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The purpose of this paper is to offer a collection of articles that explore some of the many innovative approaches to qualitative inquiry and to challenge HRD scholars and practitioners to consider using innovative approaches in their work. In doing so, qualitative research in HRD can better capture and honour voices, experiences and meaning making of individuals, teams, organizations and communities.

Using Lê and Schmid’s (2022) definition of innovation in qualitative research, the authors selected four innovative approaches to qualitative research that have the potential to enhance HRD research and practice: use of multiple-case study designs in case study research in HRD, a new take on critical incident technique, a narrative approach of testimonio and a visual approach of participant photography.

Innovative approaches to qualitative research in this special issue include a review of case study research in HRD by Tkachenko et al., a new take on the familiar critical incident technique of Watkins et al., a narrative approach to testimonio by Salcedo et al. and a visual approach to participant photography by Hurtienne et al. The last article, by Grenier et al., addresses the implications of these articles to the field of HRD and points to additional directions for innovative qualitative approaches that can help to understand and create more inclusive, democratic and just organizations.

The articles in this special issue are intended to spark a dialogue about the meaning of innovation in qualitative research in HRD. It also can serve as an impetus for considering how innovative approaches to qualitative research can better tackle questions that come from the new normal of the workplace, society and diverse contexts.

This special issue will give HRD scholars and practitioners a realistic, practical view on how innovation in qualitative research can help in exploring specific problems in the workplace. The articles will offer a glimpse into how specific social complex issues can be explored and addressed through innovative approaches, new and tried/modified, to qualitative inquiry.

Four articles introduce new and tried/modified qualitative methods, and their value is in prompting HRD scholars and practitioners to consider some of the innovative approaches in exploring, understanding and transforming the workplace. The final article is a review of more innovative qualitative approaches for HRD scholars and practitioners to understand complex organizational phenomena and promote positive and inclusive change accordingly.

Employee’s service innovative behavior lays the groundwork for bottom-up innovation and ongoing service improvement in service firms. Therefore, it is vital for service organizations to understand the antecedents of employees service innovative behavior. Drawing upon the social cognitive theory, this study aims to develop a research model that examines the effects of ethical and entrepreneurial leadership on service innovative behavior.

Data were collected from 178 managers and 415 employees working in 178 small- and medium-sized (SME) hotels in Vietnam.

The findings showed that ethical leadership has direct and indirect effects on service innovative behavior, while entrepreneurial leadership only influences service innovative behavior via intrinsic motivation. In addition, trust in leader moderates the effect of intrinsic motivation on service innovative behavior

The study advances current scholarly research on leadership by combining the two areas of entrepreneurial and ethical leadership into one theoretical model and examines how these leadership styles generate hospitality employees’ service innovative behavior through the mediating effect of intrinsic motivation and the moderating effect of trust in leader.

The findings of this research offer significant implications for SME hotels and their managers. In their recruitment processes, hotels should search for particular personality traits, which have been found to predict ethical and entrepreneurial leadership. Hospitality firms also need to encourage communication between leaders and co-workers to enhance employees’ intrinsic motivation.

There are calls for research to examine whether both entrepreneurial and ethical leadership styles can be integrated to enhance employees’ positive outcomes. Evidence about the mechanism linking entrepreneurial and ethical leadership to service innovative behavior is limited. With this stated, the current study makes significant contribution to leadership and innovation literature by filling in these voids.

The purpose of the present research is to introduce a combined framework that integrates innovative work behavior, product innovation process and customer knowledge management; then, to explore the mediating effect of customer knowledge management in the relationship between innovative work behavior and the product innovation process.

The basis for the present research is a cross-sectional design. Data collection from 154 employees occurred using the following structured questionnaires: Customer Knowledge Management (CKM), Innovative Work Behavior (IWB) and Product Innovation Process (PIP). Data processing used SPSS version 26.0, including the PROCESS (3.5) macro analysis.

