Barbara Sypniewska, Guest Editor, University of Economics and Human Sciences in Warsaw, Poland

Regina Lenart-Gansiniec, Guest Editor, Jagiellonian University, Poland

Jin Chen, Guest Editor, Research Center of Technological Innovation, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

Aims and Scope

The COVID-19 pandemic has strongly impacted economies, societies, workers, and organizations (Finsterwalder & Kuppelwieser, 2020). It had many negative consequences, including economic shocks, the global health crisis, changes in social behavior, lockdowns, and the threat to the continuity of the organization's functioning. All this accelerated the need to change and develop new ways to improve flexibility, efficiency, create innovation (Azizi et al., 2021), or strengthen the organization's internal performance (Kovoor-Misra, 2020). With significant disruption in all types of organizations in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for new delivery methods and greater collaboration has become urgent and obvious as existing structures, and traditional channels have struggled to cope or even have had to shut down (Koster & Benda, 2020).

The literature has a widespread agreement that the COVID-19 pandemic provided the opportunity and necessity to understand factors that drive and enable organizations to survive a protracted crisis and challenging times. Some organizations have been able to do this thanks to layoffs, others thanks to innovation (MacMillan et al., 2020). Innovation is considered to be the primary process driving sustainable competitive advantage (Chen, 2017). It also allows organizations to react quickly and connect with achieving and maintaining a competitive advantage (Balkin, Markaman, & Gómez-Mejía, 2000; Tidd & Bessant, 2018).

Despite the importance of innovation for an organization, the ability to generate and exploit the potential benefits of innovation depends on favorable internal conditions, in particular resources and skills (O'Brien & David, 2014). It is emphasized that "people, not products, are an innovative company's major assets" (Gupta & Singhal, 1993, p. 41).

COVID-19 encouraged discussions on the future of human resources management practices (HRMP) towards identifying unprecedented new challenges (Bissola & Imperatori, 2019). It is postulated that there is a need to go beyond the traditional human resources management practices (Lund et al., 2021; Ngoc Su et al., 2021) because the traditional ones are no longer sufficient (Hamouche, 2021). In particular, they do not contribute to creating innovation (Sheehan et al., 2016). Organizations must therefore lay new foundations by redefining recent trends in human resources management practices (Przytuła et al., 2020). These new practices should be creative, flexible, and anti-fragile (Hamouche, 2021).

Even though there are more and more publications on innovation-driven human resource management practices (Seeck & Diehl, 2017) - this Issue is described as a black box, in which there is still a lot to be explored (Easa & Orra, 2021; Seeck & Diehl 2017). Some need to recalibrate discussions on the role of human resource management practices in creating innovation is stressed (Jotabá et al., 2022). As Brian Kropp, group vice president and chief of research in the HR practice at Gartner said: "one of the lessons of the pandemic is that we have to put the 'human' back into human resources" (https://www.shrm. org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/fall2021/pages/pandemic-expands-role-of-hr.aspx). By human resources management, we understand "policies and practices required to perform the routines of human resources in an organization" (Rasool et al., 2019, p. 1011). Human resources management practices are defined as "appropriately selected and used set of activities (...) concerning an integrated human capital management system or a specific element of this system, allowing for the best results and business advantage” (Juchnowicz, 2011, p. 15).

This publication addresses the above conceptual and empirical challenges by bringing together interdisciplinary, high-quality approaches to innovation-driven human resource management practices. We encourage you to submit applications that refer, inter alia, to the following problems:


•    HRM practices influencing the creation of innovations.
•    Models of human resource management supporting the innovativeness of the organization.
•    Human resources management practices and open innovation.
•    New technologies and human resource management supporting the creation of innovation.
•    Transformation of the human resources department into human resources technology.
•    The role of human resources managers in creating innovations.
•    Talent management and the creation of innovation.
•    Stimulating the creativity of employees towards creating innovations.
•    Shaping innovative employee behavior.
•    Innovative employer branding practices.
•    Psychological contract breach and innovative work behavior.
•    Motivated employees as the key to innovation.
•    Ethical issues in HRM practices in creating innovation.

Submission guidelines:

Submission deadline: October 30, 2022
Reviewed papers:  January 30, 2023
Final version of papers: February 28, 2023
Issue published: 2023

Please submit the paper proposals to JEMI (indicating the title of the thematic issue: Weathering the Storm: Innovation-Driven Human Resource Management Practices) at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

All papers will undergo a double-blind review. Submissions must be in English and should not exceed 8000 - 12000 words. All submissions must follow the submission requirements (paper template, title page, declaration for authors, etc.) posted on the JEMI website at http://jemi.edu.pl/submission-and-policy. Papers not adjusted to our formal guidelines will be desk rejected.

References

  • Azizi, M. R., Atlasi, R., Ziapour, A., Abbas, J., & Naemi, R. (2021). Innovative human resource management strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic narrative review approach. Heliyon, 7(6), e07233.
  • Balkin, D. B., Markman, G. D., & Gomez-Mejia, L. R. (2000). Is CEO pay in high-technology firms related to innovation? Academy of Management Journal, 43(6), 1118-1129.
  • Bissola, R., & Imperatori, B. (Eds.). (2019). HRM 4.0 for Human-centered Organizations. Bradford: Emerald Group Publishing.
  • Chen, J. (2017). Towards new and multiple perspectives on innovation. International Journal of Innovation Studies, 1(1), 1-4.
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  • Rasool, S. F., Samma, M., Wang, M., Zhao, Y., & Zhang, Y. (2019). How human resource management practices translate into sustainable organizational performance: The mediating role of product, process and knowledge innovation. Psychology Research and Behavior Management, 12, 1009–1025.
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