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The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between human resource management (HRM) practices and innovation performance in Spanish manufacturing firms. The paper focuses on the number of existing patents, analyzing the extent to which this variable is favored by HRM practices. It will also assess the extent to which patents explain the firm performance and mediate in the relationship between the latter and HRM practices.

The objective is to assess these relationships using the Spanish Survey of Industrial Strategic Behavior. The longitudinal analysis focuses on the years between 2001 and 2008, a period of great economic growth in Spain.

The findings show that the most innovative firms were also the most competitive ones. Furthermore, employment security positively affects innovations over time and training on new technologies is associated with the number of patents, when overall compensation practices are high.

This study demonstrated the existence of two objectives that HR managers should be aiming at. On the one hand, the development of patents should be a priority for obtaining better results over time. On the other hand, management should invest in HRM practices because they favor innovation and are neither a waste of time nor resources.

This study contributes to the literature, surpassing the limitations of previous research, by assessing the role of HRM practices in innovation and company outcomes and by using a longitudinal study design.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the antecedents of the development of dynamic capabilities from an HRM perspective, considering the leading role of leadership styles and their potential impact on the orientation of HR systems and a firm’s capabilities.

The authors designed an empirical study of a sample of 107 Spanish industrial firms, asking HR, production and marketing managers to assess the CEO’s leadership styles, the system of HRM practices applied in their organizations and dynamic capabilities. They applied multiple regressions and mediation analysis.

The authors’ results suggest that both transactional and transformational leadership styles are positively associated with dynamic capabilities (sensing, seizing and reconfiguration), directly and indirectly, through their effects on HR systems.

This paper approaches dynamic capabilities by using cross-sectional data. A longitudinal analysis would enrich this study. Also, the data aggregation in this paper does not allow to check different HR orientations from different departments. Finally, other HRM practices and strategic orientations could be assessed.

This paper highlights the need to develop CEOs who are able to combine leadership behaviors in such a way that they promote HR systems (skill-based development vs job-based development) and to use them as mediating mechanisms and in order to generate greater dynamic capabilities in the organization.

The authors are proposing that HRM can be applied to leverage a firm’s competitive advantage, as HR systems mediate for obtaining different dynamic capabilities. Second, it could be concluded that any CEO should combine or display traits of both forms of leadership styles (transformational and transactional) in order to develop the full range of dynamic capabilities. Finally, this paper can provide some insights into the way dynamic capabilities can be measured and approached, through HRM microfoundations.

A strong HRM system (encompassing the dimensions of distinctiveness, consistency and consensus) facilitates a collective interpretation of Human Resource Management (HRM) practices in a common direction, and consequently, a conjoint response by employees. The purpose of this paper is two fold: first to argue that those dimensions have a direct impact on the reaction of employees (organisational citizenship behaviour, OCB and intention to remain, IR); and second, the authors propose that these dimensions are not independent, but rather can interact in such a way that consensus impacts on the consistency of an HRM system, and consistency mediates the relationship between consensus and OCB and IR.

The authors surveyed HR managers and employees from a sample of 102 Spanish hotels. Specifically, HR managers were asked to complete a questionnaire assessing the dimensions of HRM strength, and employees completed a different questionnaire reporting their levels of OCB and IR. The authors examined the reliability and validity of measures by means of Confirmatory Factor Analysis. Finally, structural equations models were applied to test direct effects and mediating hypotheses.

As an initial finding, the authors obtained two dimensions of HRM strength: consistency and a new factor, which is a combination of distinctiveness and consensus, labelled the “Reputation” of the HRM system. A second result is that such the reputation of the HRM system positively affects OCB and IR. Third, consistency mediates in the relationships between the reputation of the HRM system and OCB and IR.

Although the authors are aware of the limitations of our paper, regarding the cross-sectional data design and the assessment of HR strength by managers, the authors believe that the results highlight the importance of HRM system strength, since it affects individual outcomes.

One of the valuable contributions made by this paper is that the authors obtained two dimensions for HRM strength instead of the three proposed by Bowen and Ostroff (2004): consistency and reputation (as a combination of distinctiveness and consensus). The authors explain that the new dimension is related to the concept of employer branding, emphasising HRM system’s internal image, facilitating common expectations that guide employees towards the desired responses. Second, Reputation impacts Consistency, improving employees’ OCB and IR; hence, the dimensions of HRM system strength are not independent, but they are better able to interact in order to affect employee outcomes.

The present paper contributes to the development of sustainable strategies by focusing on the social perspective and the role played by HRM. Specifically, we identified and compared the employee competencies that supported the compliance strategy as well as the innovative/proactive sustainability strategies – and their impacts on social outcomes.

After formulating hypotheses, we tested them on a sample of 179 companies from the chemical and metallurgical industries using the bootstrap method.

The results revealed that both sustainability strategies were present in the sample. The compliance sustainable strategy showed to be negatively associated with employee competencies, whilst proactive sustainable strategy firms presented a positive relationship with employee competencies. We also found that compliance strategies failed to have any impact on social outcomes, but proactive strategies had a positive effect on social outcomes. Indeed, normative and foresighted thinking competencies acted as mediating variables in such a relationship.

