| This study aimed at understanding innovative Human Resource Development (HRD) practices and the relationship between innovation in HRD and organizational characteristics. Since there is no prior research reported on this topic, this study can serve as a benchmark for the profession.; For this study, top officers of the human resource departments of Minnesota's largest 100 companies were surveyed. The Inventory of Organizational Innovativeness (IOI) was used, along with a questionnaire on internal moderators, to obtain data. The response rate was 40%.; The data resulted in a list of innovative HRD practices, and provided the basis to compare them to those that have been reported in other domains. All companies claimed to have been innovative in HRD during the prior years, although results indicate a rather small average number of adopted innovative HRD practices. This is revealing, considering the size and importance of the companies studied. There is a preeminence of innovative practices in the Organization Development component of HRD. Also, most of the practices reported for this study appear to stress a process of creativity for innovation.; Analyses also indicated statistically significant associations between the human resource leader's gender, educational level, years of service with the company, location of the unit where the innovative HRD practice was applied, role in the innovation process, and the size of the Human Resource group with the IOI organizational internal factors.; This study also explored some of the predictors of the adoption and implementation of innovative HRD practices in these companies. Two models were found to be explanatory of the innovation process: one, with organizational internal characteristics only (the IOI factors), and two, a comprehensive model with those internal characteristics and with organizational structure characteristics. The latter model appears more advantageous, because of the intricate characteristics of business in the modern society. |
