An Examination of the Antecedents of Individual and Team Innovation and their Association with Organisational Performance
Creators: name: Sitepu, Eddy Mayor Putra
Publisher: name: Macquarie University
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 399999
subject: Other education not elsewhere classified

description: This thesis investigates the effect of human resource management (HRM) practices as an antecedent of individual and team innovation, and the mediating role of learning stocks in such an association. The study also examines the effect of individual and team innovation on organisational performance, and the role of organisational absorptive capacity in mediating such an effect. Data was collected using a mail survey from a random sample of 228 employees in Indonesian public sector organisations with Partial Least Square (PLS) technique applied to analyse the data.
The thesis adopts the ‘thesis by publication’ format and consists of three research papers. Paper One examines the antecedent role of two individual-level HRM practices (i.e. training and the performance-reward link) in promoting individual innovation and the mediating role of two individual-level learning stocks (i.e. competence and intrinsic motivation) in such an association. Paper Two examines the antecedent role of two team-level HRM practices (i.e. team coaching and participation in decision making) in enhancing team innovation and the mediating role of the transactive memory system (TMS) (i.e. specialisation, credibility, and coordination), as team-level learning stocks, in such an association. Finally, Paper Three examines the consequences of individual and team innovation, focusing on the effect of individual and team level innovation on organisational performance and the mediating role of absorptive capacity in this association.
The findings of Paper One show that the performance-reward link is directly negatively associated with individual innovation. In addition, the results indicate that competence and intrinsic motivation, as individual-level learning stocks, provide a mediating mechanism x   through which training enhances individual innovation. The findings of Paper Two show that both participation in decision making and team coaching enhance team innovation. In addition, the results highlight the significant mediating role of TMS coordination in the association between participation in decision making and team innovation. Further, while TMS specialisation was not found to be a significant mediator between HRM practices and innovation, the results indicate that it can significantly enhance team innovation. The Paper Three findings indicate that innovation enhances organisational performance via organisational absorptive capacity. Specifically, the results highlight the significant mediating role of absorptive capacity in the association between team innovation and organisational performance.
The thesis contributes to the literature in several ways. First, this study contributes to the innovation research by contributing to the limited empirical research examining HRM-innovation relationships in a public sector context within emerging countries. Secondly, the findings provide a practical insight into Lin and Sanders’ (2017) theoretical framework by revealing that the associations between HRM practices with individual and team innovation are enacted through learning stocks at the individual and team levels respectively. Thirdly, the study contributes to the literature by confirming Harvey, Skelcher, Spencer, Jas, and Walshe’s (2010) proposition that the extent to which new ideas will enhance organisational performance is influenced by an organisation’s capacity to acquire, assimilate, transform, and exploit the knowledge from external sources.