Research On The Influence Of High Involvement Work Systems On Organizational Creativity And Performance

Firms are facing market competition in an increasingly complex and turbulent external environment,and innovation is their key to develop and attain the sustainable competitive advantage.Organizational creativity as the source of innovation plays an important role on improving organizational performance and sustainable development of the enterprises.Prior research has discussed that organizational strategy can influence organizational creativity,and some researchers have started to explore the effect of knowledge acquisition and organizational learning on organizational creativity.However,few research has explored how human resource management influences organizational creativity.Employee creativity within an organization is the source of organizational creativity,so improving involvement and contribution of these creative employees is crucial to increasing organizational creativity.Therefore,how to promote and manage employee involvement and enthusiasm effectively is important to enhance organizational creativity and organizational performance.High involvement work systems have important effects on organizational creativity and organizational performance.On the one hand,high involvement work systems can enhance human resource flexibility,whicn in turn can promote employee to solve problems creatively,produce novel and useful ideas,and ultimately improve organizational creativity and organizational performance.On the other hand,high involvement work systems can promote organizations to effectively integrate internal and external knowledge resources,and this would further promote organizational knowledge combination capability,and eventually affect organizational creativity and organizational performance.High involvement work systems have important effects on organizational creativity and organizational performance,and organizational collectivism and interaction orientation play important roles on this relationship.On the one hand,organizational collectivism can influence internal employee's attitude and behaviors.The effective interaction between high involvement work systems and organizational collectivism can promote human resource flexibility within an organization,which in turn can promote organizational creativity and organizational performance.On the other hand,interaction orientation can facilitate organization acquiring resources like knowledge and information from external environment.The interaction between high involvement work systems and interaction orientation can effectively integrate the previously acquired external knowledge resource within an organization,and this would increase the organizational knowledge combination capability,which in turn positively facilitates organizational creativity and organizational performance.Based on the literature review,we applied the descriptive method,regression method and bootstrapping test.In Chinese cultural context,we studied the interactive mechanism of high involvement work systems on organizational creativity and organizational performance,we revised the scale of high involvement work systems and then three questions were mainly discussed:(1)What was the dimensional structure of high involvement work systems and how to measure? Can high involvement work systems positively influence organizational creativity and organizational performance? Does organizational creativity mediate the relationship between high involvement work systems and organizational performance?(2)Based on the perspective of human resource flexibility,what is the interactive mechanism of high involvement work systems on organizational creativity and organizational performance? Can organizational collectivism moderate the relationship between high involvement work systems and human resource flexibility? Whether there is an indirect effect of organizational collectivism moderating the relationship between high involvement work systems and organizational creativity and organizational performance?(3)Based on knowledge combination capability perspective,what is the interactive mechanism of high involvement work systems on organizational creativity and organizational performance? Can interaction orientation moderate the relationship between high involvement work systems and knowledge combination capability? Whether there is an indirect effect of interaction orientation moderating the relationship between high involvement work systems and organizational creativity and organizational performance?Based on the resource-based view theory and new institutional theory,in order to answer these questions,we collected data from employees and managers respectively.Three studies were conducted with a sample of 159 companies,which included 776 employees and 484 middle/high level managers.Study 1: we have revised the scale of high involvement work systems and conducted pre-test.In this research we have analyzed the dimension and structure of high involvement work systems.In combination with the specific items of high involvement work systems,we conducted interviews with many companies,concluded and summarized the scale of high involvement work systems,and finally we used questionnaire survey to verify the reliability and validity of the scale.The results of exploration factor analysis showed that the scale of high involvement work systems had five factors such as recognition practices,empower practices,competence development practices,fair rewards practices and information sharing practices.The scale showed acceptable results from confirmation factor analysis,reliability and exploration validity,so our revised scale is reasonable and valid.Study 2: The effect of high involvement work systems on organizational creativity and organizational performance.Based on the revised scale of high involvement work systems,we explored the direct effect of high involvement work systems on organizational creativity and organizational performance,and the mediating effect of organizational creativity.The results indicated:(1)High involvement work systems are positively related to organizational creativity.(2)There is significant effect of high involvement work systems on organizational performance.