Linking innovation and creativity with human resources strategies and practices: A matter of fit or flexibility?

Abstract

Innovation is an important component of the overall strategy for contemporary organizations. In parallel, strategic human resources management scholars have argued that human resources management practices should help to motivate behaviors and attitudes among organizational employees that will contribute to the successful implementation of the overall strategy. Taggar, Sulsky, and MacDonald suggest that the employee sector they label as the inner core is most critical to the attainment of an innovative substrategy goal, and specific human resources bundles should be designed to encourage creative and innovative behaviors among inner core employees. This commentary argues that innovation, as an inherent part of the overall strategy, should be an important goal for all employee sectors, although the nature of their needed innovative behavior may differ. Thus, the Taggar et al. model should be integrated with the multi-level model of organizational innovation and creativity developed by Bains and Tran (2006) to account better for the requirements of innovation in complex organizations.

Citation

Farr, J.L. and Tran, V. (2008), "Linking innovation and creativity with human resources strategies and practices: A matter of fit or flexibility?", Mumford, M.D., Hunter, S.T. and Bedell-Avers, K.E. (Ed.) Multi-Level Issues in Creativity and Innovation (Research in Multi-Level Issues, Vol. 7), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 377-392. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1475-9144(07)00014-8