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The aim of this study is to explore employees’ perceptions of the role of human resources (HR) departments in Jordanian organisations and the reasons behind these perceptions.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 23 employees who work at different organisations in various industrial sectors in Jordan.

Employees perceive HR roles as: providing transactional services (traditional); working as business partners to facilitate other departments’ roles (limited). Perceptions of HR professionals and the role of HR departments were generally negative, due to: societal-cultural norms and stereotypes of HR departments and HR professionals; the role of Wasta (a localised form of favouritism) in affecting HR practices; employees’ personal experiences with HR departments and HR professionals at their workplace; and the non-availability of human resources management (HRM) degrees in Jordan.

Limited research has explored varying perceptions about HR departments and their impacts on business contexts in emerging markets, including Jordan. This research is unique as it identifies the reasons behind common misconceptions of HR roles in Jordanian organisations. It extends beyond existing literature by integrating employees’ perceptions of the role of the HR departments to understand the consequences for HR practices’ operational effectiveness. It also pioneers consideration of societal culture in shaping these perceptions, which helps us build theories for future testing and generalisation purposes in other contexts with cultural commonalities. This study also highlights the current state of HRM development in Jordan, which helps in setting the agenda for future research in the country and the Middle East and North Africa region.

Prior research in the area of organizational change highlights the critical role played by HR practices during organizational change as it may require altering employee behavior to support the change direction. human resource (HR) function is considered to be well positioned to influence employee behavior by institutionalizing HR practices that support change. Further there is a significant body of literature that suggests that employee behavior is significantly influenced by the perceptions of HR practices during change. HR practices which create positive employee perceptions increase employee commitment to change. The purpose of this paper is to provide a conceptual framework that identifies critical HR practices that support organizational change and examines their impact on employee perception and commitment to change.

First, an extensive literature review on organizational change at macro level has been done to identify critical practices desired from key organizational members during organizational change. Second, a case for importance of HR function as a key organizational member during change is presented. Further literature on effectiveness of HR practices adopted by HR professionals during organizational change is examined to find out the gap areas. Third, literature on employee perception and commitment to change is examined to find out possible linkages to HR practices during organizational change. Finally, eight propositions are presented to build an integrated conceptual framework identifying critical HR practices during organizational change and their impact on employee perception and commitment to change.

The study suggests that HR practices undertaken in the area of culture, leadership, cross functional integration, training, communication and technology if introduced and implemented will positively influence employee perception reducing resistance and increasing commitment to change. Therefore assessing employee perception about critical HR practices at different stages of change initiation, implementation and consolidation can enable understanding about employee commitment to change. This would also help HR professionals understand how effective the HR practices implemented during change have been.

This framework can be used by the researchers and practitioners to study, guide, frame and model empirical research into the area of studying critical HR practices during organizational change. So far literature provides a generic view of desired organizational practices during change. Moreover there are few studies available on employee perception about HR practices implemented during organizational change and its impact on employee commitment to change. The framework presented in this paper would help explore the effectiveness of specific HR practices implemented during change by evaluating its impact on employee perception and commitment to change.

Human resource (HR) process research emerged as a response to questions about how (bundles of) HR practices related to organizational outcomes. The goal of HR process research is to explain variability in employee and organization outcomes by focusing on how HR practices are intended (adopted) by senior managers, the way that these HR practices are implemented and communicated by line managers, and how employees perceive, understand, and attribute these HR practices. In the first part of this chapter, we present a review of 20 years of HR process research from the start, to how it developed, and is now maturing. Within the body of HR process research, several different research theoretical streams have emerged, which are largely studied in isolation without benefiting from each other. Therefore, in the second part of this chapter, we draw on previous work to propose a staged process model in which we integrate the different research streams of HR process research, recognizing contingencies in the model. This leads us to an agenda for future research and practical implications in the final part of the chapter.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of HRM philosophy for HPWS formulation and implementation, as well as to investigate its role to improve employee perceptions of HPWS.

