Science Research Management ›› 2022, Vol. 43 ›› Issue (5): 164-171.

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Research on the impact of AUO-AHRP on organizational innovation performance——The effect of knowledge transfer and social capital

Chen Yun, Zhao Fuqiang, Zhou Jinhan   

  1. School of Management, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, Hubei, China
  • Received:2019-05-06 Revised:2019-11-05 Online:2022-05-20 Published:2022-05-20

Abstract:    Under the mobile Internet era of the volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, it is difficult for organizations to sustain development only through exploitation of innovation by utilizing internal resource or by acquiring external resources. The ambidextrous innovation is becoming a realistic choice for enterprise development. Based on the contextual theory, innovation oriented human resource practice, high performance human resource practice, supportive human resource practice and, internal fit human resource practice all have positive impacts on dual innovation capability. To sum up, although existing researches have paid attention to the important influence of human resource practice on organizational innovation, there are few researches on the influence of acquisition utilization oriented ambidextrous human resource practices (AUO-AHRP) on organizational innovation. Therefore, human resource practice is one of the most important antecedent variables of the organizational innovation.
   As we all know, the organization innovation is some kind of new business idea, product, and service or management process generated in the enterprise. In the essence, the organization innovation is the knowledge creation process, so the knowledge is the basis of the organizational innovation. According to the resource-based view, resource dependency theory and resource bricolage theory, the organizational innovation needs the internal resource exploitation, the external resource exploitation, and the internal and external resource integration. Therefore, enterprises should pay attention to external acquisition of knowledge, internal utilization of knowledge, and integration of internal and external knowledge. Knowledge transfer has a positive impact on organizational innovation performance. Human resource practice can enhance the knowledge transfer ability, arouse the knowledge transfer motivation, and provide the knowledge transfer opportunity. The relevant research indicated that committed human resource practice is positively correlated with knowledge transfer. Thus, the knowledge transfer may serve as a bridge between human resource practice and the organizational innovation performance. Therefore, it is very important to get the support of AUO-AHRP in order to enhance ability, stimulate motive, and provide opportunity of the employee. It will help the organizational employees to exploit the internal knowledge resources, explore the external knowledge resources, and integrate the internal and external knowledge resources. Therefore, it becomes an important problem to be resolved urgently by the industry and the academia how to enhance the knowledge transfer ability, motive, and opportunity of the employee. 
   Organizational innovation not only needs the support of human resource practice, but also needs favorable organizational context. Social capital can provide favorable communication channels, trust relations and common cognition for knowledge transfer. Social capital includes three dimensions of structure. The higher the structural dimension level, the smaller the knowledge distance between members, the closer the social relationship between members, and the more opportunities for knowledge transfer. The higher the relationship dimension level, the more mutual benefit, honesty and trustworthiness among members, the smoother the knowledge transfer. The higher the level of cognitive dimension, the closer the knowledge base and cognitive level among members. Therefore, as an organizational context, the direct influence and indirect effect of human resource practice on organizational innovation through knowledge transfer should be moderated by social capital. Organizational innovation resources are embedded in social networks. The acquisition of external knowledge and the utilization of internal knowledge are affected by social capital. Social capital can promote organizational innovation and knowledge transfer by providing opportunities, trust and channels for employee communication, so it may play a regulatory role in the impact of human resource practice on knowledge transfer and innovation performance. However, the existing researches take social capital as the antecedent variable to explore its impact on organizational innovation, but ignore the regulatory role of social capital as organizational context.
   Based on this, the purpose of this study is to define the connotation of AUO-AHRP and explore its influence mechanism and boundary conditions on organizational innovation performance based on the resource-based, dependence, and bricolage theory. The empirical study of 425 top managers found the follow. Firstly, AUO-AHRP has a significant positive impact on organizational innovation performance. Secondly, the knowledge transfer mediates the relationship between AUO-AHRP and organizational innovation performance. Finally, the social capital negatively moderates the impact of AUO-AHRP on knowledge transfer and its indirect effect on organizational innovation performance through knowledge transfer. Therefore, the research will enrich human resource practice, knowledge transfer, organizational innovation and social capital theory, provide measurement tools for empirical research of AHRP, and theoretical basis and decision-making reference for organizational innovation.
    The theoretical contributions of this study are as follow. Firstly, the research scientifically defined the connotation structure of AUO-AHRP, and provided measurement tools for the empirical research of ambidextrous human resource practice impact. Secondly, the paper explored the internal mechanism of AUO-AHRP on organizational innovation performance, and further opened the black box of human resource practice impact on organizational performance. Finally, it is clear that social capital negatively moderated the direct effect of AUO-AHRP on knowledge transfer and its indirect effect on organizational innovation performance through knowledge transfer, due to the crowding out effect of social capital and HRP as the homogeneous resources and the knowledge homogeneity of closed social network.

Key words: acquisition-utilization oriented ambidextrous human resource practices (AUO-AHRP), knowledge transfer, social capital, organizational innovation