Closing strategic human resource management research lacunas with mediating role of employee creativity

• Main Authors: Ismail, Abdussalaam Iyanda, Abdelrahman, Samia Elsheikh, Abdul Majid, Abdul Halim
• Format: Article
• Published: Allied Business Academies 2018
• Subjects: HD28 Management. Industrial Management
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/27067/; https://www.abacademies.org/articles/closing-strategic-human-resource-management-research-lacunas-with-mediating-role-of-employee-creativity-7035.html
• Institution: Universiti Utara Malaysia

Of note is that Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) constitutes virtually 90 per cent of global businesses and provide more than 50 per cent of world employment (International Finance Corporation (IFC), 2013). It is held that SMEs plays a key role in bulwarking the devastating upshot of recent global financial crisis (European Commission, 2014). SMEs plays a crucial role in the economic development, industrial development, job creation cum poverty reduction (International Finance Corporation (IFC), 2013; Mahmood & Hanafi, 2013; Eze, Eberechi, Chibueze, Osondu & Ayegba, 2016; Tom, Glory & Alfred, 2016). Thus, it becomes a backbone of world economic growth. Likewise, in Nigeria, SMEs is a catalyst for the economic growth (Eniola & Ektebang, 2014; Okoya, 2013), a major provider of employment and a significant contributor to the GDP (Etuk, Etuk & Baghebo, 2014; Shehu, 2014). Nigerian SMEs constituted 97% of the entire enterprises in Nigeria; it contributed about 47% to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) while more than 50% of Nigerian’s workers were employed by SMEs (Anudu, 2016; MSME survey report, 2010; Taiwo, Ayodeji & Yusuf, 2012).Nevertheless, Nigerian SMEs is still facing a myriad of challenges ranging from high rate of collapse of SMEs, insufficient manpower (Mwobobia, 2012a & 2012b), shortage of technical savoir-faire, shortage of planning (Onugu, 2005), low human capital formation, low level of technology adoption to insufficient innovation (Nigeria Vision 2020 Program, 2009). The incessant collapse of SMEs is associated with absence of business strategy, poor recruitment exercise, lack of succession plan, lack of focus, poor market research, cut-throat competition, among others (Onugu, 2005) and lack of competitiveness, particularly during the economic crunch (Zakaria, 2013). Thus, Nigerian SMEs’ performance should be improved to enable it to catch up with the SMEs’ performance level of the advanced countries and to be able to actualize the initiatives under the Nigeria’s Vision 2020 which will in turn facilitate Nigeria to become one of the top 20 economies in the world by 2020. Moreover, in the past, economies of scale, access to capital and regulated competition were recognized to be the predictors of competitive advantage. However, recent streams of research have identified strategic human resource management as a basis of competitive advantage (Bamberger & Meshoulam, 2000; Seidu, 2011) and high performance (Seidu, 2011). Considerable stream of research has established that human resources and its management form a central part of the whole of firm’s competitive advantage (Allen & Wright, 2007; Boxall & Purcell, 2003), and strategic HR that enhances task, targets and performance are formed through the effective adoption of High Performance Work System (HPWS). The high performance work systems literature have reported a number of Human Resource (HR) practices that consistently lead to higher individual and firm performance (Werner, 2011). Also, it has been found that enhanced firm performance and organizational accomplishments are contingent upon systematically-bundled HPWS (Choi, 2014; Choi & Lee, 2013; Demirbag, Collings, Tatoglu, Mellahi & Wood, 2014). However, many studies have recognized vague process, otherwise known as ‘black box’ within the HPWS-performance link. These studies recommend usage of a mechanism through which the so called ‘black box’ could be unpacked (Chadwick & Dabu, 2009; Messersmith, Patel, Lepak & Gould-William, 2011). On this, Boxall (2012) reiterates the absence of issue in the direct HRM-Performance nexus, but he claimed that a lot remain unknown about the chain of nexuses that are persistent inside the ‘black box’ of HRM.Besides, the recent trends in the world of business today have underscored creativity and innovation as a strategic objective of majority of organizations. Research has noted creativity-performance nexus (Gilson, 2008; Martinaityte, 2014), HRM-creativity interconnection (Binyamin & Carmeli, 2010; Byron & Khananchi, 2012; Chang, Jia, Takeuchi & Cai, 2014; Martinaityte, 2014) and HRM-performance link (Demirbag et al., 2014; Fan et al., 2014; Shin & Konrad, 2014). Based on this and in consideration of Baron & Kenny’s (1986) supposition, creativity is logically and empirically fit to be the mechanism (mediator) through which the identified lacunas (i.e. black box) could be resolved.