The Impact of High-Performance Human Resource Practices on Employees’ Attitudes and Behaviors

Abstract

Although strategic human resource (HR) management research has established a significant relationship between high-performance HR practices and firm-level financial and market outcomes, few studies have considered the important role of employees’ perceptions of HR practice use or examined the more proximal outcomes of high-performance HR practices that may play mediating roles in the HR practice–performance relationship. To address recent calls in the literature for an investigation of this nature, this study examined the relationships between employees’ perceptions of high-performance HR practice use in their job groups and employee absenteeism, intent to remain with the organization, and organizational citizenship behavior, dedicating a focus to the possible mediating role of affective organizational commitment in these relationships. Data in this study were collected from surveys of employees at a large multiunit food service organization. The model was tested with CWC(M) mediation analysis (i.e., centered within context with reintroduction of the subtracted means at Level 2), which accounted for the multilevel structure of the data. Results indicate that employees’ perceptions of high-performance HR practice use at the job group level positively related to all dependent variables and that affective organizational commitment partially mediated the relationship between HR practice perceptions and organizational citizenship behavior and fully mediated the relationship between HR practice perceptions and intent to remain with the organization. The discussion reviews the implications of these results and suggests future directions for research in this vein.

When innovation requirements empower individual innovation: the role of job complexity

“…It is specifically relevant to study the latter because these collective subjective experiences with job characteristics are closer to employee reactions than managerial intentions (Kehoe and Wright, 2013). We thus study employees' perceptions of job characteristics in the aggregate (at the job group level).…”

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

“…Piening, Baluch & Salge, 2013). Prior research found that the perceived intensity of HRM systems is positively related with employee task performance (Kooij, Jansen, Dikkers, & De Lange, 2010;Kuvaas & Dysvik, 2010) and OCB (Alves, Shantz, Truss, & Soane, 2013;Kehoe & Wright, 2013). Given that employee perceptions of HRM systems follow from the degree to which employees co-produce them, we predict a relationship between HRM coproduction and employee performance, which is mediated by the employee reports of HRM systems.…”

“…As reflected in Hypothesis 1, higher levels of HRM co-production result into higher levels of perceived intensity of HRM systems by employees. Others have argued that these perceptions of HRM system intensity induce employees to engage in task performance and OCB (Kehoe & Wright, 2013;Kuvaas & Dysvik, 2010). In doing so, they have mostly build on the social exchange theory to conceptualize the performance effects of HRM practices (Blau, 1964).…”

“…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 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).…”

Role of Strategic Human Resource Practices in Employee Performance

“…These human resource practices results in the employee outcomes like employee's job performance, employee's job satisfaction, employee's turnover intention, and perception of procedural justice. Kehoe and Wright (2013) investigate the perception of employees towards the high performance human resource management practices that shows a positive relationship with the financial and market outcomes. The employee perception of high performance practices shows a positive relationship with the organizational citizenship behaviour, which is mediated by affective organizational commitment.…”