Role of Innovation in Practices of Human Resources for Organizational Competitiveness: An Empirical Investigation

Competitive advantage shows the road to sustainability and directly gets linked with the varied functional success of the organization. To remain competitive, diagnosing human resource (HR) problems and finding innovative solutions for the same serves are one of the most important determinants of organization survival. The objective of this chapter is to understand the linkage between human resource management (HRM) and innovation and how one complements the other in effective functioning of an organization. This chapter follows an iterative approach. Firstly, it emphasizes on innovation primarily to be the key to sustainability and presumable future growth. Secondly, it explores how innovation in different HR practices like recruitment and selection, learning and development, performance management, and leadership and organic compensation system facilitates competencies and simultaneously generates long-term fruitfulness of business ideas and strategies for future. Thirdly, it embraces employees’ knowledge to be of grave importance for augmentation of innovation for successful execution of HRM practices and firm’s performance. The study is based on primary findings from select sectors which include ITES, manufacturing units, etc., which when evaluated subsequently through appropriate statistical techniques leads to a comprehensive understanding of innovation as a key to human resource function for achieving competitive success of an organization.