The effects of slack resource of R&D professionals on firm performance: evidence from traditional manufacturing firms in an emerging economy

Ying Zhang, Ji Li, Yanghong Hu* (Corresponding Author), Wenwen Song, Wanxing Jiang, Wanling Ding

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

7 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

As an important component of organizational human resource slack (HR slack), the slack of research-and-development (R&D) professionals has been studied by several authors. However, it remains unclear whether and how this small component of general HR slack, i.e. the slack of research-and-development professionals (RHR slack), may affect overall firm performance in an emerging economy without much R&D tradition or pro-R&D institutions. Based on two organizational theories, i.e. institutional theory and the resource-based view of the firm (RBV), we propose competing hypotheses on the relationship between RHR slack and firms’ accounting performance. We also examine whether the relationship between RHR slack and firm performance should be linear or curvilinear. Finally, we also test the relationship between RHR slack and other dimensions of firm performance. Several interesting findings have been obtained. For instance, neither the perspective based on institutional theory nor that based on RBV can fully predict all types of RHR slack-performance relationships, be these relationships linear or curvilinear.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1594-1616
Number of pages23
JournalInternational Journal of Human Resource Management
Volume31
Issue number12
Early online date9 Jan 2018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2020

Bibliographical note

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support for this research from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71402098) and Guangdong Department of Education Youth Innovative Talents Projects (2014WQNCX076).

Keywords

  • R&D professionals
  • human resource
  • slack
  • void of institutions
  • firm performance
  • LEADERS
  • MANAGEMENT
  • BEHAVIOR
  • INNOVATION
  • MODEL
  • VIEW
  • INSTITUTIONS
  • COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
  • LINK
  • OWNERSHIP

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