6. Conclusion
In this study, we examined the link between firms’ organizational and human resource management of their research units on the one hand and innovation outcomes on the other. Our findings can be summarized as follows. First, implementing more than one management practice at the same time is associated with a higher probability of innovating new products. Our results suggest that implementing different types of organizational and human resource management practices at the same time significantly raises the probability of product innovation. However, in the case of process innovation, the magnitude of the marginal effects does not monotonically increase in the number of practices implemented: the human resource management practices considered in this paper do not necessarily raise the probability of process innovation when they are implemented together with other organizational management practices. Second, particularly for product innovation, we found that four types of management practices – namely, the use of interdivisional cooperation/teams, having board members with an R & D background, personnel assessment reflecting R & D outcomes, and the creation/relocation/integration of R & D centers – are positively associated with innovation success. The results were very similar when we focused on breakthrough innovation, i.e., taking the technological superiority of products into account. The results suggest that human resource management of R & D personnel is an important determinant of innovation success and that providing the right incentives to motivate researchers and assessing researchers are important for promoting breakthrough innovation.
