organizational behaviour

The associations between organisational performance, employee attitudes and human resource management practicesAn empirical study of small businessesChin-Ju TsaiLecturer in Hutmar) Resource Mariagemerit, School of Managetnetit, Royal Holloway, Utiiversity of London, UK

Paul EdwardsProfessor of Industrial Relations, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, UK

Sukanya SenguptaAssociate Professor for the Industrial Relations and Organisational Behaviour Group, Warwick Business School, UK

Most research on the associations between organisational performance, employee attitudes and Human Resource Management (HRM) practices has adopted a theoretical framework that proposes that HRM practices lead to HR outcomes (e.g. job satisfaction, skills, etc.) which in turn affect organisational performance. Building on theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence from the fields of organisational psychology-performance and HRM-performance, this paper presents a study that develops and tests an alternative view of the association. This model depicts the influence of organisational performance on employee attitudes and the role of HRM practice as a mediator between the two. It was tested using data collected from employee surveys and management interviews in 32 small firms. The results suggest that employees in firms with better business performance have more positive attitudes towards three attitude measures (overall perceptions of work, job autonomy and the perceived link between reward and performance) and that the association between business performance and employee attitudes is partially mediated by HRM practices. The findings are discussed with respect to the nature of the complex performance-attitude-HRM relationship and their implications for management and future research.

I 2OIOThe Braybrooke Press Ltd. Jourrial of General Management Vol. 36 No. I Autumn 2010

1-20

organizational behaviour

Chin-Ju Tsai, Paul Edwards and Sukanya Sengüpta

IntroductionUnderstanding the associations between organisational performance, employee attitudes, and Human Resource Management (HRM) has been a major area of research infieldssuch as organisational psychology, strategic HRM and organisational theory. Two broad strands of research have investigated attitude-performance relationships at the organisational level: one in the organisational psychology-performance literature and the other in the HRMperformance literature. Historically, numerous studies in the organisational psychology-performance literature have examined the link between employee attitudes (e.g. job satisfaction and commitment) and individual-level performance (e.g. Cook, Hepworth, Wall and Warr, 1981; Iafïaldano and Muchinsky, 1985). More recent research, however, has focused on performance outcomes at the organisational level (e.g., Harter, Schmidt and Hayes, 2002; Schneider, Hanges, Smith and Salvaggio, 2003). In the HRM-performance literature, a great number of studies have examined the associations between

HRM, HR outcomes (e.g. attitudes, skills, labour turnover) and organisational performance and have provided some empirical evidence to support the linkages (e.g. Arthur, 1994; Huselid, 1995; Park, Mitsuhashi, Fey and Björkman, 2003). Both streams of research, however, have long hypothesised that employee attitudes drive organisational performance, but have paid little attention to the influence of organisational performance on employee attitudes. In the light of recent empirical evidence which shows that firm performance is a better predictor of employee attitudes than the other way around (e.g. Ryan, Schmit and Johnson, 1996; West, Smith, Feng and Lawthom, 1998; Schneider etal, 2003), some scholars have argued that the prevailing view that employee attitudes drive firm performance may be 'at best too simplistic and at worst wrong' (Schneider et al.,, 2003: p. 846) and have begun to discuss whether scholars have been 'putting the cart before the horse' (Kiewitz, 2004: p. 127). Although the issue of possible reverse causation (i.e. organisational performance influences employee attitudes) has been recognised (e.g. Ramsay etal.y 2000), no conceptual models that illustrate the association have been put forward. To further understanding of the associations between organisational performance, employee attitudes and HRM practices, the present study (building on the extant theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence from the organisational psychology-performance and HRM-performance research) develops and tests an alternative view of the nature of these associations. Specifically, a model is proposed that illustrates the following relationships: that firm performance influences employee attitudes and that HRM practices mediate the association between performance and attitudes. To conduct a preliminary examination of the model, hypotheses were tested using data collected from management interviews and employee surveys in the context of small business. Apart from the evident importance of the sector in the modern economy (Granovetter, 1984; Scase, 2003), the main reason for using data collected from small firms is that the small business context may provide a unique setting for testing performance-attitude relationships. Employment relationships in small firms have been charac-

I 2010 The Braybrooke Press Ltd. Journal ofGer)eral Management Vol. 36 No. I Autumn 2010

organizational behaviour

Organisational employee attitudes and human resource management practices

terised as being informal, using direct communication and having close management-employee working relationships (see e.g. Bacon et al.., 1996; Kotey and Slade, 2005). This means that employees in small firms may have better knowledge about firms' actual performances than employees in large organisations, which is particularly important in rel …… 此处隐藏：62809字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……