Do they see eye to eye? Management and employee perspectives of high-performance work systems and influence processes on service quality.

Abstract

Extant research on high-performance work systems (HPWSs) has primarily examined the effects of HPWSs on establishment or firm-level performance from a management perspective in manufacturing settings. The current study extends this literature by differentiating management and employee perspectives of HPWSs and examining how the two perspectives relate to employee individual performance in the service context. Data collected in three phases from multiple sources involving 292 managers, 830 employees, and 1,772 customers of 91 bank branches revealed significant differences between management and employee perspectives of HPWSs. There were also significant differences in employee perspectives of HPWSs among employees of different employment statuses and among employees of the same status. Further, employee perspective of HPWSs was positively related to individual general service performance through the mediation of employee human capital and perceived organizational support and was positively related to individual knowledge-intensive service performance through the mediation of employee human capital and psychological empowerment. At the same time, management perspective of HPWSs was related to employee human capital and both types of service performance. Finally, a branch's overall knowledge-intensive service performance was positively associated with customer overall satisfaction with the branch's service.

Board Heterogeneity and Organisational Performance: The Mediating Effects of Line Managers and Staff Satisfaction

“…Important here is the way line managers communicate policies to staff and also their leadership styles, in terms of fairness towards staff and levels of support. In both respects, the ways in which line managers behave are likely to have major consequences for how strategies (set by TMTs) are received and translated by staff on the ground and therefore also on performance outcomes (Hassan & Hatmaker, 2014;Liao, Toya, Lepak, & Hong, 2009). On the one hand, line management styles and practices could reinforce commitment to strategic priorities and policies set by TMTs, while on the other hand, they could have precisely the opposite impact, leading to employee cynicism and disengagement.…”

Implementing HRM Systems: The Role of Employees' Co-Production Behavior and HRM Attributions

“…In combination with calls for a more employee-centered perspective (Nishii & Wright, 2008;Wright & Boswell, 2002), this has resulted in a growing body of literature that studies employees' perceptions of HRM systems as a measure of their effective implementation (Khilji & Wang, 2006;Liao, Toya, Lepak, & Hong, 2009). Driven by the fact that these employee perceptions are associated with higher employee satisfaction (Macky & Boxall, 2007), affective commitment (Gilbert, De Winne, & Sels, 2011;Kehoe & Wright, 2013) and performance (Ayree, Walumbwa, Seidu, & Otaye, 2012;Kehoe & Wright, 2013), existing studies have sought to explain why employees differ in their reports of HRM systems.…”

“…This omission has been attributed to the dominant assumption in strategic HRM literature that (1) managers determine which HRM practices are implemented and (2) employees are passive recipients of HRM (Keegan & Boselie, 2006;Lepak & Boswell, 2012). This assumption becomes best explicit in studies that exclusively examine managerial attributes such as their knowledge and skills (Kuvaas, Dysvik, & Buch, 2014), transformational leadership (Vermeeren, in press) or reports of HRM practice usage (Den Hartog et al, 2013;Liao et al, 2009) to explain employee perceptions of HRM systems. Remarkably however, those same studies find that the majority (up to 90%) of the variability in HRM perceptions resides on the employee level.…”

“…Driven by the fact that these employee perceptions are associated with higher employee satisfaction (Macky & Boxall, 2007), affective commitment (Gilbert, De Winne, & Sels, 2011;Kehoe & Wright, 2013) and performance (Ayree, Walumbwa, Seidu, & Otaye, 2012;Kehoe & Wright, 2013), existing studies have sought to explain why employees differ in their reports of HRM systems. This stream of literature has suggested, mostly through the use of the process model of Nishii and Wright (2008), that employee experiences of HRM systems follow from the intended and actual HRM practices enacted by managers (Den Hartog, Boon, Verburg, & Croon, 2013;Jensen, Patel, & Messersmith, 2012;Liao et al, 2009). …”

“…Our data was collected among employees in the Dutch subsidiary of a multinational engineering firm. While we studied a single organizational unit and excluded outsourced workers from our sample, we could control for between-firm and employment mode differences (see Liao et al, 2009) when examining the effect of employee co-production on HRM perceptions and performance. After presenting our data which lend support for most of our hypotheses (summarized in Figure 1), we finalize with discussing the practical and theoretical implications of our findings.…”