The originality of this paper lies in three aspects hitherto unaddressed in the literature: first, the conceptualisation and assessment of sustainable strategies focused on a social dimension; second, the identification of individual competencies required developing sustainable strategies; and third, the demonstration that it is only the firms that adopt proactive sustainable strategies that obtain positive social outcomes.

This study aims to examine whether the psychological capital of male and female university students explains the intention to undertake entrepreneurism. Following Ajzen’s theory of planned behaviour, the aim was to study whether perceived behavioural control and subjective norms influence entrepreneurial intention and if subjective norms moderate established relationships, in both genders.

Structural equation modelling and analysis of variance was applied to test the hypotheses amongst students at a Spanish university.

The results showed that gender differences in psychological capital, in perceived behavioural control and in subjective norms existed between the male and female population, which explain gender differences in entrepreneurial intention. Similarly, subjective norms acted as a moderator in the relationship between psychological capital, the perceived behavioural control and entrepreneurial intention, with the moderating impact being higher on the female population.

The results obtained in this paper indicate that developing perceived behavioural control and the psychological capital of university students in training programmes of male and female students helps to promote their entrepreneurial intention. Similarly, the results suggest that building a support network, for instance of family and groups of friends is key to fostering entrepreneurial intention, particularly for women.

Entrepreneurship is key to the successful employability of current and future generations in the labour market. This study examined key antecedents of student’s entrepreneurial intention and how these are gendered. For both men and women (investing in) psychological capital is important. Informal social support was shown to play a key role in women’s entrepreneurial intention.

Scholars have emphasized intellectual capital’s importance for universities in obtaining competitive advantages and creating value. The purpose of this paper is to identify the influences of two components of intellectual capital, relational and human capital at the international level, and psychological capital on international orientation of academic entrepreneurs, and the mediating effects of international relational and human capital.

On the basis of a literature review, a theoretical model is proposed to explain the relationship between the studied variables. Our hypotheses are tested on a sample of 173 academic spin-offs of Spanish universities using bootstrapping methodology.

The results show that the international market relational capital and international human capital of academic entrepreneurs influence their international orientation, and that their psychological capital is directly, and indirectly, related to international orientation through international human capital and international market relational capital.

This study provides a better understanding of the antecedents of the international orientation of academic entrepreneurs, which would provide an important contribution to the literature on intellectual capital, academic entrepreneurship and internationalization. The achieved results highlight important implications for training of academic entrepreneurs and for managers and management teams of companies willing to enter, or even those already operating in, international markets.

In this study, the international orientation of academic entrepreneurs is explained through the psychological capital that is studied jointly with two components of intellectual capital, relational and human capital at the international level. Although some recent work has focused on the study of the internationalization of academic spin-off, this line of research is still incipient.

There is some research showing that leadership behaviors could be important antecedents to learning, but knowledge is scarce on the impact of which leadership styles support exploitative and explorative learning. The purpose of this paper is to hypothesize that transformational leadership – more concerned with innovation – will encourage generalist human capital (HC), while transactional leadership – more focused on the efficiency of existing operations – will promote specialist HC.

To test the hypotheses, the authors adopt a structural ambidexterity approach as the authors consider that organizations need units working on both types of learning.

The results show the versatile role of transformational leaders, who are able to promote both types of HC and, in turn, both types of organizational learning. The authors have also found that marketing departments are more willing to explore than production departments.

This study highlights the relevance of considering the department as a unit of analysis (structural ambidexterity approach), the significant role of transformational leaders in organizational learning and the mediating role of HC.

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between human resource (HR) practices and innovative performance in the Spanish industry. Specifically, the authors will focus on innovativeness, analysing the extent to which this capability is favoured by some human resource management (HRM) practices as investments on training and whether it is also affected by the use of full time and/or temporary workers.

The authors propose the assessment of these relationships by means of the Spanish Survey of Industrial Strategic Behaviour. The authors focus the longitudinal analysis on the period 2001-2008, years of the highest economic growth in Spain during the last decades.

The findings show that the most innovative firms are also the most competitive ones in terms of added value. Moreover, while a significant and positive relationship between the use of full-time workers and innovativeness is demonstrated, the role of temporary workers employees remains unclear. Finally, and surprisingly, training investments on new technologies, languages and data processes do not have any impact on innovativeness. The paper is closed with a discussion about some lessons the authors may learn from these wealthy years and the role played by HRM investments on firms.

This study demonstrates the existence of two objectives that managers should seek to achieve. On one side, they should focus on innovation as a way of increasing firm performance. And, on the other side, managers should invest on specific training, in order to develop more innovative and profitable organizations.

This paper proposes and tests a model where innovation mediates the relationships between HRM practices and performance. Such mediation would be a contribution to the strategic HRM field as very recent research call for the study of new mediators. Also, this paper employs panel data (2001-2008) for assessing these relationships. This is worthy because it is coherent with the idea of internal development of capabilities, instead of cross-sectional analyses and because the authors may infer causality with the study design, as it is demanded by researchers.