Imprinting in HR process research: a systematic review and integrative conceptual model

Figures & data

Table 1. Overview of the 19 studies included in the systematic review.

Study	Type of paper	Design	Context	Imprinting factor(s)	HR process	HR content	Summary of main findings
Perceived HR Strength Studies
Babar et al. (2020)	Conference paper	Survey – time-lagged; multi-source	Employees and line managers within the telecom. industry in Pakistan	Faith in religion (mod) Gender (control) Age (control)	Perceived HR strength	Perceived performance appraisal quality	The effect of performance appraisal quality on perceived HR strength was stronger for employees with low faith in religion, compared to high faith employees. Age had a positive main effect on perceived HR strength.
Farndale et al. (2020)	Article	Survey – time-lagged; single source	Employees in various industries in Kenya, Lebanon, and the Netherlands	Gender (control) Age (control)	Perceived HR strength	High commitment HRM systems	Gender and age were not found to have significant relationships with perceived HR strength.
Jorgensen and Van Rossenberg (2019)	Conference paper	Survey – cross-sec; multi-source	Employees and managers in various organisations across 10 countries	Uncertainty avoidance (IV) Gender (control) Age (control)	Agreement (consensus) between employee’s and manager’s talent and development perceptions	Talent & development	A positive significant relationship was found between uncertainty avoidance and perceptions of talent and development (T&D) agreement (consensus) between line managers and employees. Employees’ age had a negative relationship with talent and development agreement. Males reported higher levels of agreement compared to females.
Kitt, Sanders, Qureshi, & Obaid (2020)	Conference paper	Survey – cross-sec; single source	Employees within various industries across China and Pakistan	Parental support (mod)	Perceived HR strength	Clear job descriptions	Parental support moderated the indirect effect of perceived HR strength on the relationship between clear job description and innovative work behaviours so that the relationship was weaker when parental support is high rather than low.
Functional and HR Attribution Studies
Arvey et al. (1984)	Article	Survey – cross-sec; single source	Hourly employees at a large South-Western chemical plant and oil refinery in the USA	Gender (control) Age (control) Ethnicity (control)	Attributional factors of the supervisor within the discipline process (internal; external)	FHRA: Disciplinary system	Age, gender, and ethnicity were not found to have significant relationships with attributions of any type.
Chen and Young (2013; study 2)	Article	Experimental – vignette; time-lagged	Students at a USA university	Belief in a just world (mod)	Attributions of success (internal; external)	FHRA: Promotion criteria	Individuals with weak just world beliefs who recalled experiences of personal injustice were less likely to develop causal internal attributions.
Chen and Young (2013; study 3)	Article	Experimental – vignette; time-lagged	Students at a USA university	Belief in a just world (mod)	Attributions of success (internal; external)	FHRA: Promotion criteria	Individuals with weak just world beliefs who recalled experiences of personal injustice were less likely to develop causal internal attributions, and this relationship was mediated by feelings of resentment.
Chiang and Birtch (2007)	Article	Survey – cross-sec; single source	Employees in the banking industry across multiple positions and four countries (UK, Finland, China, & Canada)	Individualism (IV) Collectivism (IV) Mastery (IV) Subjugation (IV) Power distance (IV) Gender (control) Age (control) Educational level (control)	Attributions of performance (internal; external)	FHRA: Performance evaluation	Individuals in cultures with higher levels of individualism, mastery over nature, and lower power distance were more likely to make causal internal attributions, rather the causal external attributions. Individuals in cultures with higher levels of collectivism, subjugation to nature, and power distance were not more likely to make causal external attributions, rather than causal internal attributions.
De Stobbeleir et al. (2010)	Article	Experimental – vignette; single source	Former Masters of Business Administration students in the USA	Implicit person theory (IV) Gender (control) Age (control)	Attributions of proactive behaviour (impression management; performance enhancement)	FHRA: Performance evaluation	Managers with lower implicit person theory beliefs were more likely to develop stronger impression-management attributions, rather than performance-enhancement attributions.
