Organizational Conservatism, Strategic Human Resource Management, and Breakthrough Innovation

Organizational leaders routinely note the critical importance of human capital in enabling successful innovation outcomes. However, strategic human resource management (SHRM) practices, especially in large firms, often are not aligned with practices that facilitate breakthrough innovation (BI), where uncertainty, ambiguity, and risk of failure are high. In this paper, drawing from the motivation–opportunity–ability (MOA) framework, we identify and delineate SHRM practices that are likely to affect BI outcomes in firms. These include career risk mitigation, extrinsic rewards (motivation), idea generation facilitation (opportunity), innovation talent development, and managerial ambidexterity development (ability). We theorize that while these SHRM practices may directly affect BI outcomes, these effects are likely to be modulated by the broader organizational context, specifically, the degree of organizational conservatism. We test our hypotheses using survey data collected from 79 U.S.-based multinational firms and find that first, the impacts of career risk, extrinsic rewards, and innovation talent development on BI outcomes vary with the firm's degree of conservatism. Second, developing ambidextrous talent among middle managers positively influences BI outcomes, irrespective of the firm's level of conservatism. Overall, our study provides a basic framework to understand how SHRM practices can be leveraged to influence innovation under varying degrees of conservatism in organizations.