A qualitative study of 55 interviews was conducted with managers (senior, HR, frontline) and employees from three telecommunication organisations based in Pakistan.

The findings indicate that a clear, well-developed HRM philosophy ensures clarity in HPWS formulation not only for managers, but also for employees. However, lack of strong philosophical foundations for HPWS can result into distorted HRM messages and negative employee perceptions.

Whilst there remains debate over the positive and negative influence of HPWS for employee outcomes, this study presents HRM philosophy as important HRM component to understand HPWS implementation. The article highlights the fact that the purpose of HPWS practices and its effective communication to employees can make a substantial difference in how employees perceive these practices. In sum, an employee centred philosophy is likely to be pre-condition circumstances for improving employee outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the internal process by which high performance work systems (HPWSs) affect firm performance. It attempts to show the mediating effect of employee job satisfaction in the human resource (HR)‐performance link and also to show the moderating effect of employees' perception on the effectiveness of HPWSs.

Using a nationally representative data set from Korea (firm‐level samples: 245 firms, employee‐level samples: 6,709), this study analyses the mediating effect of job satisfaction in the relationship between HPWSs and firm performance with ordinary least squares (OLS) analysis and examines the moderating effect of employee perceptions with OLS and hierarchical linear modeling (HLM).

Results show that: there are positive associations between HPWSs and firm performance and between HPWSs and job satisfaction; job satisfaction has a mediating effect in the HR‐Performance link; and employees' perceptions of the effectiveness of HR practices moderate these relationships.

Limitations of the study are the measurement of HR practices, omitted variable problem, and generalizability of the results in this study. Scholars argue for the positive effect of HPWSs on firm performance and managers attempt to introduce HPWSs in their firms, but most of them do not fully understand what happens in the HR‐performance link. This study demonstrates that job satisfaction is a “black box” in the linkage between HPWSs and firm performance and may inform managers of appropriate policy levers that, if manipulated appropriately so that employees feel the effectiveness of HPWSs, can help the firm achieve more desirable organizational outcomes.

Many scholars argue that research to examine the internal process in the HR‐performance link is essential for rigorous elaborations of SHRM‐related theories, but few studies have investigated this issue. This study reveals the mediating and moderating mechanisms through which the HR‐performance link exerts its influence.

Sudden crises, known as environmental jolts, can cripple unprepared organizations. In recent years, financial jolts have led many organizations, particularly government organizations, to respond by furloughing employees. Furloughs can engender various responses in employees that can lead to negative work outcomes for both the employees and the organization. Previous research shows that the implementation of strategic human resource management (SHRM) practices, such as commitment-based systems, can mitigate the negative effects of environmental jolts. Utilizing the knowledge-based view and affective events theory, we propose a multilevel model where SHRM practices moderate employee affective responses to furloughs, which, in turn, drive subsequent employee behavioral outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to apply insights from the moral legitimacy theory to understand how climate for inclusion (CFI) is cultivated at the individual and collective levels, thereby highlighting the influence of employee perceptions of inclusion-oriented high-performance work systems (HPWS) on CFI.

A multi-level conceptual framework is introduced to explain how employee perceptions develop about the moral legitimacy of inclusion-oriented HPWS and the subsequent influence on CFI.

CFI is theorized to manifest when employees perceive inclusion-oriented HPWS as morally legitimate according to four unit-level features. Employees with a strong moral identity will be particularly attuned to the moral legitimacy of each of the unit-level HPWS features, thereby strengthening the perceived HPWS and CFI relationship at the individual level. The convergence of individual-level perceptions of CFI to the collective level will be strongest when climate variability is low for majority and minority groups.

Organizations seeking to develop CFI should consider the role of HPWS and the perceived moral legitimacy of such systems. This consideration may involve policy amendments to include a broadened scope of HPWS.

This paper explores how employee perceptions of the moral legitimacy of HPWS can help or hinder CFI, thereby offering a novel framework for future inclusion and human resource management research.

