In the strategic human resource (HR) management literature, over the past three decades, a shared consensus has developed that the focus should be on HR systems rather than individual HR practices ...because the effects of HR practices are likely to depend on the other practices within the system. Despite this agreement, the extent to which the fundamental assumption in the field of interactions and synergy in the system holds true is unclear. We present a systematic review of 495 empirical studies on 516 HR systems in which we analyze the development of HR systems research over time and identify important trends, explicitly linking conceptualization and measurement of the HR system. Our findings suggest that the increasingly broad conceptualization and measurement of HR systems and the lack of clarity on the HR systems construct at different levels have hampered research progress. Much of the research to date does not align with the fundamental assumption of synergies between HR practices in a system, the measures have problems and increasingly confound HR systems with related concepts and outcomes, and insufficient attention is paid to the HR system construct at different levels. Overall, we thus still know little about the “systems” element and how synergies and interactions in an HR system operate. We offer actionable suggestions on how to advance HR systems research towards conceptual clarity and construct refinement, focusing both on how to conceptualize, measure, and combine practices in systems and on studying such systems at different levels of analysis.
The concept of digital human resource management and related concepts such as the digitization of human resource management, the digitalization of human resource management, the digital ...transformation of human resource management, and the digital disruption of human resource management are gaining prominence in scholarly discussion. Frequently, however, the use of these concepts is implicit, heterogeneous, and proliferating. These concepts, thus, lack the “conceptual clarity” necessary in research. Therefore, this article aims at a conceptual clarification of digital human resource management and of related concepts of the digitization of human resource management, the digitalization of human resource management, the digital transformation of human resource management, and the digital disruption of human resource management. To do so, the article references general literature on digital organizations to develop a terminology and typology of digital human resource management. The terminology offers precise and parsimonious definitions of the concepts and relationships between them, offering a basic understanding. The typology offers precise and parsimonious ideal-types, which order and classify phenomena related to digital human resource management, in turn expanding knowledge about these phenomena. Together, the terminology and typology clarify the concept of digital human resource management and related concepts, uncover digital human resource management as an evolutionary advancement of previous conceptualizations of technology-based human resource management, and provide a conceptual basis for future work on digital human resource management.
Scholars have shown that green human resource management (GHRM) practices enhance a firm's environmental performance. However, existing studies fail to explain how GHRM initiatives can enable a green ...organisational culture or how such a culture affects the environmental performance and sustainable development of the firm. This paper examines the relationship between GHRM practices, the enablers of green organisational culture, and a firm's environmental performance. We conduct a large‐scale survey of 204 employees at Chinese manufacturing firms. Our findings suggest that proenvironmental HRM practices including hiring, training, appraisal, and incentivisation support the development of the enablers of green organisational culture. We suggest the key enablers of green organisational culture include leadership emphasis, message credibility, peer involvement, and employee empowerment. Our paper contributes to HRM theory in terms of originality and utility of research by explaining that the enablers of green organisational culture positively mediate the relationship between GHRM practices and environmental performance. Managers are provided with a detailed understanding of the GHRM practices needed to enable an organisational culture of environmentally aware employees. Finally, we address potential implications of this work for teaching green organisational culture to future generations of responsible managers.
Strategic human resource management scholars have drawn on the resource-based view of the firm to argue that a high commitment human resource (HCHR) strategy leads to firm competitive advantage by ...creating greater firm-level employee-based resources that are rare and valuable. While there is early empirical support for this mediated model, prior studies have largely ignored two key aspects of the RBV perspective. First, extant research has not effectively explained why differences in employee-based resources persist across firms that have adopted the same firm-level HR strategy. Second, this body of research has largely ignored contemporary thinking on the RBV which suggests that employee-based resources only lead to competitive advantage when they are a fit to other organization capabilities that enable the firm to effectively orchestrate them for productive use. I draw on the literature on dynamic managerial capabilities to argue that CEO managerial cognition, social capital, and human capital help to explain when pursuing an HCHR strategy potentially leads to greater firm-level employee-based resources and when firms are able to effectively manage and deploy these employee-based resources for competitive advantage.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and other AI-based applications are being integrated into firms' human resource management (HRM) approaches for managing people in domestic and international ...organisations. The last decade has seen a growth in AI-based applications proliferating the HRM function, triggering an exciting new stream of research on topics such as the social presence of AI and robotics, effects of AI adoption on individual and business level outcomes, and evaluating AI-enabled HRM practices. Adopting these technologies has resulted in how work is organised in local and international firms, noting opportunities for employees and firms' resource utilisation, decision-making, and problem-solving. However, despite a growing interest in scholarship, research on AI-based technologies for HRM is limited and fragmented. Further research is needed that analyses the role of AI-assisted applications in HRM functions and human-AI interactions in large multinational enterprises diffusing such innovations. In response to these combined issues-the fragmented nature of research and limited extant literature, we present a systematic review on the theme of this special issue and offer a nuanced understating of what is known, yet to be known, and future research directions to frame a future research agenda for international HRM. We develop a conceptual framework that integrates research on AI applications in HRM and offers a cohesive base for future research endeavours. We also develop a set of testable propositions that serve as directions for future research.
