Effects Of Strategic-hrm On Organizational Performance Through Multi-level Mediating Mechanism

The relationship between high-performance work systems(HPWS)and organizational performance(OP)is difficult to comprehend without understanding the complexity and contexts between them.In the organizations,employees usually exert higher efforts to work if they perceive the organizational(Implemented)HR practices and procedures are favorable to them.Previous studies have revealed that the effects of actual HR-practices do not reside in those practices but rather in the perceptions of those practices which employees got experiences.In support,strategic-HRM(SHRM)scholars argued that employee outcomes serve as one of the significant mediating mechanism between the relationship of HR systems and firm performance.Nevertheless,most of the previous research almost exclusively takes a managerial perspective on the relationship between HR and performance and implicitly assumes that managers' opinions are similar as with employees' perceptions.Interestingly,recent research has challenged this managerial opinion and demonstrated that employees' perception is important to notify because it may have different experiences of HR systems from what is reported by their managers.Moreover,this association is difficult to comprehend without understanding the complexity and contexts between them.This study has examined the impact of HPWS as a unitary index(system)on unit performance concerning black-box mediating mechanism at the unit and employee level.As the influence of HR as a system on organizational performance has basically seen as a multilevel phenomenon in nature because it first designed at the higher level need to be first experienced by individual(employee)level and in consequences to impact unit-level performance outcomes.Therefore,it is significant to integrate both macro and micro approach in SHRM context.This dissertation tries to answer two main research questions.First,how does the implemented-HPWS affect the unit performance? Second,how employee perceived implemented HPWS and their consequence towards OP? While most of the research on the relationship of high-performance HR(HPHR)practices and performance has demonstrated positive links,however,a growing body of literature has started to criticize the way through which HPHR practices influence performance.Relatively,SHRM research has not been succeeded to explicitly identify the many ways in which individual and group/unit level may experience and respond to organizational HR practices(as a system).The purpose of this dissertation was to examined that how implemented “HPWS” practices affect the unit performance concerning black-box multi-level mediating mechanism.Moreover,how employee perceived implemented HPWS and what are their consequences on the unit performance? Further,does collective human capital(CHC)influence the relationship between implemented “HPWS” and performance at unit-level? Underpinned by the resource-based view(RBV)and conceptually integrated Nishii and Wright multilevel model,this research proposed and tested a multi-level model that simultaneously examines the mediating mechanism through which these implemented HPWS impact unit performance.To test the proposed hypotheses,Multilevel Structure Equation Model(MSEM)and multilevel mediational analysis were approached,in which the lower(employee)level perceived HPWS construct is clearly separated into within-and between-group components so that the entire relationship can be formulated as a two-level structural equation modeling model.Survey-based questionnaire was used to collect the data from branch level managers and employees of Chinese “big four” banks situated in Shanghai zone.Altogether,181-line managers and 504 employees responded the questionnaire.Data were analyzed using the IBM SPSS(Statistical Package for the Social Sciences),AMOS version 21 and the Mplus statistical software package,version 7(Muthén and Muthén,2010).This research has used multilevel mediation approach to demonstrate a specific type of 2-1-2 multilevel mediation analysis or more recently known as bathtub model.In this model,an indirect link between HPWS and OP(measured at branch Level)through CHC(measured at branch level)and perceived HPWS(measured at the individual level)were examined.The 2-1-2 multilevel analysis procedure separates measurement errors into relevant employee-and branchlevel components to create more precise assessments of multivariate relationships.Such analysis had not yet been conducted in research on HPWS prior to this study into Chinese banking sector,but they are essential for teasing out the micro-and macro-level effects of HPWS.Previously,the substantial body of research has examined the relationship of HPWS-performance link through a single-level mediation approach,thereby ignoring the possibility that HPWS and unit performance may examine at a multilevel analytical level from an employee perspective.Such types of studies omit from consideration the interdependencies between individuals nested in the organization and therefore do not address potential sources of bias.The key findings of the current study can be summarized into following folds.First,in line with the notion that manager ratings of implemented HPWS and employee ratings of perceived HPWS form separate constructs that are not necessarily aligned.As,both managers' implemented and employees' perceived HR practices are important constructs for the explanation of the effects of HRM on performance.This study found that implemented HPWS at the branch level related positively but weakly comparative to employees' perceptions,which exposed that employees perceived different experiences of HR systems from what is reported by their managers.Generally,branch managers actively implement HPWS,and employees perceive a fairly high level of HPWS.Second,drawing on an RBV of the firms,this study connected the relational link,adopting the variable of CHC into study structure on firms in the Chinese banking sector to disclose the formerly overlooked black box of the relationship between HPWS and unit performance.Prior studies of SHRM that employed the RBV exposed HC as a direct link to HPWS and performance outcomes.This study showed that CHC partially mediates the relationship between implemented HPWS and unit-performance(perceived unit performance and perceived market performance).These findings support the RBV that holds that HC is a critical resource with a positive influence on(unit)performance.This outcome contributes to the existing SHRM literature because the role of CHC is rarely examined explicitly as a mediator between relationships of HPWS and performance at the branch and overall level of organization.Third,perceived HPWS at the individual level have seldom studied in terms of the relationship between HPWS and performance by using 2-1-2 multilevel mediation approach.This study demonstrated that employee-perceived HPWS was also found to partially mediate the relationship between manager-implemented HPWS and unit-performance(both perceived unit performance and perceived market performance).Moreover,while this study has exposed the commonly found top-down effect of managerimplemented HPWS,we extend the results of such research by providing a new employee-level perception of HPWS.Further,this research draws attention to bottom-up or cross-level effects,in which perceived effects of HPWS on unit performance are exposed and identified.Last but not the least,this study investigated the relationship between HPWS and unit performance in a service setting and target branch-level analysis in a key service,the banking sector.