| Scope and method of study. To be competitive, an organization must manage its employees so that they constantly develop new ideas as solutions to both new and old problems. Kirton (1976) classified people as adaptors or innovators based on personality differences that indicate the amount of structure needed to solve a problem. When people have problems they often seek help from other people. Social support has been classified as four types of supportive behaviors: emotional, instrumental, informational, and appraisal. The purpose of this research is to examine how social support facilitates the problem-solving process used in the adoption of human resource management innovations. The Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory (KAI) is used to determine if a respondent has an adaptor or innovator approach towards problem solving. I hypothesize that problem-solving style is related to the source of information such that innovators perceive more informational social support from sources outside the organization, whereas adaptors perceive more informational social support from inside the organization. In addition, emotional social support from internal colleagues is hypothesized to moderate the relationship between the information about the innovation and the decision to become personally involved in its adoption.; Findings and conclusions. Results indicate that the relationship between problem solving style (innovators) and external information support is significant, however the relationship between problem solving style (adaptors) and internal information support is not. Innovators, contrary to one hypothesis, receive both internal and external information support. Furthermore, support was found for the moderating effect of emotional support. When emotional support is low, increased information increases personal involvement in the innovation. However, when emotional support is high, increased information will not increase personal involvement. Regardless of the level of information support, higher levels of emotional support will produce greater personal involvement in the innovation. |
