انعطاف پذیری استراتژیک، شیوه های HR نوآورانه و عملکرد شرکت: یک مدل واسطه Strategic flexibility, innovative HR practices, and firm performance: A moderated mediation model

Introduction Rapid development in technologies, intense competition, and increasing globalization has fundamentally reshaped the external environment of business, making it dynamic, complex, and unpredictable to business administration. In some countries, such as China, where the institutional environment is also changing dramatically, volatility has been challenging the leaders of businesses. To stay competitive and relevant in intensely dynamic environments characterized by discontinuities, innovation, and institutional uncertainties, firms need to develop strategic flexibility to adapt to unprecedented changes (Hitt et al., 1998). Strategic flexibility refers to a firm’s ability to modify its strategic course in order to stay competitive in substantial, uncertain, and rapidly occurring environmental changes that impact firm performance (Aaker and Mascarenhas, 1984; Evans, 1991). Empirical evidence reported in the literature shows that strategic flexibility has a positive impact on firm performance in dynamic environments (Grewal and Tansuhaj, 2001; Nadkarni and Narayanan, 2007; Worren et al., 2002) through various mechanisms, from modularity in product design (Sanchez, 1995) and organizational forms (Schilling and Steensma, 2001) to contingent alliance development (Young-Ybarra and Wiersema, 1999). In this study, we propose that in addition to these efforts and mechanisms, organizations in China that adopt strategic flexibility are more likely to use innovative HR practices, and in so doing, strategic flexibility leads to better firm performance. We are also interested in the role of gender-based leadership in this relationship. Researchers have increasingly emphasized that both the firm’s strategic type and strategic orientation should affect the choice of the set of HRM practices (Schuler and Jackson, 1987). Specifically, some have advocated that organizations need to develop HR practices that are flexible and innovative in order to adapt to changing environmental contingencies (Delery and Doty, 1996; Way et al., 2015; Wright and Snell, 1998). In the past three decades in China’s economic reform, Chinese firms have gradually shifted away from the traditional personnel administration to innovative HR practices (Chow, 2004; Wei and Lau, 2005; Zheng et al., 2009). Such innovative HR practices include free market selection and recruitment, incentive rewards, performance evaluation and promotion, training and development, and worker participation in the decision-making process that are closely associated with human resource outcomes and firm performance (Zheng et al., 2009). While strategic flexibility is beneficial for business in dynamic environments, developing and maintaining strategic flexibility would also call for a unique leadership that endorses appropriate operational practices and policies in support of strategic flexibility. After all, organizations are the reflection of their top leaders’ attributes (Hambrick and Mason, 1984). It has been found that leaders’ commitment to status quo and past strategy increases as they get older and get saddled in their positions (Miller, 1991; McClelland et al., 2010), suggesting that leadership attributes do affect firm adaptation and strategic flexibility.