Human Resource Flexibility and Innovation: Competitiveness in the Automotive Industry

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between human resource flexibility and innovativeness with the moderator effect of environmental dynamism in some flexibility dimensions. The research population is the Spanish automotive industry and the analysed sample includes 123 first-tier automotive suppliers. The results of our survey indicate that internal flexibility (capacity to modify the assets and skills of employees and the redistribution of annual working time) is positively related to innovativeness, whereas the influence of external flexibility (capacity to modify the number of employees or the amount of working hours through the hiring and layoff of employees) depends on the type of contingent employees: short-term hires, temporary help agencies, or consulting firms and R&D centres. The firm ́s level of environmental dynamism moderates the relationship between some flexibility dimensions and innovativeness:firms in high-dynamic environments can benefit more from some internal and external human resource flexibility dimensions than firms in low-dynamic environments.