Personal disposition as the source of variability in the hrm-performance relationship: the moderating effects of conscientiousness on the relationship between high-commitment work system and employee outcome

Abstract

Despite a growing interest in examining why and how variability within organizations develops throughout HR implementation, attempts hitherto appear futile. We evaluate that it is attributed to the with-organization level HRM research, overly skewed towards delineating the mediating processes. It is, as we argue, imperative to directly capture the sources and consequences of the discrepancy in the HRM–performance relationship to enrich our understanding of the phenomena and, more importantly, intervene more strategically in practice. To that end, we investigate how employee conscientiousness systematically changes the relationship between workgroup-level HR practices and employee affective commitment, subsequently conducive to task performance. Our analyses of time-lagged, multilevel data demonstrated that the indirect HRM–commitment–performance link turns significant only when the level of conscientiousness is factored in. Further, we found that motivation-enhancing HR practices are more effective for those low on conscientiousness, whereas high-conscientious individuals perform better under the influence of opportunity-enhancing HR practices. In our sample, the ability-enhancing HR bundle did not work together with conscientiousness either way. The current study is indeed a meaningful pursuit as one of the early attempts to draw a more nuanced picture of idiosyncratic employee responses.