Do HR practices facilitate innovative work behaviour? Empirical evidence from higher education institutes

2.1 High-performance work practices (HPWP)

HPWP is conceptualised as a separate set of HR practices that are intended to upgrade organisational performance by expanding employees’ capacities, improving their inspiration, and develop possibilities for employees to take interest and get engaged at work [7–9]. It is evident from the definition that there seems to have a synergistic impact among a bunch of HR practices with the means to improve performance. There has been little understanding of the HR practices that establish high-performance work practices [10, 11].

Currently, a few researchers have laid stress on the connection between HPWP and innovation [12]. This relationship may be clarified by the social exchange theory. Social exchange theory states to a long term work relationship that highlights “open-ended and diffuse obligations “containing emotional joint venture and trust among employers and employees [13]. Employees may observe an organisation’s acceptance of HPWP as a source of taking care of them by motivating and giving them chances to take interest and be involved at work [14]. This may motivate employees to understand that their employers are boosting their long-standing relationship. In return, employees are expected to be faithful, and show performance that is fruitful for their organisation in exchange for what the employer offers eventually that may lead to IWB. Past literature has revealed that the implementation of effective HPWP facets can raise employee creativity [15]. In the sequence of this, some HR practices reveal more significant association with performance than others [16].

2.2 Innovative work behaviour (IWB)

Innovative work behaviour is the behavioural tasks initiated by the employees to foster innovation [17, 18]. IWB also encompasses the intentional efforts by the employees introducing new services/products or new ways of performing work through generating, promoting, and implementing ideas successfully [19, 20].

IWB ranges from developing incremental impro-vement to radically developing novel ideas that affect the processes, product, or services across the organisation. For example, IWB includes, thinking out of the box, looking for novel and new improvements, figuring out new techniques and ways to solve the problems, and securing resources to accomplish the task efficiently and effectively. IWB is taken as an extra role behaviour, that is not specified in the formal job role. It is a discretionary behaviour that is intended to benefit the organisation. IWB is crucial for performance improvement.

2.3 Training and development, and IWB

Organisations can improve their human capital through training and development practices. The connection among training and development practices and IWB can be assumed as an aspect of social exchange in which workers experience training and development practices as an organisation’s assertion to their human resources; the employees might reciprocate this assertion in some extra-role behaviour such as, IWB [21].

Training is the procedure of financing in people; as a result, they are equipped to perform. Generally, these practices are part of the human resource management approach that will result in people being encouraged to achieve creativity and innovation in an organisation [22]. Offering training and development will sign that the institution considers the employee well-being and eager to put resources into them [23].

Employees determine if the training opportunities provided to them are satisfactory. Such satisfactory developmental opportunities would be reciprocated with a positive attitude. The outcome of positive att-itudes will be in behaviour that is valued for both the institution and employees. Whenever workers re-cognise training and development supportive and significant, they feel enriched for attaining and in-creasing new thoughts.

Training, as compared to other HR practices, had the best impact on product innovation and innovation in technical systems [24]. Training and development help to enhance employee knowledge and skills, with the enhanced skills and knowledge, employees be-come more aware of the opportunities and alternatives, thus feel more confident and secure in trying new things.

Other researches have comparatively demonstra-ted the strong positive outcome of training and dev-elopment practices on IWB [25]. We believe that training and development will encourage the emp-loyee to be more innovative; thus, we hypothesise,

H1: Training and development are positively related to innovative work behaviour.

2.4 Selection and IWB

Recruitment or selection is the procedure or action that evolved in attracting individuals who are qualified, proficient, talented, experienced, and skilled [26]. For any institution to be effective and to keep up a competitive advantage, they should remain ahead by anticipating the individuals who will be the leading operators of an institution’s future. In current research supports constant training, development, and selection of the able workforce improves organisational performance and innovation. Recruitment and selection are the decisive steps of recruiting staff for grabbing the exact quality of candidates [27]. A merit-based and right selection of employees by the management is also one of the primary sources of selecting employees who are willing to behave innovatively in order to work beyond the assigned targets. This ‘fit for job’ and transparent selection criteria in return invoke innovative sense in employees while performing their assigned work. This research is the sequence of previous research by [28] who proposed the selection procedures and HR practices have higher links with organisation commitment than others. Employees who experience the right and fair selection are always positively related to productivity, creativity and performance. Proper selection means to select the right people for the right job. This activity is helpful in increasing firm performance [29].