In this study, we examine whether the relationship between employees' perceptions of human resource management (HRM) and work engagement is mediated by job crafting. Using conservation of resources ...(COR) theory, we propose that HR practices offer job resources which employees reinvest by displaying job crafting behaviours. Since job crafting involves the pro-active redesign of job characteristics by employees, this study advances the idea that employees are pro-active in their response to HRM and translate perceived HRM practice into attitudinal outcomes through displaying pro-active behaviour. In support of this idea, our results show that the relationship between perceived HRM and work engagement is fully mediated by the job crafting type 'increasing job resources and challenging job demands'. The job crafting type 'decreasing hindering job demands' turned out to be insignificantly related to both employee perceptions of HRM and work engagement.
Balancing environmental, social, and economic performance is today considered a key responsibility that firms have toward society. As a result, academics, practitioners, and political decision makers ...are increasingly paying attention to environmental management systems improving a full spectrum of environmental performance. In that regard, even if recent literature suggests that environmental management should be deployed through a cross-functional approach, extant literature mostly focuses on independent functional systems. This paper addresses this gap investigating how the deployment of environmental management in the human resource function—adopting green human resource management (GHRM) practices—and the supply chain function—adopting green supply chain management (GSCM) practices—impact on environmental and financial performance. We draw from a multiple-respondent survey of human resource and supply chain managers in multiple industries in Italy. The study suggests that GHRM and GSCM impact on both environmental and financial performance and shows that GHRM and GSCM exert those impacts in a joint fashion. Indeed, our results show that GSCM plays a mediating role in the relationship between GHRM and performance. Overall, our results provide researchers and managers with relevant insights into the cross-functional deployment of the environmental values and principles across functions.
Research on the effects of HR management on employees’ psychological well‐being has yielded inconclusive results. Moreover, prior works remain unclear on whether human resource practices specifically ...aimed at enhancing employee well‐being also benefit organizational performance. Building on signaling theory and conservation of resources theory, our study investigates the relationship between health‐related human resource management (HHRM), employees’ collective well‐being (in terms of collective emotional exhaustion and collective engagement) and organizational performance. Results from a multi‐source field study of top management team members, HR representatives, and 15,952 employees in 88 organizations reveal a positive indirect relationship between HHRM and employees’ collective well‐being, which is mediated by employees’ positive stress mindset. In addition, we find this positive indirect association to depend on the level of transformational leadership climate in organizations. Finally, our findings also show a positive indirect relationship between HHRM and company performance, mediated by employees’ positive stress mindset and collective engagement.
With the growing number of studies investigating employee perceptions of HR practices, the field of SHRM is challenged with monitoring how cumulative insights develop. This paper presents a ...systematic review on employee perceptions of HR practices in terms of 1) how they are examined (as an antecedent, mediator, or outcome), 2) the theoretical perspectives that explain this construct, and 3) the type of conceptualizations of employee perceptions of HRM that have been used in the extant SHRM research. The findings illustrate how scattered current approaches are in terms of how employee perceptions of HRM have been examined. In addition, a range of theoretical frameworks that advocate and support the employee perspective on HRM have been used, showing that a single perspective on employee perceptions of HRM seems infeasible. Finally, a variety of descriptive and evaluative conceptualizations have been used. Recommendations and avenues for future research to gain a more comprehensive understanding of employee perceptions of HRM are provided.