Front-line managers as agents in the HRM- performance causal chain: theory, analysis and evidence (original) (raw)
Related papers
Implementing human resource management successfully: a first-line management challenge
management revue. The …, 2006
In this paper we will address the success of Human Resource Management (HRM) implementation, concentrating not on the HR function but on first-line managers. First-line managers find implementing HR practices at the operational level difficult and show reluctance with their HR responsibilities. However, they have become increasingly responsible for the implementation of HRM and thus, their performance is critical for HRM effectiveness. Previous research pointed to five factors that could lead to HRM implementation difficulties. Four case studies in four different multinational business units are presented here to investigate the salience of these factors. Results show that first-line managers perceive four of the five factors hindering, but that the challenges faced vary per business unit.
Employee Reactions to Human Resource Management: A Review and Assessment
Journal of Industrial Relations, 2002
Research into Human Resource Management (HRM) all too often skirts around the issue of how employees react to its implementation. We know relatively little about the impact of HRM on employee attitudes, behaviour and wellbeing; how it translates into 'organisational performance'; and what employees actually think about the HRM they are subject to. Moreover, when researchers have considered employee presence within HRM, they have done so in instrumental terms: the employee is perceived as a means to an organisational end rather than a thinking, acting stakeholder on whom HRM is practised. This implies the need for new approaches to the study of HRM and, in particular, the adoption of new research agendas for locating and understanding the response of employees to its practice.
We examine the relationship between HRM practices, conceptualized at the workplace level, and individual employee attitudes and behaviour. We focus on two possible explanations for the relationship: social exchange and job influence/employee discretion. Findings from a study of employees in North-East England suggest that there is a positive impact of HRM practices on organizational citizenship behaviour, through an effect on perceived job influence/discretion. There was no such effect for perceived organizational support. These findings provide support for a job influence and opportunity explanation of HRM effects on employee attitudes and behaviour.
HRM and Performance: Achievements, Methodological Issues and Prospects
Twenty years ago published his normative framework describing the essence of HRM. He presented HRM as a new approach to personnel management, emphasizing its strategic contribution, its closer alignment to business, the involvement of line management, and focusing on HRM outcomes like commitment, flexibility and quality. The achievement of these human resource outcomes was, in turn, expected to contribute to a range of positive organizational outcomes, including high job performance, low turnover, low absence and high cost-effectiveness through the full utilization of employees, now relabelled as human resources. Put this way, it is not difficult to understand the wide appeal that the notion of HRM had (and still has) to academics and practitioners alike. It led to the renaming of chairs/departments within universities and to changed job titles in the business community. The attractiveness of the concept of HRM increased considerably when Huselid, in 1995, published a ground-breaking paper in the Academy of Management Journal in which he demonstrated a correlation between the degree of sophistication of HR-systems and the market value per employee among a range of publicly quoted companies in the USA. The paper generated admiration, criticism and an abundance of 'me too' research, trying to replicate the proclaimed relationship between HRM and Performance . Since then many academics on both sides of the Atlantic have become active in this field, with a special focus on the relationship between HRM and Performance. Within this rapidly expanding field of study, the HRM-Performance relationship has been approached from a variety of perspectives rooted in organizational behaviour, sociology, economics, industrial relations and organizational psychology, with a particular emphasis placed on the impact of various combinations of human resource practices on a range of performance outcomes at the individual and organizational level of analysis.
Employee Reactions to Human Resource Management: Debates and Perspectives
Journal of Industrial Relations, 2002
Research into Human Resource Management (HRM) all too often skirts around the issue of how employees react to its implementation. We know relatively little about the impact of HRM on employee attitudes, behaviour and wellbeing; how it translates into 'organisational performance'; and what employees actually think about the HRM they are subject to. Moreover, when researchers have considered employee presence within HRM, they have done so in instrumental terms: the employee is perceived as a means to an organisational end rather than a thinking, acting stakeholder on whom HRM is practised. This implies the need for new approaches to the study of HRM and, in particular, the adoption of new research agendas for locating and understanding the response of employees to its practice.
HRM Practices, Organizational Citizenship Behaviour, and Performance: A Multi-Level Analysis
Journal of Management Studies, 2010
We examine the relationship between HRM practices, conceptualized at the workplace level, and individual employee attitudes and behaviour. We focus on two possible explanations for the relationship: social exchange and job influence/employee discretion. Findings from a study of employees in NorthEast England suggest that there is a positive impact of HRM practices on organizational citizenship behaviour, through an effect on perceived job influence/discretion. There was no such effect for perceived organizational support. These findings provide support for a job influence and opportunity explanation of HRM effects on employee attitudes and behaviour.
Academia Letters, 2021
This study aims to provide additional empirical evidence on the impact of Human Resource Management Practices (HRMP) on Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCB). To this end it was hypothesized: HRMPs have a significant and positive effect on OCBs. A total of 525 participants, employees in different organisations in Portugal, participated in this study. The results revealed a significant and positive effect of HRMPs on OCBs. However, of the seven HRMPs only Performance Appraisal showed a significant effect on OCB.