H2: Selection is significant and positively related to innovative work behaviour.

2.5 Self-efficacy and innovative work behaviour

Bandura (1986) defined self-efficacy as an individual’s judgment of their capabilities and abilities to perform certain tasks. It does not reflect the level of skills one has, but it reflects the perception of being able to do something with the skills one possesses. It is a conditional state that is proximal to behaviour, which means it directly influences behaviour. According to Gits and Mitchell (1992), self-efficacy can change over the period and gaining more knowledge and experience. Which means providing training and development opportunities to an individual can enhance their self -efficacy. Innovation is a risky and uncertain undertaking, and innovative work behaviour involves a range of challenging and uncertain behaviour which enfolds social and cognitive activities.

Employees with high self-efficacy feel more confident and comfortable in performing the risky task as compared to those who are low on self-efficacy. People having high SE believe that they can overcome the challenges by exerting more efforts to apply the strategies to get success. Past literature showed a strong link of SE with a work-related outcome such as performance [30, 31] innovative behaviour [32, 33] and entrepreneurial intentions [34] Drawing on this line of arguments; we postulate that

H3: Self-efficacy has a positive relation to innovative work behaviour.

2.6 Self-efficacy as a mediator in the relationship between training and IWB

According to SET, there exists a mutual relationship between employer and employee. So, if the employees are provided with the required training for performing innovative work, it boosts self-efficacy among employees, organisations can increase its human capital through training practices. Conducting training is a symbol that the institute considers employees to be valuable and organisation is willing to invest in them [23], and the employee will react positively in progressive activities to the institute that purposes the development’. As a result, the positive attitudes will bring behaviour which is valuable for both the organisation and employee. Once workers observe training and development useful and valued, they feel equipped for generating novel ideas. (Shipton et al., 2006) indicated that training had a great impact on innovation as compared to other HR practices.

Other research has equally revealed confirmation about the significant impact of training and development practices on IWB [25, 36]. Based on this discussion, we conclude that training enhances employee self-efficacy, which in turn leads a higher innovative work behaviour (IWB). As per social exchange theory and previous literature review, training and selection may lead to increased self-efficacy and improved, innovative behaviour of employees.

H4: Self-efficacy mediates the relationship between training & development and IWB.

2.7 The mediating role of self-efficacy on the relationship between selection and employee innovative work behaviour

In accordance to SET, there is a common relationship between the organisation and employees. If employees are happy and satisfied with their job, they will be more active in sharing their innovative and creative ideas. Every element of selection has a contribution to make in helping to find the most appropriate candidates for any given position. The organisation can increase its innovative outcome using innovative HR practices like selection, training, job definition, performance appraisal, and teamwork and employee contribution.

Fair and proper selection process helps to increase the overall performance of the organisation; it also improves self-efficacy of the employees to become more innovative and creative for their institution. On the contrary, if there are a lousy selection and hiring process, then the work will be affected and training the incompetent persons will be a significant loss for the organisation. There is a connection between HR practices and organisational innovation. Human capital is the main contributor to organisational success because if the institutes capitalise on increasing the skills, awareness and commitment of the employees, then the employees will return their efforts to develop the innovation in their organisation.

The past literature reveals that HPWP has a pos-itive influence on employees innovative work be-haviour [37]. High-performance work systems can improve employees’ abilities, capabilities and awareness, increase their job motivation, and provide self-sufficiency at work. High-performance work practices increase beneficial exchanges between the workforce and the organisation. Employees with higher self-efficacy beliefs are more confident to adopt positive moods, new ideas and skills. So in the relevance with the above discussion, this study examined the mediating effect of self-efficacy between selection and employee innovative work behaviour.

H5: Self-efficacy mediates the relationship be-tween selection and IWB.

3.1 Measures

The existing measures from prior studies were used for the survey questionnaire. All variables were measured using a five-point Likert- scale ranging from 1–5=strongly disagree, 2=disagree, 3=neutral, 4=agree, and 5=strongly agree. Training and development were measured by three items adapted from [39]. A four-item scale adopted from [39] was used to measure selection. Likewise, innovative work behaviour was measured by nine items adopted from [40, 41] and [17]. A nine-item scale adopted from [34] was used to measure self-efficacy.

