“Impact of HR managers’ competencies on organizational effectiveness: Mediating role of innovative HR practices”

With increased business intricacies, human resource (HR) managers must possess relevant competencies to meet market demands. The study investigates the relationship among HR competencies, innovative HR practices, and organizational effectiveness. It also conducts an importance-performance analysis for HR competencies to identify the skill gap. A structured questionnaire comprising 31 questions was used to measure various components of HR competencies, innovative HR practices, and organizational effectiveness. 247 HR managers working in various companies in Tamil Nadu are selected based on a purposive sampling technique. Importance-performance analysis was carried out for items and dimensions of HR competencies. Confirmatory factor analysis, correlation analysis, and mediation analysis us-ing regressions are further carried out on the collected data. The skill gap analysis revealed that the abilities to use the latest insights in various HR practices, co-craft strategic agenda, align the company’s activities with customer needs, and connect people through technology must be improved. The regression results indicated that the competencies of the strategic positioner, credible architect, capacity builder, and technology proponent are needed to improve organizational effectiveness. The innovative HR practices partially mediated the relationship between HR competencies and organizational effectiveness. The study meets the literature gap in the area of the contribution of HR managers toward organizational effectiveness through their competencies and the adoption of HR practices.


INTRODUCTION
The progression of human resource (HR) managers from the industrial revolution to the present century has evidenced significant changes in HR functions for organizational development. HR managers face knowledge replenishment, change management, and leadership development challenges. HR managers are emphasized to play strategic roles and compete with key decision-makers within the business. They are expected to manage uncertain problems that require them to adopt a competency-based HR framework, as competencies are essential to meet current and future requirements. They must demonstrate specific competencies for improvement in organizational performance. During a crisis, they must provide supervisory support and positive reinforcement, appreciate employees' work, and be involved in transparent communication to gain employees' trust.

LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESES
The responsibilities of HR managers have widened, and they involve various issues that promise great avenues for organizational growth (Fenech et al., 2019;Kurdi-Nakra et al., 2022). Their role in organizational decision-making and high workplace performance is imperative (Gollan, 2012). They must identify the internal and external risks and prepare the company at the cybernetic level (Băndoi et al., 2022). The emotional intelligence of the HR managers influences the decisions on the implementation of human resource management practices (Cuéllar-Molina et al., 2019). The competencies are the basis for HR managers' contribution to organizational effectiveness. Competency is an individual's ability associated with the type of risk someone takes, career growth, and organizational development (Boyatzis, 2008). A competency model is a model built to recognize the skills, knowledge, and attitude required for the people within organizations. It is designed based on specific requirements. The employees' individual capabilities are found to impact the success of an organization (Bustinza et

