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The purpose of this paper is to test alternative conceptualizations of the relationship between systems of human resource management (HRM) practices and organizational effectiveness. The authors describe a framework suggesting a complex relationship between HRM practices and organizational effectiveness, test this approach empirically in a large sample of US motor carriers, and compare the results to those derived using other approaches prevalent in the strategic HRM literature.

The study used a large scale cross-sectional survey design. In a sample of US motor carriers, questionnaires completed by senior HRM department staff were used as the primary data. The data were supplemented by organizational effectiveness data reported by motor carriers to the US Government.

The results support the general hypothesis that HRM practices enhance organizational effectiveness, provide some evidence that HRM practices can enhance each other’s effectiveness, and underscore the value of theory driven methodological approaches. Specifically, the authors found that HRM system comprising practices that ensure selectivity in staffing, performance-based pay, and enhanced employee opportunity through participation in decision-making result in higher levels of organizational effectiveness. Additionally, the effects of other combinations of these practices varied.

This study highlights the need for HRM departments and organizations to approach the strategic management of employees with a systems perspective. The optimal design of an HRM strategy must take into account the various components.

This study is one of the first to test the main assumptions of the systems perspective in strategic HRM using multiple measures and empirical approaches for combining HRM practices into systems. Comparison of these different approaches in a single study offers insight into how researchers can test the relationship between HRM practices and organizational effectiveness and provide practitioners more useful approaches for designing HRM systems.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a perspective on the future of the human resource management (HRM)-performance debate and its prospects for interaction with practice by evaluating the debate's intellectual structure.

With co-citation analysis the paper examines the intellectual structure that informed the HRM-performance debate. The findings were presented to a group of academics, who have been influential in the development of the debate. In several rounds of a quasi-Delphi interaction they discussed the state of the art, future development of the debate, upcoming theoretical sources of inspiration and topics on which they (dis)agreed.

The dominant knowledge domain is built upon resource-based view, social exchange theory, human capital theory, institutional theory and critical perspective. It became well established in the mid 1990s, when the strategic HRM domain merged with the high performance work systems domain, thus forming the conceptual backbone of the debate. More recently the debate has been informed by review studies, meta-analyses and critical reflections on the current methodological paradigms, which is aligned with the debate's life cycle stage.

The paper highlights the theoretical foundations of the HRM-performance debate and gives valuable suggestions on how to take the field forward along with important implications for researchers and their relationship with the business community.

This paper proposes a framework for understanding the concept of a learning organization from a normative perspective. A questionnaire was developed to operationally measure the described management practice attributes of a learning organization. Using a sample of four organizations and 612 subjects, support was found for three a priori predictive hypotheses derived from a conceptual framework. Implications of the results and further empirical research are discussed, especially for linking learning organization attributes to performance using larger samples and multiple measures.

The purpose of this study is to analyze and map the terrain of human resource management (HRM) in higher education (HE) contexts, with the aim of uncovering potential gaps within the existing knowledge base.

This study employs a unique, in-depth bibliometric analysis of 945 publications from the Web of Science database over the past 40 years between 1981 and 2022.

Based on the bibliometric analysis, the authors retrospectively examined the dominant research themes in HRM within the HE sphere, tracing their evolution over time. Four central clusters emerged: the theoretical foundations of HRM, strategic HRM, organizational culture and human capital development. Furthermore, the authors pinpointed critical research gaps and proposed areas for future inquiry, such as the impact of HRM on productivity, leadership dynamics, sustainable growth development, international staffing strategies and knowledge transfer mechanisms.

This study demonstrates how academics can use bibliometric techniques to systemize literature, expose potential gaps and suggest fruitful lines of inquiry in the field of investigation. The findings of this study can also help improve the decision-making processes of managers and human resource professionals.

This study provides readers with a systematic understanding of the development of HRM in HE settings and presents forward-looking perspectives, highlighting future research possibilities. Moreover, it validates the significance of bibliometric analysis as an efficient technique for discovering gaps in the existing literature.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework that clarifies the construct of pay secrecy.

Paralleling organizational justice research, two continua of pay information – a distributive continuum about pay raise outcomes and a procedural continuum of pay raise processes – are crossed to produce a 3 × 3 matrix with nine distinct forms of pay communication.

Drawing on the substitutability effect from the organizational justice literature, the matrix highlights the importance of considering how the communication of different types of pay information interact with one another as individuals form pay perceptions.