(3)Organizational creativity positively mediates the relationship between high involvement work systems and organizational performance.Study 3: The mechanism of high involvement work systems on organizational creativity and organizational performance: based on the perspective of human resource flexibility.We explored that how the interaction between high involvement work systems and organizational collectivism is positively related to organizational creativity and organizational performance,and we further discussed the mediating role of human resource flexibility.The results indicated:(1)High involvement work systems can positively influence human resource flexibility.(2)Human resource flexibility mediated the relationship between high involvement work systems and organizational creativity.(3)Human resource flexibility mediated the effect of high involvement work systems on organizational performance.(4)Organizational collectivism positively moderated the relationship between high involvement work systems and human resource flexibility,and it also positively moderated the indirect effect of high involvement work systems on organizational creativity and organizational performance through human resource flexibility.Study 4: The interactive mechanism of high involvement work systems on organizational creativity and organizational performance: based on the perspective of knowledge combination capability.We explored that the interaction between the high involvement work systems and interaction orientation can positively influence organizational creativity and organizational performance and we analyzed the mediating effect of knowledge combination capability.The results indicated:(1)High involvement work systems positively influenced knowledge combination capability.(2)Knowledge combination capability was positively related to organizational creativity and organizational performance.(3)Knowledge combination capability mediated the effect of high involvement work systems on organizational creativity,and it also mediated the effect of high involvement work systems on organizational performance.(4)Interaction orientation positively moderated the effect of high involvement work systems on knowledge combination capability,and it also positively moderate the indirect effect of high involvement work systems on organization creativity and organizational performance respectively through knowledge combination capability.In this research we have proposed the following theoretical and managerial contributions:(1)We revealed the effects of high involvement work systems on organizational creativity and organizational performance based on the revised and tested scale of high involvement work systems.Based on company interviews and in combination with China's rapid economic development and firm's employment shortage,we have revised a few items of high involvement work systems and conducted pre-test.The revised scale of high involvement work systems is beneficial to researchers' local research in Chinese context.Based on revised scale of high involvement work systems,we explored the direct effect of high involvement work systems on organizational creativity and organizational performance,and we provided a foundation for future research.The results indicated that the high involvement work systems constitute as one of the important factors influencing organizational creativity.We improved our understanding of organizational creativity that it mediated the relationship between high involvement work systems and organizational performance.This will help us to improve organizational creativity and further organizational performance through new methods in the theories and practices.(2)We have also revealed the mediating role of human resource flexibility between high involvement work systems on organizational creativity and organizational performance,and also the moderating mechanism of organizational collectivism.We have explored the mechanism of high involvement work systems on organizational creativity and organizational performance based on the perspective of human resource flexibility.The researchers have found that human resource flexibility is one of the important factors influencing the relationship between high involvement work systems and organizational creativity,and the relationship between high involvement work systems and organizational performance.We demonstrated that human resource flexibility was positively related to organizational creativity,and further verified the effect of human resource flexibility on organizational performance.We also found that human resource flexibility mediated the relationship between high involvement work systems and organizational creativity.At the same time,we explored the interactive effects of high involvement work systems and organizational collectivism on human resource flexibility.The results indicated that the interaction between the high involvement work systems and organizational collectivism can significantly improve human resource flexibility,which would further positively enhance organizational creativity and organizational performance.The results can be contributed to understanding the interactive mechanism between high involvement work systems and organizational culture,help us to understand the effects of human resource flexibility on organizational creativity and organizational performance,and provide us with new ways of improving organizational innovation capability.(3)We have also revealed the mediating role of knowledge combination capability between high involvement work systems and organizational creativity and organizational performance,and also the mediating mechanism of interaction orientationIn this research we explored the interactive mechanism of high involvement work systems on organizational creativity and organizational performance through the perspective of knowledge combination capability.The results indicated that high involvement work systems can significantly influence organizational creativity and organizational performance through knowledge combination capability,whereas the knowledge combination capability served as a mediator.We further explored the mechanism of high involvement work systems on organizational creativity and organizational performance under the interaction orientation.The results indicated that the interaction between high involvement work systems and interaction orientation can significantly influence knowledge combination capability,and further affected organizational creativity and organizational performance.The results were extended to show the effect of interactive mechanism between high involvement work systems and strategy orientation on organizational creativity and organizational performance,which can provide firms with new methods to improve their creativity and innovation.