Being innovative for surviving: the role of HRM practices.

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between HR practices and innovative performance in the Spanish industry. Specifically, we will focus on innovativeness, measured through the production of patents, analyzing the extent to which this innovative result is favoured by some HRM practices as investments on training and whether it is also affected by the use of full time workers. We propose the assessment of these relationships by means of the Spanish Survey of Industrial Strategic Behaviour. We focus our longitudinal analysis on the period 2001-2008, years of high economic growth in Spain during the last decades. Our findings show that the most innovative firms are also the most competitive ones in terms of added value, and they also use full time workers. Finally, training investments on new technologies, languages and data processes have an impact on innovativeness. The paper is closed with a discussion about some lessons we may learn from these wealthy years and the role played by HRM investments on firms.