HRM and innovation: looking across levels

Abstract

Studies are starting to explore the role of human resource management (HRM) in fostering organisational innovation, but empirical evidence remains contradictory and theory fragmented. This is partly because extant literature by and large adopts a unitary level of analysis, rather than reflecting on the multi‐level demands that innovation presents. Building on an emergent literature focused on HRM's role in shaping innovation, we shed light on the question of whether, and how, HRM might influence employees' innovative behaviours in the direction of strategically important goals. Drawing upon institutional theory, our contributions are threefold: to bring out the effect of two discrete HRM configurations – one underpinned by a control and the other by an entrepreneurial ethos, on attitudes and behaviours at the individual level; to reflect the way in which employee innovative behaviours arising from these HRM configurations coalesce to shape higher‐level phenomena, such as organisational‐level innovation; and to bring out two distinct patterns of bottom‐up emergence, one driven primarily by composition and the other by both composition and compilation.