High involvement innovation: Analysing employee involvement and HR performance in the construction industry

In the context of competitive economy innovation is a key strategic imperative for any organization. Successful technological, marketing, and organizational innovations result in a sustainable competitive advantage and lead to better financial results. As it stands, the organizational innovation is considered to be a vehicle for technological and market development. It is, in turns, driven by the involvement of employees, which therefore needs to be investigated before innovation can take place. The research objectives are to define the performance of organizations' high involvement innovation (HII) in the construction industry in Russia, to analyze the correlation between HII and HR performances in order to determine the potential of organizational innovation development and promotion of employee involvement in the industry. A behavioral model questionnaire was applied to measure both the performance of organizations' HII and the average value of the construction industry. A HR performance questionnaire was developed to analyze the organizations' HR management efficiency as well as the correlation between HII and HR performances in the industry. The analysis of the collected data shows that the industry gets the 3rd position in the HII score, where HII is goal oriented. The research revealed that the HII performance depends directly on how efficient a company's HR management is, while the potential of introducing HII within the studied area is not taken full advantage of. The findings give us reasons to believe that low-level capabilities could be improved to move the firms studied to the 5th position, demonstrating a strong innovation capability with HII being the dominant culture.