Effect Of High-performance Human Resource Practices On Employees And Organizational Performance

The high-performance human resource(HPHR)practices and performance relationships are difficult to comprehend without understanding the complexity and contexts between them.The individuals and groups in an organization,usually,exert higher efforts to work if they perceive the organizational human resource(HR)practices and procedures are favorable to them.Research has revealed that the effects of HR practices reside in the perceptions that employees have of those practices rather than the actual HR practices.The shared meaning and a collective perception of employees about HPHR practices in an organization develop a climate that implicitly shapes employees? responses and performance behavior.Research has affirmed that the workplace climate intervenes between HPHR practices to performance relationships.Turning a blind eye to the effect of workplace climate might lead to erroneous and inaccurate conclusion regarding the relationship of HPHR practices and performance.Therefore,it is critical to analysis the mechanism of HPHR practices and performance relationship.This thesis tries to answer three main research questions:(1)how do organizations disseminate their intended objectives to their employees to achieve desired performance?(2)How do HPHR(skill enhancement,motivation enhancement,and opportunity enhancement)practices influence employees and organizational performance?(3)How does the external business environment influence the mechanism and relationship of HPHR practices and organizational performance? Although most of the research on the relationships of HPHR practices and performance has demonstrated positive links,a growing body of literature has started to criticize the way through which HPHR practices influence performance.Relatively,HRM research has not explicitly recognized the mechanism between HPHR practices and performance.Researchers endorse the argument that to accurately predict performance it is necessary to take into account the situational variables under which the performance takes place.The main purpose of this thesis is to examine how the employees? perception of organizational HPHR practices and procedure shapes their behavior and performance.The human resource management(HRM)climate is the employees? perception of organizational HR practices and procedure that are supported and rewarded by the organization.Therefore,the author conceptualizes and operationalizes the HRM climate construct and develops an instrument to measure the HRM climate.Furthermore,this thesis intends to analyze the effect of HPHR(skill enhancement,motivation enhancement,and opportunity enhancement)practices on HRM climate,employee performance,and organizational business performance.It desires to explain the HRM climate mechanism in the relationship of HPHR practices with employees? task performance and organizational business performance.The thesis determines the business environment volatility as a boundary condition of HPHR practices and organizational performance relationship.The social cognition theory and AMO theory provides the theoretical foundation to the proposed hypotheses.This thesis is divided into two studies: Study one conceptualizes and operationalizes the HRM climate construct,and develops an instrument to measure HRM climate;study two explains the relationships of HRM climate with HPHR practices,employees performance,and organizational business performance.The study one used a sample of one hundred and eighty participants from seven organizations to develop the HRM climate measurement.The second study used a sample of five hundred and four participants from twenty-two organizations to confirm the measurement scale and examine the relationships between HPHR practices,employee task performance,and organizational business performance.The organizational managers evaluated the HPHR practices and organization business performance.The organizational employees evaluated the HRM climate and employee task performance through questionnaires.The employees of a functional area that has the largest numbers of employees in the organization were selected to evaluate the workplace climate.The measurement scales from the literature were used to evaluate the organizational HPHR practices,employee performance,job satisfaction,employee engagement,work-life integration,and organizational business performance.The measurement scale for HRM climate was developed by the author using the deductive and inductive approaches.The thesis results showed that six climates(innovation & flexible,support,welfare,involvement,autonomy,and family orientation)constituted the HRM climate.The six climates demonstrated a significantly positive influence on employees? performance such as task performance,job satisfaction,employee engagement,and work-life integration.Contrast to the expectations,motivation enhancement and opportunity enhancement HR practices were not directly related to employees and organizational performance.However,the HPHR practices(skill enhancement,motivation enhancement,and opportunity enhancement)were significantly related to organizational employees? task performance and business performance via HRM climate.The result supported the thesis main hypothesis that HRM climate mediates the HPHR practices and organization performance relationship.Furthermore,the business volatility moderated the main relationship of HPHR practices and performance.Also,the indirect relationship of HPHR practices with organizational employees? task performance via HRM climate was moderated by business volatility.It strengthens our understanding of the HPHR practices and performance relationship,and discovers that an external business environment,relatively,influences the climate mechanism in an organization.The finding of the thesis contributes to HRM,climate,and performance literature in several ways.First,it measures the employees shared perceptions of organizational HPHR practices and procedures that an organization supports and rewards.It provides deep insights to understand what constitutes overall HRM climate.Second,the development of HRM climate instrument allows researchers to capture the employees? understanding of ?climate for something?.It exams the notion of Schneider and Reichers(1983),Bowen and Ostroff,(2004),and Nishii and Wright(2008)that HRM climate mediates the relation between HRM practices and performance.Third,this thesis provides a profound understanding of the relationships between HRM climate and employee performances(task performance,job satisfaction,work engagement,and work-life integration).It explained that a cumulative effect of climate on employee performance.The collective effect of climate which can be considered as ?equifinality? draws on the configurational approach(Doty,Glick,& Huber,1993).Fourth,the current thesis contributes to the theoretical arguments of Bowen and Ostroff(2004)that HRM climate mediates the relationship between HPHR practices and performance.It explores the profound HRM climate mechanism in HPHR practices and performance relationship,which is significantly a milestone in opening the “black box” in SHRM literature.Fifth,the current thesis extends the implications of AMO theory and tests the skill enhancement human resource(SEHR)practices,motivation enhancement human resource(MEHR)practices,and opportunity enhancement human resource(OEHR)practices with organizational performance.Employees? perception of HPHR practices will channel the effect of AMO enhancement HR practices on business and employees? task performance.Finally,it illuminates the way through which HPHR practices influence employees? task performance and organization business performance.With the new insight of climate future research would be,in part,able to understand the so-called black box in HPHR practices and performance relationship.The thesis findings offer a number of implications.First,the HRM climate construct would allow HR professional to understand how the employees? shared meaning and perception of organizational HR policies,practices,and procedure influence task and business performance.It could help practitioners to monitor employees? evaluation of organizational HPHR practices and procedure over time,and to take adequate action when needed.Second,HRM climate mechanism between HPHR practices and organizational performance would help practitioners to minimize a gap between the intended and implemented HRM practices.Third,organizations may benefit greatly by designing and implementing HPHR practices according to the business environment.A competitive advantage may be substantial for organizations that find a fit between organizational practices and business environment.