Human Capital Acquisition and Organizational Innovation: A Temporal Perspective

Abstract

Newcomers contribute to organizational innovation by bringing in new knowledge and ideas, on the one hand, and by collaborating and exchanging with incumbents, on the other. We propose that an organization’s ability to use these contributions is influenced by hiring rate, hiring rate change, and hiring rate dispersion, which affect both the flow of new ideas into the organization and the level of collaboration between newcomers and incumbents. Using four years of data from a large, multi-industry sample, we find that hiring rate and hiring rate dispersion increase organizational innovation. We also find that increases in hiring rates from year to year are positively related to innovation for organizations with more collaborative work practices, while the relationship between hiring rate dispersion and innovation is less positive when organizations have more collaborative work practices. This study highlights how temporal patterns of hiring influence human capital acquisition and development.