A paper led by Dr Na Fu at Maynooth University School of Business has been nominated for the Carolyn Dexter Award for Best International Paper in the Academy of Management Annual Meeting 2015 in Vancouver, Canada.
The Carolyn Dexter Award is presented to the annual meeting paper that best meets the objective of internationalizing the Academy. This serves the mission of the Academy and the charge of the International Theme Committee (ITC), which sponsors this award.
Papers are considered for this prestigious award if they offer new insights, are rich in observation and employ creative methodologies. Papers receiving this honor typically reflect collaboration between scholars from different countries, topics that are not in the U.S. mainstream, but are important in other countries’ research traditions, and whose theme and content reflect an awareness of business and management outside of domestic boundaries.
Paper title: Fostering Consultants’ Innovation: The Role of Exploring the Role of Line Managers
Authors: Na Fu (Maynooth University), Patrick Flood (Dublin City University), and Tim Morris (Oxford University).
Paper abstract:
Although innovation is important for all organizations, it is particularly important for consulting firms which provide customized solutions for their clients. How to make consultants become more innovative is a key question in professional service firm management. Addressing this issue, this study identifies the critical role of line managers in managing consultants and fostering their innovation. In particular, this study investigates the relationships between line manager’s implementation of human resource management (HRM), consultants’ innovation and the mediating mechanism of team member exchange (TMX) in this relationship. Using data from 174 team members nested in 60 consulting teams, results from multi-level analysis provide support for the mediating model where line manager’s implementation of HRM is positively associated with consultants’ innovation through its impact on the development of TMX. This study contributes to better understanding of the key factors influencing consultants’ innovation. In addition, the research on line manager’s implementation of HRM at team level enriches the extant HRM literature which mainly focussed on either the organizational or individual level over the past three decades. The findings provide important implications for managers that more attention needs to be paid to the managers’ role in developing and maintaining their sub-ordinates’ motivation and innovation through the implementation of HRM practices.