The HRM–Creativity Link: How Workplace Happiness Fuels Supervisory-level Employees’ Creativity in Bangladesh’s Garment Sector

The focus of the current research is to investigate the influence of high commitment human resource management (HCHRM) on supervisory-level employees’ creativity through the mediating effect of their workplace happiness in ready-made garment (RMG) organisations in Bangladesh. Most prior studies have been undertaken in developed countries and knowledge-intensive industries, leaving a literature gap on HCHRM practices in labour-intensive and emerging economy sectors like the RMG industry in Bangladesh. HCHRM improves employee performance and engagement, but its psychological and emotional mechanisms, particularly workplace happiness as a mediator, are understudied. Questionnaires were distributed to RMG employees purposively selected through the judgmental sampling technique. To test the hypotheses, partial least squares structural equation modelling was used for the analysis of 301 responses collected in 2 waves. Statistical results showed that HCHRM influenced employees’ creativity directly and via workplace happiness. This study expands the research on HCHRM by examining its influence on employee creativity through the mediating effect of workplace happiness. The current findings would help the management of organisations to understand the importance of commitment-oriented human resource management (HRM) practices rather than executing conventional HRM practices to make employees feel happy and more creative in the organisations.