Top management team's vision and human resources management practices in innovative Spanish companies

Abstract

The objective of the article is to analyse whether the strategic vision of the top management team (TMT) and the way employees working in teams are rewarded and assessed affect companies' innovation performance. The study was carried out on a sample of 97 Spanish companies belonging to the three most innovative sectors based on number of patents registered. The results indicate that the top management team's strategic vision alone does not explain a company's innovation performance. Innovation also requires the existence of compensation practices based on the ideas generated and developed by project teams. These results offer relevant implications for the TMT and the managers of the research and development (R&D) and human resources (HR) functions about the way teams should be rewarded and supported in order to improve the company's innovation efforts.

Keywords:

• assessment
• compensation
• group
• innovation
• top management team's vision

Acknowledgements

This study was financed under a research project of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science: SEC2003-07741 titled, The effects of capacities, new organizational forms, and human resources management architecture on innovation in products and processes.