The Influence of Learning Orientation and Human Resource Practices on Firm Innovativeness and Innovations: An Application of the Push and Pull Framework

Abstract

Innovation is the key to sustainable competitive advantage and prosperity for firms in ever-changing business environments. The purpose of this study is to test the hypothesized model, which focuses on examining how human resource practices and learning orientation affect innovativeness and innovation performance. This study proposes the “learning-orientation-pull” and “HR-practices-push” concepts and tests them after analyzing a survey of 305 general managers or senior executives in Taiwan. The results indicate that learning orientation and HR practices significantly impact firms’ innovativeness, which subsequently has a significant positive effect on product, process, and administrative innovation. This result also revalidates that the push and pull framework is a workable idea for both explanation and prediction of a firm’s potential or possible innovation capabilities. HR practices and learning orientation are important exogenous constructs that influence a firm’s innovation abilities. Thus, an innovative firm appears to adopt HR practices and learning orientations to push and pull on product, process, and administrative innovation.