The matrix framework illustrates that not only information content shapes pay perceptions, but also the extent to which different types of pay information are communicated, and how these different types of information interact. As with any conceptual framework, the current manuscript is limited by a lack of empirical testing.

Managers should be cognizant of the many different ways in which pay information can be communicated. A call is made to reconsider the use of traditionally binary terminology (secret or not) in favor of more accurate descriptions of the nuanced ways in which organizations communicate pay information.

The value of the pay communication matrix lies in the nine unique forms of pay communication arising from the interaction of two different forms of pay information – distributive (outcomes) and procedural (process).

The purpose of this paper is to measure the effect of aligning HR practices horizontally and vertically to support organizational strategic goals.

Hypotheses were tested using 85,840 employees’ responses collected from a single, large public organization’s annual employee survey. Factor analysis with principal axis factoring and varimax rotation was used to confirm the variables being studied. The relationships were analyzed using ordered logistic regression.

Results suggest that compensation practices, workforce planning, and work/life balance-focused HR practices can be used to predict job satisfaction and turnover intentions. Additionally, when the combined effects of the three HR practice types are considered together, an increased reduction in turnover intention is indicated.

To achieve optimal performance organizations should be diligent in their efforts to align their functional area HRM strategies and practices with each other and with the overall strategic goals and objectives guiding the organization.

While the positive effect of alignment has been proposed by many scholars, empirical examinations of the binary approach are rare. This paper contributes to the field by providing a unique empirical examination of an organization’s implementation of HR practices designed to achieve stated strategic objectives through a large scale study.

This paper aims to discuss the association between human resource management and performance from a process perspective, differentiating intended and implemented vertical and horizontal fit. Although researchers have examined deeply the relationship between these constructs, extant literature demonstrates inconclusive results. Previous studies have stressed the strategic importance of vertical and horizontal fit from a prescriptive view. Nevertheless, a deeper understanding, focused on management processes, is needed.

This paper reviews and integrates two streams of strategic human resources management (SHRM) literature: the fit perspective, drawing on Martín-Alcázar et al.’s (2005) model, and the system strength approach, proposed by Bowen and Ostroff (2004).

The conceptual analysis developed in this paper concludes that HRM system strength mediates the effects of an aligned strategy on performance. In this sense, the paper argues that success in implementation of the HRM strategy depends on employees’ perceptions about the system of policies and practices through which it is carried out. Additionally, organizational communication is considered as the mechanism to create a shared HRM meaning to translate to employees.

Drawing on the theoretical discussions in the paper, the following implications for HRM practice are identified: the usefulness of the system strength construct as a tool to measure employees’ perceptions and anticipate potential problems at the implementation stage, the importance of organizational communication mechanisms, the relevance of formal and informal connections between HR managers and top executives and the need for specific training to promote HR managers’ communicational skills.

This study examines the relationship between HRM and organizational performance by presenting a new model that integrates HRM strategy formulation and implementation, proposes employee perceptions concerning HRM are mediators of HRM strategy and firm performance, highlights the role of organizational communication in creating and managing shared HR messages and introduces system strength as an instrument to assess vertical and horizontal fit during implementation.

Human Resource Management (HRM) effects on firm performance can be examined at the systems architecture (i.e., guiding principles or philosophy), the policy, or practices levels. This paper suggests that, at least for small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries, it is the guiding principles that affect a firm’s performance. Using a unique dataset of 44 SMEs in Tamil‐Nadu, India, this paper presents a regression analysis of the relationship between HRM philosophies and measures of firm performance. It is shown that the attitude of the firm’s owner(s) towards its employees is a major determinant of the firm’s profitability. The effect of HRM philosophy on productivity is smaller, albeit still highly significant.

This study looked at the impact on return‐on‐assets (ROA) of aligning budgeting and human resource management (HRM) practices with strategy. A Lisrel model was tested on 79 large Canadian and U.S. firms. Although HR policy alignment was positively associated with ROA, budgetary alignment was only positively associated with ROA in conjunction with process participation. That is, organisations performed best when the budgets were aligned with the mission of the organisation and numerous levels of the organisation had the opportunity to participate in strategy formation. Furthermore, aligned budgets did not ameliorate the negative affects of implementing a non‐participatory process of strategy formation.