HR competencies, innovative HR practices, and organizational effectiveness
Competencies are defined as the combination of observable and non-observable factors like knowledge, skills, attitudes, behavior, commitment, and innovativeness, which enable superior performance and create competitive advantage for the firms. Competency characteristics are connected to superior performance in carrying out a job. They include motives, traits, self-concept, knowledge, and skills. The knowledge, abilities, and personal traits that any individual builds through learning are competencies. Competencies include technical skills, people skills, and language skills. They include all characteristics individuals need to perform in a specific society (Ley, 2006). The dimensions of HR competencies are strategic positioner competencies, credible architect competencies, capacity builder competencies, change champion competencies, HR innovator and integrator competencies, and technology proponent competencies (Ulrich et al., 2012b).
The emphasis on understanding business led to one of the six HR competencies -strategic positioner. HR professionals create value when they make organizational decisions based on external business dynamics. Increased globalization and outsourcing of manufacturing outside the original base nation of the organization make it imperative for HR professionals to understand and evolve systems and processes reflecting these changes. HR professionals must align HR strategy and plans with the organization's strategy and business plans. This strategic partnership impacts HR services such as the design of job roles, recruitment, performance appraisal, reward and recognition, and employee training and development. Credible architect HR competency involves identifying the organization's priorities and working on them with appropriate skills. This competency is also the basis for building relationships with business partners using their communication skills. The relationship built assiduously evolves into trust among the HR professionals within the organization.
Capability builder HR competency requires HR professionals to create the optimum enabling environment. HR leaders have the task of aligning strategy and culture with HR practices and systems. An illustration would be to build capabilities that match the organization's requirement to collaborate with local government agencies for their business. The following HR key competency is change champion. HR leaders will have to influence other business leaders to initiate the change, communicate it to the employees, facilitate to remove resistance, sustain the change, and ensure the intended outcomes. HR professionals should ensure that all resources required for the change are in place. HR innovator and integrator HR competency have a more significant influence on organizational effectiveness. This competency is vital to building talent and designing meaningful employee rewards. HR must be innovative in designing the organization and building a leadership pipeline. HR leaders should exhibit competence in building fair, equitable, and transparent performance management systems and reward mechanisms that retain talent through financial and non-financial rewards.
The last HR competency is technology proponent, which reflects the changing times, where increasingly technology has begun to influence individual and organizational lives. Technology helps deliver employee services seamlessly, build human capability data, and helps in workforce planning analytics. Social media helps organizations to source new talent, keep in touch with stakeholders like customers, and has become an effective alternate communication medium. HR professionals must be tech-savvy to capitalize on the phenomenal opportunities technology provides to build organizational effectiveness. The recent pandemic has only further increased the need for this HR competency, with recruitment, onboarding, induction, and work increasingly becoming virtual.
The HR competencies that impact organizational performance have shown more significant implications for HR talent planning, assessment, and development (Ulrich et al., 2012b). When companies strive to develop knowledge and skills of their HR managers, adopt innovative approaches, and adjust to ever-changing customer demands, they can achieve more significant success in the high-ly competitive business environment. The theory offers many HR competency models that include different sets of skills to obtain competitive advantages. Moreover, considering the growing trend of employee turnover, HR managers should choose the most suitable HR practices to keep the most productive talents. There is a clear talent gap for HR business partners as HR competencies are treated as secondary and substituted by line managers and non-HR business partners (Reilly et al., 2007). New demands are being placed on HR managers to develop leaders and recruit and retain a quality workforce.
Moreover, firms strategically aiming to be flexible and respond to environmental challenges follow innovative HR practices. Innovative HR practices are the outcomes of HR managers expected to possess various competencies. According to Ulrich et al. (2012b), HR managers need HR competencies to develop innovative HR practices. The innovative HR practices include selective hiring, extensive and well-designed training, self-managed teams, decentralization of decision-making, information sharing throughout the organization, comparatively high compensation, and compensation contingent on organizational performance (Pfeffer, 1998). When firms adopt change, they alter the entire vision, strategies, systems, and process that requires new HR competencies to capture customer mindset, business knowledge, effective communication, credibility, integrity, and system perspective (Yeung et al., 1996). The HR leaders must provide supervisory support and positive reinforcement, appreciate employees' work, and be involved in transparent communication to gain employees' trust (Dirani et al., 2020). Based on the resource-based perspective, the capacity of the HR managers can be considered as resources that help to achieve competitive advantage through the various HR practices they develop (Barney, 1991).
Organizational effectiveness is a topic of interest in both behavioral and social sciences research (George et al., 2019). Previous research exclaims that organizational effectiveness represents the capacity to access resources from their environments (Amah & Ahiauzu, 2013). In addition, it is linked to the company's capacity to access and absorb the needed resource to achieve organizational goals (Federman, 2006). The managerial competencies such as leadership, problem-solving, strategic competency, and customer focus show a direct and positive link with organizational effectiveness (Hawi et al., 2015). Human resources are the only variable in business that could provide more value to the organization through continued capability enhancement. Developed economies have come to rest more on services and the knowledge industry (Mejri et al., 2018). Scholars opine that human resources are a source of sustainable competitive advantage (Barney, 1991;Huselid, 1995;Wright et al., 1998). In line with Barney's (1991) view of considering human resources as a rare asset to the organization for achieving competitive advantage, the HR competencies of HR managers are viewed as assets that lead to organizational effectiveness. Today's firms operate in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world that requires human capital as the key ingredient for achieving competitive advantage (Hayton, 2003

