ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Organizational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1584489
This article is part of the Research TopicPsychological Dynamics in Knowledge Management: Cognitive, Emotional, and Social InfluencesView all articles
Strategic HRM and SME Innovation: A Chain Mechanism of Learning-Resilience Pathway and Nonlinear Environmental Dynamism
Provisionally accepted
- Shanghai University, Shanghai, Shanghai Municipality, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
In an increasingly competitive business environment, organizational innovation has become crucial for enterprises seeking to establish and maintain a competitive advantage. This study aims to investigate how SHRM drives innovation in SMEs through the chain mediation of organizational learning and resilience, while exploring the nonlinear moderating role of environmental dynamism. Grounded in dynamic capability theory, we propose a three-dimensional framework that integrates internal organizational mechanisms with external environmental contingencies. Utilizing a three-wave survey design with 256 technology-focused SMEs in China's Yangtze River Delta region, we employed hierarchical regression analysis and bootstrap mediation tests to validate hypothesized relationships. The findings indicate that SHRM significantly contributes to promoting organizational innovation in SMEs.Organizational learning (as a knowledge-building process) and resilience (as an adaptive capacity) sequentially mediate this relationship, forming an internal "learning-resilience" mechanism in which knowledge acquisition fosters robust adaptation, thereby synergistically enhancing innovation capability development. Furthermore, environmental dynamism exhibits a significant inverted U-shaped moderating effect: moderate levels amplify SHRM's innovation-enhancing effects, whereas excessive dynamism diminishes its efficacy, revealing a "dynamic-changing" boundary condition. Theoretically, this study advances dynamic capability theory by unraveling the synergistic interplay between internal capability-building processes and external environmental contingencies. Practically, this study provides actionable insights for SME managers to strategically allocate human resources, cultivate learning-resilience capacities, and adaptively respond to environmental turbulence, thereby fostering sustainable innovation in volatile markets.
Keywords: Shrm, Organizational innovation (OI), Organizational learning (ol), Organizational Resilience (OR), Environmental dynamism, SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises), Dynamic Capabilities (DC)
Received: 27 Feb 2025; Accepted: 27 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 WANG, Zhang and Zhao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yi Zhao, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, Shanghai Municipality, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.