The results show positive relationships between innovative work behavior and the product innovation process (r = 0.420, p < 0.01). Pearson's correlation shows a coefficient of 0.42, meaning that 42% of the variations in perceived product innovation are due to variations in innovative work behavior. The second condition of the mediation test involved testing the relationship between the independent variable (Innovative Work Behavior) and the mediating variable (Knowledge Management) and showed a significant relationship (r = 0.272, p < 0.01). The findings suggested that knowledge management that other determinants supported, such as collaboration in idea exploration, idea championing and encouragement of participation in idea implementation, significantly contributed to the product innovation process (r = 0.509, p < 0.01). The bootstrapping method confirmed that innovative work behavior supports product innovation through the mediation of customer knowledge management (z = 3.01, p = 0.002).

The cross-sectional design, along with the relatively low number of participants and the self-reporting nature of the questionnaires, represent the current study's main limitations. Developing the research model could integrate new variables, such as customer co-creation processes, performance-based compensation, employee citizenship activities and transformational leadership.

This research has both theoretical and practical implications. These emphasize the importance of further investigation into the factors influencing companies' innovation processes. They also provide managers with a means of finding a fit between the deployment of customer knowledge mechanisms and the achievement of innovative workplace behavior, to improve innovation process efficiency.

The current study broadens the empirical research area of customer knowledge management and its impact on both innovative work behavior and the product innovation process, particularly in knowledge-intensive market scenarios that require organizations to be innovative.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the mechanism of shared leadership on team members’ innovative behavior.

Paired questionnaires were collected from 89 scientific research teams in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region of China at two-time points with a time lag of 4 months. Then multilevel structural equation model method was applied to analyze the multiple mediating effects.

This study finds that: the form of shared leadership in scientific research teams of universities; shared leadership has a positive impact on team members’ innovative behavior; there are multiple mediations in the relationship including synchronization and sequence of creative self-efficacy and achievement motivation.

According to the “stimulus-organism-response” model, this paper has constructed a multi-level theoretical model that shared leadership influences individual innovation behavior and reveals the “black box” from the perspective of psychological mechanism. It not only verifies that “can-do” shapes “willing to do” but also makes up for the gap of an empirical test of the effectiveness of shared leadership in scientific research teams of universities. Besides, the formal scale of shared leadership in the Chinese situation is revised, which can provide a reference for future empirical research on shared leadership. The research conclusions provide new ideas for improving the management of scientific research teams in universities.

Employees play an essential role in interactive innovation activities in Open Innovation Communities (OICs). Nevertheless, the factors influencing employees' innovation behavior in OICs have not been studied in depth. This study selects personality traits and social network characteristics to explain why and how these two factors affect employees' innovation behavior in OICs.

Three regression models were constructed to test the relationship between personality traits, social network characteristics, and interactive innovation behaviors. The authors examined how employees' personality traits (Big Five personality traits) influence employees' innovative behavior (initiating and supporting innovation) directly in OICs and explored whether social network characteristics (social group) mediate the relationship between employees' personality traits and employees' innovation behavior.

Using empirical data on 162 employees from Salesforce's IdeaExchange, the authors found that extraversion and openness to experience have significant positive effects on employees' interactive innovation behaviors, while conscientiousness has a significant negative effect on employees' interactive innovation behaviors in OICs. Furthermore, the mediation effect test results indicated that social network characteristics have a mediating effect on the relationship between extraversion and innovative behavior, and between openness and innovative behavior.

This study analyzes how personality traits influence innovation behavior in an open innovation environment, thus enriching research related to the factors influencing interactive innovation behavior. Meanwhile, the study integrates personality, social network, and innovative behavior research streams and clearly explains the relationship between the three variables. The research findings assist firms in selecting suitable employees to participate in interactive innovation behaviors in OICs.

This study clarifies the factors that foster individual innovative behaviour in the public sector by examining the effects and roles of empowering leadership, work group cohesiveness and individual learning orientation. This study also explores the direct effect of empowering leadership on work group cohesiveness and individual learning orientation, the influence of work group cohesiveness on individual learning orientation and the mediating roles of work group cohesiveness and individual learning orientation.