This paper aims to understand the role of perception of HR capability, HR service quality, along with HR inducements, which, in turn, provides satisfaction with HR practices and affects employee performance.

The data of 155 managers have been collected through a questionnaire to understand the relationship among the studied constructs using partial least square structured equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The results suggest that employers should attempt to create a positive perception by providing quality services in the HR domain, and quality services will certainly enhance employee performance.

This study is unique in terms of its contribution. This study has tried to link service quality and satisfaction to HR practices with employee performance. Further, it also shows that HR should be capable and have high HR inducements to provide the necessary and expected HR services, which leads to employee satisfaction with HR practices and employee performance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating factor of interactional justice (IJ) between the specific types of human resource (HR) practices: training and development (TD), compensation and benefits (CB), work process (WP), and perceived organizational support (POS). There has been scant attention paid in the past studies in examining the specific components of HR practices on organizational support and IJ.

The study was conducted in a healthcare organization, and employed quantitative analysis based on surveys and interviews conducted with 150 nurses. Confirmatory factor analysis and regression analysis were generated to examine the relationships among TD, CB, WP and IJ and POS.

Significant findings demonstrated that there are no direct effects between CB and TD, and POS. The result revealed that establishment of HR practices is not synonymous to organizational support. However, WP is positively correlated to POS. Further analysis indicated that IJ mediated between all three HR practices (CB, TD and WP) and POS. The findings are aligned with the previous research relating to the absence of direct correlation between team training and POS (Aguinis and Kraiger, 2009; Koster et al., 2011). The study suggests that adopting an interactive and a fair approach HR practices is crucial in managing the perceptions of employee support and workplace fairness. The management who enact the policies and practices are seen as the representatives in facilitating the WP (Wiili-Peltola et al., 2007). CB and TD are extrinsic benefits that are significant in individual personal and career growth. Hence, these components of reward system can be employed as a HR mechanism to promote trust and support with employees.

The empirical evidence in this present study shows that it bodes well for an organization to understand the impact of HR practices and policies on employees’ perceptions of support and fair treatment to promote organizational effectiveness and efficiency. The study shows that HR practices can enhance the psychological well-being of the employees through the support system through an open-communication channel. Providing a clear channel of communication in how the reward and benefits systems are administered and distributed, and promoting shared goals and objectives (Lyubovnikova et al., 2018) between employer and employee can be instrumental in promoting IJ in HR practices.

This study has enriched the theoretical and practical implications of examining the specific components of HR practices in association with IJ and organizational support. The results shed light on the balancing act of adopting the hard and soft HR management in executing the HR practices.

Organizational behavior scholars have long recognized the importance of a variety of emotion-related phenomena in everyday work life. Indeed, after three decades, the span of research on emotions in the workplace encompasses a wide variety of affective variables such as emotional climate, emotional labor, emotion regulation, positive and negative affect, empathy, and more recently, specific emotions. Emotions operate in complex ways across multiple levels of analysis (i.e., within-person, between-person, interpersonal, group, and organizational) to exert influence on work behavior and outcomes, but their linkages to human resource management (HRM) policies and practices have not always been explicit or well understood. This chapter offers a review and integration of the bourgeoning research on discrete positive and negative emotions, offering insights about why these emotions are relevant to HRM policies and practices. We review some of the dominant theories that have emerged out of functionalist perspectives on emotions, connecting these to a strategic HRM framework. We then define and describe four discrete positive and negative emotions (fear, pride, guilt, and interest) highlighting how they relate to five HRM practices: (1) selection, (2) training/learning, (3) performance management, (4) incentives/rewards, and (5) employee voice. Following this, we discuss the emotion perception and regulation implications of these and other discrete emotions for leaders and HRM managers. We conclude with some challenges associated with understanding discrete emotions in organizations as well as some opportunities and future directions for improving our appreciation and understanding of the role of discrete emotional experiences in HRM.