Abstract
SummaryDespite significant interest in the attributions employees make about their organization's human resource (HR) practices, there is little understanding of the antecedents of HR attributions. Drawing on attribution theory, we suggest that HR attributions are influenced by information (perceptions of distributive and procedural fairness), beliefs (organizational cynicism), and motivation (perceived relevance). We test a model through a two‐wave survey of 347 academic faculty in the United Kingdom, examining their attributions of the purpose of their institution's workload management framework. After two preliminary studies (an interview study and a cross‐sectional survey) to establish contextually relevant attributions, we find that fairness and cynicism are important for the formation of internal attributions of commitment but less so for cost‐saving or exploitation attributions. Fairness and cynicism also interact such that distributive fairness buffers the negative attributional effect of cynicism, and individuals are more likely to attribute fair procedures to external forces if they are cynical about their organization. This study furthers the application of attribution theory to the organizational domain while making significant contributions to our understanding of the HR‐performance process.
Highlights
In the past decade or so, there has been increased recognition that employee perceptions are an important step in explaining the relationship between human resource (HR) practices and organizational performance (Guest, 2011; Nishii & Wright, 2008)
Prior HR attributions research focuses on bundles of HR practices, we examine the practice of workload measurement and management (WMM) because individuals' attributions are likely to be context specific (Lord & Smith, 1983) and because employees evaluate specific HR practices differently (Nishii & Wright, 2008)
As the first study to examine individual‐level antecedents of HR attributions, our research expands the nomological net of the HR attributions framework and advances HR process theory more broadly by elucidating part of the process that explains the relationship between HR practices and organizational performance (e.g., Guest, 2011; Huselid, 1995)
Summary
In the past decade or so, there has been increased recognition that employee perceptions are an important step in explaining the relationship between human resource (HR) practices and organizational performance (Guest, 2011; Nishii & Wright, 2008). Scholars have suggested that employees' beliefs about the purpose of HR practices provide valuable insight into the HR‐performance process (Nishii, Lepak, & Schneider, 2008). This body of research fuses attribution theory (Heider, 1958; Kelley, 1973; Weiner, 1985) with strategic HR theories (e.g., Lepak, Taylor, Tekleab, Marrone, & Cohen, 2007; Schuler & Jackson, 1987) to suggest that attributions provide an important explanation for the variability in how employees respond to HR practices. If a core aim of this burgeoning literature is to explain the microprocesses through
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