Data were collected from an online survey of respondents working in a public sector organization. Partial least squares structural equation modelling and mediation analysis by the bootstrap method were used for the data analysis.

Empowering leadership and individual learning orientation had significant direct effects on individual innovative behaviour. Both empowering leadership and work group cohesiveness have significant direct effects on individual learning orientation. Empowering leadership was positively related to work group cohesiveness. The mediation analysis revealed that individual learning orientation mediates the relationships between empowering leadership and individual innovative behaviour and between work group cohesiveness and individual innovative behaviour.

The study focuses on three factors that foster individual innovative behaviour in a public sector organization.

This study offers new insights into the factors that foster individual innovative behaviour in the public sector. The findings reveal the importance of using a balanced leadership style and encourage learning in the workplace for individual innovativeness by public leaders.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the mediating effect of work engagement on the relationship between learning organization and innovative behavior.

This study used surveys as a data collection tool and implemented structural equation modeling for empirically testing the proposed research model.

The study found that learning organization culture makes a direct and indirect impact on employees' innovative work behaviors. Results from hierarchical multiple regressions and structural equation modeling supported that work engagement fully mediates the relationship between the learning organization and innovative work behaviors.

HRD practitioners can develop effective interventions to enhance their employees' innovative behavior by devoting efforts to create a workplace that promotes collaborative learning culture and work engagement.

This study is valuable to HRD specialists interested in developing effective interventions that encourage employees to engage in innovative behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of high-involvement human resource practices in the innovative work behavior of employees, with the mediation of supportive work environment conditions.

The study uses regression analysis to test the hypotheses in a sample of 198 Spanish firms.

The results indicate that ability-enhancing and opportunity-enhancing human resource practices are positively related to innovative work behaviors with the mediation of two work environment variables: management support and coworkers support. This study discusses results and highlights limitations and future research directions.

Previous researchers have identified employees as important sources of innovation, but systemic empirical research has not been fully applied to examine the relationship between human resource management (HRM) and employees' innovative work behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role of task-efficacy and information exchange in linking the relationship between developmental feedback and employee creativity. In addition, this current paper tests the moderating role of innovative climate in reinforcing the effects of task-efficacy and information exchange on employee creativity.

This current research used a time-lagged questionnaire survey to reduce the potential problem of common method variance. The sample size of this study was 305 employees from information technology companies in southern Vietnam. This research undertook a hierarchical regression analysis to test the hypotheses.

The results found that task-efficacy and information exchange fully meditated the relationship between developmental feedback and employee creativity. Furthermore, innovative climate positively moderated the effects of task-efficacy and information exchange on employees’ creative performance.

This current paper is one of the first studies to examine task-efficacy as a motivational mechanism and information exchange as a cognitive mechanism for understanding the relationship between developmental feedback and employee creativity. This paper is also one of the first attempts to investigate whether innovative climate reinforces the effects of task-efficacy and information exchange on employee creativity.

This research examined how Australian construction projects perform in the area of client-led innovation. The purpose of this paper is to test the influence of a set of enablers in promoting the innovative performance of construction projects and examine how Australian construction projects perform in relation to innovation.

A questionnaire was developed and distributed to over 300 construction industry practitioners to obtain perceptions of industry practitioners regarding client-led enablers to promoting innovation at the project level, with 131 valid responses received. The data from the survey were subjected to statistical analyses including mean comparisons, using the Mann–Whitney U-test and Kruskal Wallis Test.

This research identified a number of enablers that clients can employ in construction projects to enhance innovative performance. It also revealed that the innovative performance of construction projects in Australia appears to be above average, although the perceived level is not too high. The main finding of the research is that Australian clients could achieve higher outcomes from construction projects by promoting innovativeness in their projects, especially by promoting innovativeness in their own organizations and providing incentives/rewards and other support for innovative activities in projects.

Past research focusing on client-led enablers at the project level is limited. This research identified a number of enablers that clients can employ to achieve greater benefits from their projects through innovation.