Finding Common Ground: HR Manager and Line Manager Alignment on Climate and Innovation Performance

Abstract

Both HR managers and line managers play a significant role in implementing espoused organizational HR practices, yet these two entities often hold different views of both the intended and implemented practices within the organization. To date, the research literature is not clear about how either alignment or misalignment of the perceptions of these important groups affects HR practice implementation or downstream performance outcomes. Using HR system strength theory as a theoretical guide, this study leverages the concept of consensus amongst HR managers and line managers to determine if alignment affects the innovation performance of new product development (NPD) teams in the Chinese automotive industry. Specifically, the paper examines the effects of alignment on innovation performance through important mediating variables: climate for cooperation and climate for innovation. Drawing upon a sample of NPD units in 73 firms, we find that both innovative climate and cooperative climate are significantly higher when HR managers’ and NPD managers’ perceptions of HR practices are aligned rather than when they are misaligned. Under the condition of perceptual misalignment, higher levels of innovative and cooperative climates are observed when NPD managers report higher implementation of HR practices than when HR managers report higher levels. Moreover, we find that innovative climate significantly mediates the relationship between HR practice perception alignment and NPD performance. A similar result was not found for cooperative climate. The findings further advance HR system strength theory and demonstrate the importance of managerial alignment in practice implementation.