerging economies – China and Hungary – established that supportive HRM partially mediated the relationship between customer‐oriented strategy and customer‐linking capability. Customer‐linking capability further explained how supportive HRM contributed to perceived financial performance. This study explicates the implication of customer‐oriented strategy for HRM and reveals the importance of HRM in strategy implementation. It also sheds some light on the ‘black box’ between HRM and performance. While making important contributions to the field of strategy, HRM and marketing, this study also offers useful practical implications.

Evidence is accumulating on the role of teams in shaping a variety of business outcomes, but our knowledge on the effect of teamwork on organizational innovation is still evolving. This study examines whether the extent to which two staff groups are organized in teams (production staff and management/administrative staff) affects organizational innovation and whether human resource management (HRM) systems, which can be of facilitating or constraining nature, enhance the teamwork/innovation relationships. Hypotheses were tested with lagged and longitudinal data derived from 18 to 45 organizations from the UK manufacturing sector. Results suggest that the more widespread the use of teamwork in organizations, the higher the level of organizational innovation. Furthermore, this effect depends, particularly for production teams, on the overall quality of the HRM systems that exist in their organizations. Teamwork/innovation relationships are further moderated (for management and administrative teams) by an HRM practice that provides teams with time for thoughtful reflection. Thus, HRM systems can be of more or less facilitating or constraining nature for teams in organizations.

This volume offers a broad-based treatment of autonomous learning to advance our understanding of learner-driven approaches and how organizations can support them.

The importance of innovation can hardly be exaggerated, given that landmark change has defined human progress in our technological age. The business pages of popular journals are replete with a dazzling array of inventions that have overturned existing ways of working and fundamentally changed human experience — from agricultural drones that offer farmers new ways to increase crop yield to genome editing that provides powerful insights into genetically baffling brain disorders. Innovation has become a topical theme within organisations, too, with no shortage of advice and suggestions often targeted at business leaders about how to craft an innovation strategy or increase the number and quality of ideas with a view to enriching organisational life. The quote at the start of this chapter bears testament to the sheer effort of moving away from familiar, habitual practices in the direction of less-certain, risky future terrain. Setting aside what has gone before to move in new directions requires determination, resilience and courage at a personal level. Often overlooked, though, are the multi-level dynamics that this entails.

In this concluding chapter, we bring together the threads and reflections on the chapters contained in this text and show how they relate to multi-level issues. The book has focused on the world of Human Resource Management (HRM) and the systems and practices it must put in place to foster innovation. Many of the contributions argue that in order to bring innovation about, organisations have to think carefully about the way in which they will integrate what is, in practice, organisationally relevant — but socially distributed — knowledge. They need to build a series of knowledge-intensive activities and networks, both within their own boundaries and across other important external inter-relationships. In so doing, they help to co-ordinate important information structures. They have, in effect, to find ways of enabling people to collaborate with each other at lower cost, by reducing both the costs of their co-ordination and the levels of unproductive search activity. They have to engineer these behaviours by reducing the risks for people that might be associated with incorrect ideas and help individuals, teams and business units to advance incomplete ideas that are so often difficult to codify. In short, a range of intangible assets must flow more rapidly throughout the organisation and an appropriate balance must be found between the rewards and incentives associated with creativity, novelty and innovation, versus the risks that innovation may also bring.

Creativity in organisations is defined as the generation of new and useful ideas regarding products/services, process and problem-solving activities (Amabile, 1996; George & Zhou, 2001; Oldham & Cummings, 1996). As employee creativity has been seen as a critical impetus for organisational innovation and effectiveness and success, it is unsurprising that much research has been done to identify contextual and personal factors that may foster or hinder creativity (see Shalley, Zhou, & Oldham, 2004; Zhou & Shalley, 2003). Despite these efforts the creativity research so far has adopted a generic approach assuming creativity will unfold more or less similarly across various contexts regardless whether creativity is overtly required or not. More specifically, little is known about why employees choose to engage in creative activities in a general work environment where creativity is seen as extra-role behaviour (i.e. going beyond the existing role expectations) (Van Dyne, Cummings, & Parks, 1995) and an alternative option to routine performance (Ford, 1996). Drawing on the reasoned action theory, this chapter aims to discuss employee creativity as an option in a general work environment.

HR professionals are expected to get more involved in knowledge management and facilitate knowledge exchange among employees in knowledge economy. Four papers in this symposium provide a comprehens...

In this article, we examine line manager prioritisation of HR roles and the consequences for employee commitment in a health-care setting. Our analysis is based on a quantitative, multi-actor study (509 employees and 67 line managers) in four Dutch hospitals. Using sense-giving as a theoretical lens, we demonstrate that, in addition to the effects of high commitment HRM, prioritising the Employee Champion role alone and the Employee Champion and Strategic Partner roles in combination is associated with higher employee commitment. We argue that through performing roles that are evocative of deep-seated values, such as excellent patient care and concern for others, line managers can have a positive effect on staff attitudes. In a sector often beleaguered by staff turnover, exhaustion and burnout, we offer an important, empirically based framework that has the potential to improve employee commitment and, from there, enhance performance.

There is growing evidence available to suggest that Human Resource Management (HRM) practice is an important predictor of organizational performance. Drawing upon organizational learning perspectives, we argue that HRM systems also have the potential to promote organizational innovation. We present longitudinal data from thirty-five UK manufacturing organizations to suggest that effective HRM systems – incorporating sophisticated approaches to recruitment and selection, induction, appraisal and training – predict organizational innovation in products and production technology. We further show that organizational innovation is enhanced where there is a supportive learning climate, and inhibited (for innovation in production processes) where there is a link between appraisal and remuneration.

This special issue brings together a variety of articles, each one enriching understanding about whether and how human resource management (HRM) influences organizational performance (however defined) against a backdrop of complex change. We present a preliminary framework that enables us to integrate the diverse themes explored in the special issue, proposing a mediating role for organizational change capacity (OCC). OCC represents a particular subset within the resource-based literature labeled as “dynamic capabilities.” Although not well researched, there is evidence that OCC is positively associated with firm performance and that this relationship is stronger given conditions of high uncertainty. Our framework reflects on external and internal parameters, which we suggest moderate the relationship between human resource management (HRM), OCC, and organizational performance. Our intention is to provide compelling insight for both practitioners and researchers, especially those whose remit extends beyond national boundaries, with reference to areas of the globe as disparate as Greece, Ireland, Pakistan, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

With increasing worldwide competition and ever more pressing environmental turbulence, an organization’s ability to innovate is increasingly seen as a key factor to ensure success. The logic is that by introducing new products and new technology, organizations are able to diversify, adapt and reinvent themselves. While researchers have accumulated a lot of knowledge about the relationship between human resource management (HRM) activity and an organization’s financial performance, our knowledge of the extent to which HRM practice promotes organizational innovation is still relatively scarce.

Successful organizations almost invariably exhibit an ability to change, adapt and on occasions reinvent themselves in order to survive in challenging circumstances. What does this intense commitment to innovation mean for the employment systems of these organizations? What is the logic behind assertions that certain HRM practices and work design features promote innovation while others suppress and constrain this result? And what is the impact of employee feelings and attitudes on an organization’s propensity to operate in this way? It is with these and other questions that we are concerned in this chapter. Our assertions are necessarily tentative, since there have been few empirical studies examining this topic. Nonetheless, there is a burgeoning literature concerned with understanding what organizations can do internally to promote innovation. Some of the studies that we describe below offer new empirical insights into this area.

This paper examines the mechanism through which human resource management (HRM) promote firms’ product and process innovation. Based on a dataset of 3,755 firms from 13 countries, we find that in m...