The Relative Importance of Human Resource Management Practices for a Firm's Innovation Performance

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Human resource management (HRM) practices are generally expected to stimulate a firm's innovation performance. However, which of these practices do really pay off? Based on a unique dataset that includes detailed information for both a firm's innovation activities and different types of HRM practices we find that primarily new workplace organization practices seem to enhance a firm's innovation activities. Flexible practices of working time management and incentive payment schemes show only small effects on both innovation propensity and innovation success. Further training does only affect innovation success, but not innovation propensity. Overall, we find a stronger linkage between innovative HRM practices and innovation propensity than with innovation success. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may

The Evolution of Economic and Innovation Systems

“…These scholars interpreted this result as evidence of complementarities between HRM practices and innovation. Arvanitis et al (2013) find cumulative effects from the use of HRM practices on innovation. From a certain threshold on, the effect on innovation is larger with the firm's introduction and intensive use of larger numbers of individual HRM practices.…”

“…They found correlation between innovation and the factors under examination, but in many cases this was weak. Many empirical studies find different innovation results according to the type of management practice under examination: Zhou et al (2011) for the Netherlands, Cosh et al (2012) for UK, Chang et al (2012) for Taiwanese firms, Jiang et al (2012) for Chinese firms, Koski et al (2012) for Finnish manufacturing firms, and Arvanitis et al (2013) for Swiss and Greek firms.…”

“…From a certain threshold on, the effect on innovation is larger with the firm's introduction and intensive use of larger numbers of individual HRM practices. However, although both Laursen and Foss (2003) and Arvanitis et al (2013) control simultaneously for many different aspects of innovative HRM practices, 5 several problems still remain, as follows.…”

“…6 Another problem indicated byArvanitis et al (2013) is reverse causality: innovative firms could in turn be more likely to adopt innovative organizational practices.…”

The Role of Management Capacity in the Innovation Process for Firm Profitability

“…Van Reenen (2007, 2010) found that measures of monitoring, targetsetting and incentivizing, as assessed via surveys, are strongly associated with productivity and other measures of firm-level performance. The question of whether there is impact from management practices precisely in the area of innovation has received less attention, although several scholars have recently explored the effects from firm organization and employment conditions on propensity to innovate and on actual success in innovation (generally represented by sales of innovative products) (Arvanitis et al 2013). 4 Other scholars have attempted to examine managerial effects on innovation by examining mainly human resources management (HRM) practices, such as employee training, hiring criteria, teamwork, job design and employee hierarchies (Ichniowski and Shaw 2003).…”