Relating career stage to attitudes towards HR practices and commitment: evidence of interaction effects?

A dominant theme within the HRM literature concerns the identification of 'best practices' that will enhance both organisational performance and employee commitment. Though research exploring the impact of these practices at the level of the individual is considerably limited, it is implied that they may be applied both across and within organisations, yielding favourable firm level outcomes and employee behaviours. There is growing support among researchers for a more complex understanding of commitment. Meyer and Allen (1997) suggest that commitment is best viewed as multi-dimensional, comprising affective, continuance and normative dimensions. Employees displaying each dimension of commitment will remain in an organisation because they feel that they want to, need to or ought to do so. Research suggests that certain organisational and individual variables are related to different forms of commitment. There is also evidence that both commitment and work attitudes differ over the stages of an employee's career. This presents the possibility that organisations seeking to promote commitment may need to tailor HR practices to suit employees' needs, thus challenging the best practice perspective at the employee level. This paper extends on the literature by examining whether career stage has a moderating influence on the HR-commitment relationship. The empirical research is based on an employee attitude survey within three financial service organisations in Ireland (N= 288). Using moderated multiple regression, the findings highlight the extent to which interaction effects are evident regarding attitudes towards HR practices and continuance and normative commitment, though not affective commitment. The implications of these findings for the management of commitment are discussed

Assessing the importance of multi-dimensional commitment to international HRM: evidence from employees in the Irish financial services industry

A key feature of the HRM literature in recent years has concerned the identification of HR practices associated with high performance or high commitment management. Despite references to 'high commitment' in this literature, little research has examined the impact of these practices on the attitudes and commitment of employees. This is despite claims that commitment is best viewed as a multidimensional construct, with different outcomes for both individuals and for organisations pursuing high commitment strategies. This pursuit of two disparate research agendas makes it difficult to add sense to what might represent best practice from an employee perspective, and what might constitute high commitment HR practices. This paper extends both HRM and commitment research perspectives by examining employee experiences of HR practices and linking these experiences to multiple dimensions of commitment. Findings are based on a survey of employees (N = 288) within three multinational firms operating in the Irish Financial Services sector. The findings show that while attitudes towards some HR practices impact considerably on affective commitment, their impact on the continuance or normative dimensions is considerably weaker. In light of the findings, the paper evaluates the suitability of using a three-dimensional framework in research on high commitment management

Developing a culture for innovation: what is the role of the HR system?

Research on Human Resource Management and innovation has to date relied on a theoretical assumption that there exists an identifiable set of HR practices which organisations seeking to be innovative should adopt. However, analysis of the various prescriptions of HR practices for innovation reveals a high level of internal inconsistency, leading to conflicting advice for practitioners. Furthermore, a review of empirical research on the topic indicates that HR practices within innovative organisations are remarkably similar to those found in the best practice literature This raises questions about the link between strategy and HRM, and about the theoretical foundations of research on HRM and innovation. Drawing on recent research on HRM and firm performance, we suggest that research on HRM and innovation can benefit from incorporating elements from both contingency theory and best practice approaches into the existing configuration theory approach. A change in direction for both theoretical and empirical research on HRM and innovation is proposed. What type of HR system is most appropriate for a firm wishing to pursue a strategy of innovation? This question has attracted attention from researchers since the early 1980s. In fact, it can be argued that this stream of research predated by as much as a decade a much wider interest in the links between HRM and organisational performance which Guest (1997, p. 263) argues is now “the dominant research issue in the field (of HRM)”. Interest in the topic of innovation is also growing rapidly. Global dissemination of information via technology has ensured that competitive advantage based on a particular product or process is no longer sustainable. In the information age, sustainable competitive advantage belongs to those firms who continually reinvent themselves at a pace which is consistent with the rapid pace of change in the environment. The result is that the pressure on firms to innovate in order to survive is greater than ever before (see, for example, Tushman & O’ Reilly, 1997). These parallel developments in HRM research and the broader business environment ensure that both academic and practitioner interest in the topic of HR systems for innovation is likely to grow. The question of how research on this topic should proceed is therefore an important one, and is the subject of this paper

Rigidity of spherical codes

A packing of spherical caps on the surface of a sphere (that is, a spherical code) is called rigid or jammed if it is isolated within the space of packings. In other words, aside from applying a global isometry, the packing cannot be deformed. In this paper, we systematically study the rigidity of spherical codes, particularly kissing configurations. One surprise is that the kissing configuration of the Coxeter-Todd lattice is not jammed, despite being locally jammed (each individual cap is held in place if its neighbors are fixed); in this respect, the Coxeter-Todd lattice is analogous to the face-centered cubic lattice in three dimensions. By contrast, we find that many other packings have jammed kissing configurations, including the Barnes-Wall lattice and all of the best kissing configurations known in four through twelve dimensions. Jamming seems to become much less common for large kissing configurations in higher dimensions, and in particular it fails for the best kissing configurations known in 25 through 31 dimensions. Motivated by this phenomenon, we find new kissing configurations in these dimensions, which improve on the records set in 1982 by the laminated lattices.Comment: 39 pages, 8 figure

Exploring the linkages between attitudes towards human resource management practices and organisational commitment: evidence from the financial services industry in Ireland