Innovative HR practices and organizational effectiveness
The critical feature of innovative practices is to develop human capital to provide a sustained competitive advantage for the organization (Zhang et al., 2023a). According to the resource-based view of the firm, the HRM practices bring in a unique pool of employees who contribute to organizational perfor-mance (Zheng et al., 2009). Nasomboon (2014) indicated the effect of HR practices on employee engagement and organizational performance. Bustinza et al. (2019) found that a well-conceived organizational structure that provides role clarity, methods to ensure continuous learning of employees, and a conducive environment motivates employee performance that correlates with enhanced organizational effectiveness. Boselie and Paauwe (2005) analyzed the existing literature review to conclude that HRM helps organizational effectiveness through its efforts to recognize and recruit strong performers. In addition, when given the confidence to work and monitored, the new recruits can achieve their goals.
A strong HRM system brings in common understanding among employees so that the employees perform in line with the organizational strategic goals and achieve high firm performance (Guan & Frenkel, 2018;Singh, 2004). Innovative HR practices impact the individual-level attitudinal variable of employees, such as satisfaction, commitment, empowerment, engagement, and trust in management, thereby directing employee behavior toward organizational goal achievement (Messersmith et al., 2011). Innovative HR practices improve organizational performance by positively influencing the internal social structure (Evans & Davis, 2005). The HR managers are involved in contributing to organizational effectiveness through the adoption of innovative HR practices based on the positive norm of reciprocity for their association with the organization. Although most studies have examined the contribution of innovative practices to firm performance among employees, very scanty studies have looked from the perspective of HR managers. There is still much that researchers must know about HR competencies and mediating links in the relationship between innovative HR practices and organizational effectiveness. It is argued that when innovative HR practices from HR competencies meet dynamic industry demands, it will lead to higher firm performance. Long et al. (2013) showed that firms that have better HR competencies among HR managers impacted organizational performance.
Previous studies have clearly shown the positive effect of employees' competencies on organizational development. Moreover, the competencies are key in implementing innovative practices critical for effective organizational functioning. With much im-portance on the competencies of HR managers, this study aims to examine the contribution of HR competencies toward organizational effectiveness. It 1) measures the level of human resource competencies of HR managers; 2) conducts importance-performance analysis to identify the skill gap of HR managers; 3) examines the impact of HR competencies on organizational effectiveness; and 4) examines the mediating effect of innovative HR practices in the relationship between HR competencies and organizational effectiveness.
Based on the literature review, the following hypotheses are proposed: H1: HR competencies are positively related to innovative HR practices.
H2: Innovative HR practices mediate the relationship between HR competencies and organizational effectiveness.
The hypotheses are thus framed in line with the purpose of the study to understand how human resource managers' competencies help achieve organizational effectiveness through innovative HR practices.

METHOD
A cross-sectional survey is adopted for data collection. The HR managers working in various companies in Tamil Nadu in various sectors were selected based on a purposive sampling technique. The snowball technique is used to select the companies for study from industry sectors such as consulting and professional services, information technology, manufacturing, and e-commerce. The questionnaires are sent to the HR heads of the organizations under the selected sectors. The HR managers were asked to respond anonymously to the questionnaire based on their interests. Later the completed questionnaires were collected from the HR heads. Overall, 350 questionnaires were circulated to HR managers. With a response rate of 81%, 283 filled questionnaires were received. After checking for the completion of responses, 247 usable questionnaires are considered for data analysis.

Measures
The questionnaire contains thirty-one items that measure the study constructs, including the human resource competencies of Ulrich

Importance and performance analysis (IPA)
Importance and performance analysis is used to identify the areas of skill gap that the HR professionals must improve. IPA highlights the good areas and areas for improvement using importance and performance scores of HR competencies. The importance and performance scores of DP attributes are plotted, and the four quadrants on the scatter plot are arrived by dividing the x-axis and y-axis based on the central tendency measure of the median. The extreme observations provide the difference in importance and performance, indicating the HR professional's skill gap. The naming of the four quadrants is "Concentrate here," "Keep up the good work," Low priority," and "Possible overkill." The IPA framework is given in Figure 1, with fulfillment or performance on the x-axis and importance on the y-axis.

Demographics
The selected organizations in different sectors possess more than two employees in the HR division.

RESULTS
Descriptive statistics are calculated after checking for the reliability and validity of the scale. Then, the results of the importance-performance analysis are followed by the results of correlation and regression-mediation analyses.

Reliability and validity of dimensions of the scales
The Cronbach's alpha value of all the six dimensions of HR competency, innovative HR practices, and organizational effectiveness ranges from .666 Source: Martilla and James (1977  to .903 (the diagonal values in the correlation matrix, given in Table 2), establishing the reliability of the scales used. Moreover, the values of composite reliability (CR) are also above 0.7 (the values given in brackets in Table 2) establishes the scale reliability. Figure  The discriminant validity of the scale is also established, as given in Table 1.

Level of HR competencies and organizational effectiveness
The descriptive analysis is carried out to explain the basic feature of the data.

