Getting to what works: How frontline HRM relationality facilitates high‐performance work practice implementation

Abstract

The lack of an efficient support system for people with multiple, long‐term health conditions has increased costs, worsened health outcomes, and prompted policymakers to implement a boundary‐spanning role within healthcare settings. While scholars have demonstrated the benefits of coordination roles and other such high‐performance work practices (HPWPs) in this sector, the actual implementation of these practices is less clear. Based on a comparative case study approach, 153 interviews, and other qualitative data, this article explores frontline managers' HR philosophies and practices (‘frontline HRM relationality’) to explain possible variation in efforts to implement the boundary‐spanning role of care coordinators (CCs). Despite strong policy support for the role, coordination has improved unevenly because of varying degrees of HRM relationality: findings show that higher frontline HRM relationality was associated with lower inter‐occupational professionalization differences and higher boundary‐spanning coordination. The article contributes to a nascent literature on HPWP implementation by theorizing frontline HRM relationality as a continuum that moderates professionalization‐related coordination problems and highlights the importance of frontline HRM relationality for implementing HPWPs in professionalized settings.

Leveraging relational analytics in human resource research and practice

“…Relational coordination networks are expected to improve strategically important performance outcomes such as quality, safety, efficiency, learning, innovation, and worker well-being by enabling participants to manage their interdependencies directly, with fewer redundancies, lapses, errors, and delays. Relational coordination is weakened by human resource practices that are siloed, and strengthened by those that are cross-cutting such as selecting and training for teamwork, shared accountability, shared rewards, and relational job design (Gittell et al, 2008;Gittell et al, 2010;Krachler, 2023;Lee & Kim, 2020;McDermott et al, 2019;Siddique et al, 2019). The theory has evolved from a linear theory of performance to a dynamic theory of change, recognizing the ability of participants to conduct interventions to develop higher performing relational networks (Burns et al, 2022;Gittell, 2016;Hajjar et al, 2020Hajjar et al, , 2023Thygeson, 2021).…”