Human Resource Systems, Employee Creativity, and Firm Innovation: The Moderating Role of Firm Ownership

Abstract

This inter-human resource (HR) systems research investigates whether, how, and when different types of employee-experienced HR systems jointly influence employee creativity. We hypothesize and find that employee-experienced performance-oriented HR systems were more positively related to employee domain-relevant skills when employees experienced stronger maintenance-oriented HR systems. In addition, employee-experienced maintenance-oriented HR systems more strongly augmented the positive relationship between employee-experienced performance-oriented HR systems and domain-relevant skills in privately owned enterprises (POEs) than in state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Employee domain-relevant skills mediated the three-way interactive effect of employee-experienced performance-oriented HR systems, maintenance-oriented HR systems, and firm ownership (POEs vs. SOEs) on employee creativity. Finally, aggregated employee creativity had a stronger positive relationship with firm innovation in POEs than in SOEs. As such, this investigation provides novel theoretical and empirical insights into strategic HR systems, creativity and innovation.