Since the 1990s, research in Human Resource Management (HRM) has been largely concerned with the search for links between HR 'systems' and firm performance (Guest, 1997). This has given rise to a body of literature that has been labeled 'high performance' and 'high commitment1 management. Despite references to the term commitment within this literature, little research has examined the relationship between these HR systems and employee commitment. This is despite claims that commitment is best viewed as a multidimensional construct, with different outcomes for both individuals and for organisations pursuing high commitment strategies. This points to a need to consolidate both individual and firm level perspectives. The present study extends this literature by (a) focusing on the individual as the unit of analysis (b) viewing commitment as a multi-dimensional construct (c) examining whether attitudes towards HR practices are linked to different forms of commitment and (d) establishing whether career stage has a moderating influence on the HR-commitment relationship. The empirical research is based on an employee attitude survey (n = 288) and interviews with HR managers within three financial service organisations in Ireland. The findings highlight that (a) attitudes towards HR practices impact on some forms of commitment more than others (b) certain attitudes have a greater impact on commitment than others (c) attitudes do not interact with career stage to predict affective commitment and (d) attitudes that do not impact on affective commitment are, in some cases, those that impact on intention to leave. It seems that the management of employment experiences over time provides the key to both high retention and high commitment within organisations. Based on these findings, models of high commitment management and high retention are presented

Leadership, human resource management and the content of the psychological contract

This paper argues that, in combination, management leadership styles (transactional versus relational) and human resource management practices (flexibility versus commitment) play an important role in formulating the orientation and content of the psychological contract. The paper presents a theoretical framework of how this occurs, drawing upon and integrating prior research to develop a typology of psychological contract obligations based on a two-by-two matrix, with leadership style and HRM systems on opposing axes. The resultant obligations are termed as partnership, paternalistic, market-based and dynamic. Implications are discussed from the viewpoint of both individuals and organizations. Crucially, the paper posits that a failure to match leadership styles and human resource (HR) practices may lead to mismatched expectations between employees and employers. This may have negative consequences for an organization’s performance as, under the psychological contract, a breach of perceived obligations to employees by employers can have consequences for employee attitudes and behaviors

HR Practices and commitment to change: an employee-level analysis

This article explores the relationship between HR practices and commitment to change in three health service organisations in Ireland. The research focuses on employee views of HR practices and resulting employee level consequences including commitment to change, perceptions of the industrial relations climate and the psychological contract, and work-life balance. The findings indicate that the practices valued by employees, and which are related to a range of employee-related consequences, are very different to the lists of sophisticated HR practices that appear in the high performance literature. The research suggests that organisations need to ensure that attention is still paid to the basics of the employment relationship and that these are not lost in the rush to introduce more sophisticated approaches to managing employees

Developing behavioural complexity among global leaders: an international, cross-continental study

Research evidence exists which indicates that the degree to which managers can develop behavioural complexity is linked to more effective leadership and higher firm performance. Behavioural complexity relates to the capacity for managers or leaders to engage in a wide repertoire of behaviours which will enable them to both maintain continuity and lead change. This paper sets out to explore differences in behavioural complexity among managers across different international contexts and across genders. It examines managers’ perceptions of how they relate to people, manage processes, lead change and produce results (i.e. their behavioural complexity). The research forms part of a wider investigation into the impact of management education on individual and organisational outcomes. It draws on a survey of managers from three countries and a variety of organisational settings (N= 286). The findings show that there are differences in behavioural complexity both across genders and across international contexts. Specifically, it finds evidence to suggest that female managers adopt a stronger internal focus (i.e. on managing processes), compared to males who adopt a stronger external focus (e.g. on producing results). In addition, the findings indicate that scores along the ‘relating to people’ dimension are significantly lower among managers in the US, compared to the other managers in the sample

Enhancing knowledge exchange and combination through HR practices: reflexivity as a translation process.

Knowledge-intensive firms (KIFs) need to encourage their employees to engage in knowledge exchange and combination (KEC) so as to create the new knowledge that is core to their success. Human resource management (HRM) has the potential to play a key role in encouraging KEC but relatively little is known about the micro-processes through which HRM and KEC are linked. Based on a sample of 498 knowledge workers in 14 KIFs in the pharmaceutical and ICT sectors in Ireland and the UK, this study focuses on the knowledge workers themselves and their perceptions of how HR practices influence KEC. In so doing, we drill down into the micro-foundations of the proposed linkages between HRM and knowledge creation, proffering reflexivity as a translation process in understanding these linkages

Performance management in context: formative cross-functional performance monitoring for improvement and the mediating role of relational coordination in hospitals

Recent research suggests that to fully realise its potential, performance management should be bespoke to the social context in which it operates. Here we analyse factors supporting the use of performance data for improvement. The study purposively examines a developmentally oriented performance management system with cross-functional goals. We suggest that these system characteristics are significant in interdependent work contexts, such as healthcare. We propose and test that (a) relational coordination helps employees work effectively to resolve issues identified through formative and cross-functional performance monitoring and (b) that this contributes to better outcomes for both employees and patients. Based on survey data from management and care providers across Irish acute hospitals, the study found that perceptions of relational coordination mediated the link between formative cross-functional performance monitoring and employee outcomes and partially mediated the link between formative cross-functional performance monitoring and patient care respectively. Our findings signal potential for a more contextually driven and interdependent approach to the alignment of management and human resource management practices. While relational coordination is important in healthcare, we also note potential to identify other social drivers supporting productive responses to performance monitoring in different contexts