Innovation-driven human resource management practices: A systematic review, integrative framework, and future research directions.

• Author: Lenart-Gansiniec, Regina

INTRODUCTION

Innovations are perceived as a driving force for the development and growth of the organization (Olavarrieta & Villena, 2014; Vila et al., 2014). Innovations are a key driver of creating and maintaining a competitive advantage, performance, and delivering business value over the long term (Chen et al., 2019). There is a lot of evidence that an organization can speed up the process of creating an organization, that it should mobilize its employees and take care of their well-being (Bienkowska et al., 2022). It is emphasized that "people, not products, are an innovative company's major assets" (Gupta & Singhal, 1993, p. 41). It is not surprising that human resource management (HRM) is becoming increasingly important in innovation (Seeck & Diehl, 2017). HRM refers to "the management of work and people towards desired ends, and is a fundamental activity in any organization in which human beings are employed" (Boxall et al., 2007, p. 1).

Recently, the discussion on the importance of HRM for innovation has been intensified (Easa & Orra, 2021), emphasizing the role of human resources management practices (HRMP) understood as "recruiting a selection, training and development, performance evaluation and compensation" (Kianto et al., 2017, p. 12). Despite the importance of HRMP for innovation, there is little research in this area (Olavarrieta & Villena, 2014). So far, considerations have focused on high-performance work practices, particularly motivating and engaging employees to create innovations, the importance of employing staff, and their mobility and composition (Ng & Dastmalchian, 2011) for creating innovation. Moreover, innovation-driven HRMP is considered a black hole (Seeck & Diehl, 2017) and one of the least explained organizational phenomena, and the need to support future research is postulated (Easa & Orra, 2021; Jotaba et al., 2022).

Apart from the above, one has to remember that although systematic reviews and meta-analyses of innovation-driven HRMP are published (Easa & Orra, 2021; Jotaba et al., 2022), they have limitations in terms of knowledge consolidation and integration. For example, Seeck and Diehl (2017) reviewed the empirical evidence on the impact of human resources management practices on innovation that was published between 1990 and 2015. However, the researchers focused on systematizing previous empirical research results, but did not propose future research directions. In turn, Koster's review (2019) concerned innovative HRM. Its limitation referred to the literature on the subject that was selected on the basis of only one database, such as the Web of Science. In addition, it was a traditional literature review that lacked accuracy and verifiability (Tranfield et al., 2003). In turn, Easa and Orra (2021) reviewed 31 empirical publications published from January 2003 to December 2018 in 18 highly rated journals with a documented history and impact on human resources management research using the following databases: Academy of Management, Sage, Wiley, Taylor and Francis, Science Direct, Oxford Academic and Emerald. The authors focused on checking how human resources management and innovation are related to each other. In turn, using bibliometric analysis, Jotaba et al. (2022) determined the current state of knowledge and research trends in HRM adopting innovative practices. At the same time, the researchers used only one Web of Science database, while the searched keywords were "innovation" and "human resources management." That narrowing resulted in omitting potentially significant publications in other databases and involving HRMP.

Therefore, an additional argument for providing further findings in the innovation-driven HRMP seems evident. The COVID-19 pandemic unleashed and intensified new and enormous challenges for management in terms of the need to go beyond traditional HRM practices (Ngoc Su et al., 2021) and redefining trends in those practices (Przytula et al., 2020) towards more creativity, flexibility, and agility (Hamouche, 2021). Which is more "due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its destructive effects on communities and limited organizational resources, sustainable human resource management with the long-term development of human resources from consumption to development is important and the concept of human resource management, organizational value, and organizational strategies should be reviewed with a focus on the health of employee and workplace, employees' participation, collaboration and development, flexibility, compliance with labor regulations, justice and equality" (Azizi et al., 2021, p. 7).

Overall, while reviews of research on innovation-driven HRMP are available, a complete review of previous research in this area is still insufficient. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic intensified the need for organizations to look for new ways to maintain business continuity and create innovations based on HRMP (Bienkowska et al., 2022). In response to the identified gaps, this literature review offers an extended and comprehensive summary of existing knowledge in the field of innovation-driven HRMP. The aim of the current research is to identify and synthesize the most significant and trustworthy research contributions of innovation-driven HRMP. "Drivers" in this article are understood as antecedents, outcomes, and other mechanisms like moderators and mediators (Dani & Gandhi, 2022). We focus on answering the following three questions:

RQ1. What are innovation-driven HRMP?

RQ2. What is the current state of research on innovation-driven HRMP? RQ3. What are the emerging research directions on innovation-driven HRMP?

This systematic review of the literature differs from the previous ones in several respects, which at the same time contribute to the existing literature in the field of HRM and innovations. Firstly, the literature on innovation-driven HRMP was collected through the two credible databases, Web of Science and Scopus, based on comprehensive journal coverage for the business field (Kumpulainen & Seppanen, 2022). This made it possible to organize existing knowledge and identify cognitive gaps in the field of innovation-driven HRMP. Secondly, the review of the literature allowed for obtaining a deductively developed integrative framework that synthesizes and organizes existing knowledge about innovation-driven HRMP. In particular, the framework integrates the identified innovation-driven HRMP into a comprehensive approach that takes into account the link between HRMP and innovation, antecedents, mediators, moderators, and outcomes in this relationship. In addition, this framework will prove useful in identifying research directions into innovation-driven human resource management practices. Taken together, our findings provide recommendations and pathways for future research to gain a more comprehensive understanding of innovation-oriented human resource management practices.

The remaining part of the article is organized as follows. The second section presents the theoretical background. The third section describes steps taken to perform a systematic review of the literature. Section four presents the results of our review. Section five focuses on discussing the results. The last section in this article contains final considerations and directions for future research.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Innovations have been the subject of lively debate in the academic literature for several years (Chen et al., 2019; Volberda et al., 2013). Scholars have studied innovation from different perspectives, resulting in multiple definitions (Chen et al., 2019). However, despite this, there is some confusion in terms of conceptualization. In particular, there are attempts to combine innovation with creativity (Tang, 2017). In this approach, creativity is a source of innovation, which in practice means that the organization's use of the ideas and suggestions of its employees can contribute to generating new ideas or improving existing ones.

The innovation findings so far focus mainly on drivers of innovation. It is emphasized that creating innovation requires various factors. In particular, attention was paid to, inter alia, investments in research and development, government institution involvement, social capital, intra-organizational networking of employees, civic culture, interpersonal trustworthiness, control, organizational ethical code, organizational support, co-decision and risk-taking by employees, employee motivation, information and communication technologies (Krasnicka et al., 2016). It is increasingly emphasized in the literature that drivers of innovation should be considered from the micro perspective (Weiss et al., 2022). Moreover, it is stressed that human resources management significantly contributes not only to the development of skills, motivation, commitment, employee satisfaction, compatibility of employees, organizational identification, civic behavior, organizational justice, a decrease in employee turnover, and an increase in organizational flexibility and performance, but also to creating innovations (Weiss et al., 2022).

Recent findings also point to the importance of HRMP for innovation (Ferrarini & Curzi, 2022). Generally, HRMP focus on four strategic organizational activities such as (1) recruiting and selection, (2) training and development, (3) compensation, and (4) performance appraisal (Kianto et al., 2017):

* recruitment refers to the act of finding a pool of candidates who are willing and able to be hired by an organization. Selection, on the other hand, is the process of the organization selecting the most suitable and qualified candidate from a group of candidates for a specific position;

* training refers to a systematic and planned instructional activity that promotes employee learning towards improving their knowledge, skills and competences. Development, on the other hand, is related to activities related to the...