Importance-performance analysis for HR competency attributes
The mean score for the HR competency is given in Table 3. For all six dimensions, the corresponding scores of importance and performance of HR competencies of all items range from 3.46 to 4.68.  The IPA is conducted separately for attributes and dimensions of HR competencies. First, all 18 attributes of HR competencies are considered for IPA. Table 3 provides the "Importance" and corresponding "Performance" scores of the HR competencies attributes, and the gap between the scores indicates the scope for improvement. A two-dimensional matrix was constructed, with HR competencies with performance on the x-axis and importance on the y-axis, based on the importance and performance scores. A scatter plot was drawn with the mean scores and the median dividing the plot into four quadrants, as given in Figure 3. The median is considered a better measure of central tendency (Martilla & James, 1977).
The quadrant "Concentrate here" has the attributes (item codes CBC2, SPC2, SPC3, and TPC2) with high importance and low performance. The quadrant "Keep up the good work" has attributes (item codes CCC1, CCC2, CCC3, CAC2, and CBC3) scoring high on importance and performance. The quadrant "Low priority" has the attributes (item codes TPC1, TPC3, HII2, HII3, and SPC1) that score low in importance and performance. In the quadrant "Possible overkill," the attributes (item codes CAC1, CAC3, H111, and CBC1) perform highly, although receive less importance.
Second, the IPA is carried out for dimensions of HR competency, and the scores are plotted in Figure 4. The vulnerability assessment falls on the median line of the performance score. The response mechanism falls on the median line of importance scores, the resource base is in the "Low priority" quadrant, and community preparedness is in the "Possible overkill" area.

Regression analysis
Enter method is adopted when carrying out hierarchical regression analysis. The results of the regression analysis are given in Table 4. In the first model, the age and experience of HR executives are entered. All the demographic and study variables are entered into the second model. The second model shows a significantly adjusted R square value of 0.268, indicating that the model explains 26.8% variation in contribution toward organiza-tional effectiveness by HR competencies. Except for change champion competencies and HR innovator and integrator competencies, all the other HR competencies significantly explain the contribution of HR executives to the organization. Thus, hypothesis 1 is accepted.

Mediation analysis
HR competencies are considered the independent variable for the mediation analysis, and organiza- tional effectiveness is the dependent variable. The mediating effect of innovative HR practices is tested in the relationship between HR competencies and organizational effectiveness. In the first step, HR competencies are entered into the regression model, and it was found to predict a 29.3% variance in organizational effectiveness. Innovative HR practices are added as the mediating variable in the second step. Innovative HR practices show a 32% variance in organizational effectiveness.
Moreover, the effect of HR competencies was reduced from b = 0.430** to b = .321* when innovative HR practices are added in the second step of regression analysis. The mediation analysis shows the partial mediation effect of innovative HR practices as the significance and the magnitude of beta values have reduced. The direct effect of HR competencies on organizational effectiveness is 28.1%, and the total indirect effect is 34.6%. Overall, the variance explained is higher in the presence of the mediator (34.6%). Thus, hypothesis 2 is also accepted.

DISCUSSION
The HR professionals exhibited a high level of change champion competencies (mean = 4.47), credible architect competencies (mean = 4.09) and capacity builder competencies (mean = 4.04), and a medium level of strategic positioner competencies (mean = 3.65). The mean value of contribution to organizational effectiveness is also high (mean = 4.14). The importance-performance and regression analyses clearly show that HR professionals must build their competency on HR innovations. The importance scores for all six HR competency With respect to the mediation analysis, the results indicated partial mediation of innovative HR practices in the relationship between HR competencies and organizational effectiveness. Based on the resource-based view of a firm, innovative HR practices are the key resources that contribute toward the betterment of the organization. Although various HR competencies play a significant role in achieving organizational effectiveness, innovative HR practices improved the understanding of the effect of HR competencies. Wongsansukcharoen and Thaweepaiboonwong (2023) indicated the positive effect of innovative HR practices on organizational performance, productivity, and innovation performance.
Future studies can investigate additional competencies related to data analytics, leadership development, and change championing for HR managers connected to organizational growth. Moreover, the difference in the mean values between HR competencies' importance and performance score can be tested for significance. The study can also be expanded to other regions in the country and diverse sectors. The additional variables related to the level of technology adoption in the organization, adoption of external business changes, and adoption of better connection with people can be considered in the relationship among HR competencies, innovative HR practices, and organizational effectiveness.

CONCLUSION
The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between HR competencies and organizational effectiveness among HR professionals and the mediation effect of innovative HR practices. Based on the importance-performance analysis, the study underwent skill gap analysis. The key conclusions include the presence of a competency gap among HR managers. The level of HR competencies is found to be high among HR professionals. The strategic positioner competencies, credible architect competencies, capacity builder competencies, and technology proponent competencies to connect with people contribute to organizational effectiveness.
Moreover, innovative HR practices mediate the relationship between HR competencies and organizational effectiveness. Based on these findings, the study recommended that organizations spend time and effort training HR executives on various competencies and measure the innovative HR practices that HR executives implement for the outcomes. However, there are limitations to these findings as the conclusions are based on a relatively modest sample of organizations and a particular time frame. More in-depth and longitudinal empirical research evidence is needed to confirm the outcomes of this study. Yet, the study has thrown valuable insights.