2.
Different HRM practices are seen as valuable to stimulate and support creativity mainly through enable freedom among employees, which hence improve innovation processes (Jiang et al., 2012). By the dual role of both representing structure and managing work and at the same time stimulating creativity and freedom among employees, we do however also imply that it is possible to imagine that the HRM practices that are being used also could constrain creativity and innovation processes rather than nurturing them.
The question is how HRM can manage this duality by both representing the organization and management and also to enable freedom and creativity? How and in what way does HRM contribute to innovation processes? Does HRM nurture or constrain innovations, and in what way? And how are these contributions perceived by the HR professionals themselves and by the employees and line managers who are affected by HRM?.
Previous studies have contributed to an extensive understanding of the positive relationship between HRM practices and firm performance (Jiang et al., 2012), but studies regarding the role of HRM in innovation processes (Beugelsdijk, 2008) and the relationship between HRM, employee creativity and innovation are scarce (Jiang et al., 2012), even more limited from an empirical perspective (Jiménez-Jiménez & Sanz-Valle, 2008). Therefore, this master thesis aims to fill this gap and will contribute to the understanding of the role by HRM in creativity and innovation processes by further exploration.
1.1 Objective and research questions.
The main purpose with this thesis is to improve our understanding of how HRM practices nurture and constrain creativity within their organization, upon which various companies build their innovation processes. This purpose have been divided into two main questions that will guide the analysis, and that will cover different sub-areas of importance to our understanding of the opportunities for HRM to be part of and contribute to the innovation process:.