4.1 Measurement model evaluation

First, we assessed the measuring model. Table 1 shows the results of this assessment. We can see that outer loading values are well above the threshold value of 0.70. Similarly, composite reliability was also archived as the CR values were well above the 0.70 value. The average variance extracted (AVE) values are above 0.50, which shows that convergent validity is achieved. Next, we analysed the measurement model for discriminant validity and for this, we used HTMT criteria. Table 2 indicates that HTMT ratios were below the threshold value of 0.85. Hence discriminant validity is also achieved.

Another essential step of measurement model evaluation is the analysis of discriminant validity (DV). In this study, we used the HTMT ratio to analyze DV, as suggested by [55]. DV is the extent to which one variable is different from others. The threshold value for DV is 0.85. The results of HTMT ratios are presented in Table 2, which shows no issue of DV.

The second stage of PLS-SEM is the analysis of the structural model for the significance and magnitude of the path coefficients. In this study, we used bootstrapping function of SmartPLS with 5000 replicates and 300 cases [56]. Results presented in Table 3 show that HPWP and SE has a positive and significant impact on IWB.

To check the predictive accuracy of the model, we also reported R² value, which is the percentage change in the dependent variable caused by the independent variables. We found that HPWP and SE cause 34% of the variance in IWB.

To test the mediating effect of SE on HPWP-IWB, we tested the significance of the indirect effect. The results of the specific indirect effect are presented in Table 4. The indirect effect of HPWP on IWB through SE was significant. According to Hair et al. (2017) if the direct and indirect effects both are significant and point in the same direction, the type of mediation would be complementary mediation; hence SE has a complementary mediating effect on HPWP-IWB linkages.

5.1 Implications

This study has theoretical implications as it adds to the literature on self-efficacy, high-performance work practices, and innovative work behaviour. The organisations invest efficiently in employees by implementing HR practices such as training and selection. In return, employees can recognise that their institutes value them, and they feel satisfied with the needs for ability and affiliation. When these needs are fulfilled, most probably, they feel psychologically satisfied and innovatively improved. According to this logic, the employees feel energetic and motivated to investigate novel ideas to come up with for the betterment of their institution. The findings of the study are equally important for both developed as well as developing countries like Pakistan. The findings will be important for managerial as purposes as well as organisations like educational institutions that are emphasising on innovation in several ways.

Firstly in designing a job that enriches employees with autonomy to work innovatively. Secondly, in introducing policies focusing mainly on shaping the work behaviour of employees that broadly adds to the goodwill as well as the performance of the organisations. Further, in the developing countries, the finding will prove to be a flux of revision and change in strict and outdated policies, not much-empowering employees to work innovatively with some delegated authority. In a nutshell, HR practices will be refined by applying the findings of the study

There are some practical implications as it is am-ongst the pioneer researches in the Pakistani service sector. It may support in emerging a practical understanding needed to create innovative work behaviour. This research can be a guidance for the organisations that need their employees to reveal innovative behaviour adopting different techniques and teaching activities. Current research shows that the organisations required to cultivate a bundle of HR practices according to their environments that can ripen emp-loyee self-efficacy and further, can raise innovative work behaviour.

5.2 Limitations and future directions

Although our study contributes to the literature on innovative work behaviour and HPWP, it also suffers some limitations. First, the study is based on a cross-sectional method; thus, the causality cannot be guaranteed. Therefore, a longitudinal study is suggested for the future. Second, the data has been col-lected through a single source, which may cause a common method bias; therefore, a dyadic method of data collection should be adopted in the future. Third, the study is focused on the service sector (education institutes). Future studies should be conducted in other sectors to enhance generalizability, such as manufacturing and information technology. Also, the model of this study can be replicated in other geographical areas.

Furthermore, a comparative study of public as well as private institutes may also provide a richer understanding of the role of HPWP and IWB. Fourth, since this study is based on a deductive approach, which may not provide an in-depth understanding, thus, a mixed-method approach for future study may prove to be an appropriate approach for more in-depth and better understanding. Lastly, this study utilised only two dimensions of HPWP; future studies should explore multiple dimensions of HPWP. Furthermore, it will also be interesting to see the mediating role of other factors such as organizational climate and culture in the HPWP-IWB link.