Abstract
The aim of this paper is to understand how workers’ perceptions and behaviors contribute to understanding the association between human resources management (HRM) and organizational performance (OP). Over the past few decades, theory construction has lagged the intermediate linkages between HRM and OP, and, therefore, there are still many unanswered questions with regards to such an association. To sustain the HRM-OP link, the authors highlight the potential influence of employees’ work engagement (WE), with the aim of exploring some of the intermediating variables, focusing on the perceptions of employees’ attitudes and behaviors. This research emphasizes that line managers have a crucial role to play in stimulating employees’ efforts and in shaping HR-related outcomes. Line managers act as crucial intermediaries in determining how HR policies that lead to OP can be designed and administered. Nevertheless, line managers have the capability to disrupt or stimulate the system, which has a significant impact on employees’ engagement with the organization. The empirical research is based on a sample of 1,609 employees and 40 organizations and was carried out in two settings. Results suggest that line managers and employees’ perceptions of HR policies were positively related to line managers’ perceptions of OP. The results also support a path model, whereby WE strengthens HR systems’ association with enhanced levels of OP. The discussion reviews the implications of these results and suggests future directions for research.
Highlights
As a result of rapid changes and new trends in the business environment, the business world has been facing challenges and demands at a fast pace
Human resource management (HRM) represents a key organizational function to achieve competitive advantage (Boudreau & Ramstad, 1998), and its contribution to the overall organizational performance (OP) is increasingly acknowledged (Budhwar, 2000). This has led the researchers to look into those HR practices that are associated with OP (e.g., MacDuffie, 1995; Gooderham, Parry, & Ringdal, 2008), as well as other dimensions in the human resources management (HRM) system that are linked with performance, such as the HR process (e.g., Sanders, Shipton, & Gomes, 2014), HRM strength “as part of building theoretical rationales” (e.g., Ostroff & Bowen, 2016, pp. 197), or even attributions made of practices (Nishii, Lepak, & Schneider, 2008)
This paper examined how employee-manager perceptual differences regarding HR policies, employees’ work engagement and managers’ perception of performance are related and inquired as to whether the relationship between employee-manager perceptual differences regarding HR policies and employees’ work engagement affected managers’ perception of performance
Summary
As a result of rapid changes and new trends in the business environment, the business world has been facing challenges and demands at a fast pace. Human resource management (HRM) represents a key organizational function to achieve competitive advantage (Boudreau & Ramstad, 1998), and its contribution to the overall organizational performance (OP) is increasingly acknowledged (Budhwar, 2000). This has led the researchers to look into those HR practices that are associated with OP (e.g., MacDuffie, 1995; Gooderham, Parry, & Ringdal, 2008), as well as other dimensions in the HRM system that are linked with performance, such as the HR process (e.g., Sanders, Shipton, & Gomes, 2014), HRM strength “as part of building theoretical rationales” While put forward to explain the process by which HRM the former has mainly focused on the internal impacts on performance
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