Ability, Motivation, and Opportunity Framework, Knowledge Sharing, and Innovation

High performance work systems (HPWS) have caught the attention of the researchers in recent years when better HR practices were positively linked with performance outcomes at the individual, team and organizational levels. Project based organizations face greater challenges as the employees are temporarily assigned to various projects and hence HR practices can greatly influence their motivation, creativity and performance. Using the lens of Ability, Motivation and Opportunity (AMO) framework under the theory of HPWS, our paper hypothesizes that the ability, motivation and opportunity enhancing practices of the project based organizations lead to better innovation performance of their employees through the mediating role of knowledge sharing. Time lagged data of AMO practices and knowledge sharing practices were collected from the employees of 170 organizations with the gap of three weeks. Furthermore, the innovation performance data was collected from the supervisors of these employees with an additional gap of three weeks. Our results confirm the initial hypothesis of the causal relationship between AMO HR practices and innovation performance with the mediation of knowledge sharing. This research has implications for both theory and practice and it can help the project managers of these organizations to better design HR practices in order to improve the creativity and innovation performance of their employees