Abstract

Innovation is a key factor for companies. It is also essential on an individual scale for employees. To ensure they are utilizing employees to the utmost efficiency, companies must implement practices to ensure the attraction and retention of top employees. Human resource practices can help to define and explain essential techniques to help employees gain satisfaction from their work, creating intrinsic motivation, and allowing them to ultimately perform more efficiently and perhaps even creatively for the company, helping to generate significant profits. The intent of this thesis is to analyze human resource practices on an empirical study of eight companies (provided from a previous study by Erwin Danneels, Ph.D.) and to determine whether or not human resource practices can help predict a firm's ability to enter new markets and implement new technologies, ultimately leading to innovation. Companies are grouped depending on their residual values generated from Danneels' study and analysis. His research observes the ability to predict new market entrance and technology implementation through five company characteristics: constructive conflict, willingness to cannibalize, slack, learning from failure, and various types of environmental scanning. This thesis seeks to find positive relationships between human resource practices and the companies where the model proves to be a good fit. I define human resource practices by the following six categories, breaking them up into incentives and skill development: extra benefits, fitness incentives, social responsibility, and continuous learning, global opportunities, and rewards/opportunities for advancement. This analysis hopes to contribute to further research by generating an association between human resource practices and company innovation.

Notes

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Thesis Completion

2011

Semester

Fall

Advisor

Danneels, Erwin

Degree

Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (B.S.B.A.)

College

College of Business Administration

Degree Program

Management

Subjects

Business Administration -- Dissertations, Academic;Dissertations, Academic -- Business Administration

Format

PDF

Identifier

CFH0004097

Language

English

Access Status

Open Access

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Document Type

Honors in the Major Thesis

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