Guest et al. (2021)	Special issue article	Survey – cross-sec; multi-source	Employees and line managers in banks in Portugal	Gender (control)	HR attributions (control and commitment)	High commitment HR practices	Females were more likely to develop stronger commitment attributions and lower control attributions compared to males.
Han (2016)	Thesis	Survey – cross-sec; multi-source	Employees in a construction company in South Korea	Gender (control) Age (control)	HR attributions (well-being, exploitation, and cost-reduction)	Productivity-oriented HRM system	Females were more likely to develop stronger well-being attributions compared to males.
Heavey (2012)	Thesis	Survey – longitudinal; single source	Organisational newcomers in USA cooperatives	Proactive personality (IV) Conscientiousness (IV) Openness to experience (IV) Emotional stability (IV) Agreeableness (IV)  Gender (IV) Major in school (IV)	HR attributions (well-being; trends; legal; costs)	N/A	Students with employment-focused degrees developed stronger well-being and trends attributions compared with non-employment focused degrees. Proactive personality traits were positively associated with well-being and trends attributions. Openness to experience traits was negatively associated with trends and legal attributions. Emotional stability demonstrated a negative relationship with legal attributions. Females were marginally more likely to develop well-being attributions compared to males.
Hewett et al. (2019)	Article	Survey – cross-sec; single source	Academic faculty in UK universities	Gender (control) Age (control)	HR attributions (control; commitment; external)	Workload and measurement management	Older employees were less likely to develop exploitation attributions compared to younger employees.
Kaplan and Reckers (1993)	Article	Experimental – scenario; cross-sec	Auditors in a large public accounting firm in the USA	Social deference (IV) Tolerance for ambiguity (IV)	Attributions of performance (internal; external)	FHRA: Performance evaluation	Social deference and tolerance for ambiguity personality attributes were not systematically associated with causal attributions.
Montag-Smit and Smit (2021)	Special issue article	Survey – cross-sec; single-source	Employees in the USA sampled through MTurk	Gender (control) Age (control)	Pay secrecy attributions (malevolent; benevolent)	Pay secrecy policies	Females were more likely to make benevolent attributions towards their organisation’s pay policy practices than males. Younger employees were more likely to develop malevolent attributions towards their organisations pay policy practices than older employees.
Raemdonck and Strijbos (2013)	Article	Experimental – scenario; single-source	Secretarial employees in Dutch organisations of various sectors	Educational level (IV)	Dispositional attribution of the feedback sender (internal; external)	FHRA: Performance evaluation	Less-educated employees were more likely to develop stronger negative internal attributions compared to highly-educated employees.
Sanders, Yang, & Li (2021; study 1)	Article	Experimental – vignette; single source	Students in an Australian university	Power distance orientation (mod) Gender (control) Age (control)	HR attributions (quality enhancement; cost reduction)	High performance work systems	The effect of HPWS on quality-enhancement and cost-reduction attributions was stronger for low power distance employees compared to high power distance employees.
Sanders, Yang, & Li (2021; study 2)	Article	Survey – cross-sec; single-source	Employees from a variety of industries in China	Power distance orientation (mod) Gender (control) Age (control)	HR attributions (quality enhancement; cost reduction)	High performance work systems	The effect of HPWS on quality-enhancement and cost-reduction attributions was stronger for low power distance employees than high power distance employees. Females were more likely to report higher levels of both quality-enhancement and cost-reduction attributions compared to males. Older employees were more likely to report lower levels of quality enhancement and cost-reduction attributions compared to younger employees.
Van De Voorde and Beijer (2015)	Article	Survey – cross-sec; multi-source	Masters students in the Netherlands	Gender (control) Age (control) Educational level (control)	HR attributions (well-being; performance)	High performance work systems	Females were more likely to develop stronger well-being attributions than males.

Items in italic indicate that HR content was used in context only, not as an isolated variable that was tested in a conceptual model. FHRA = functional HR attributions.

Figure 1. Number of studies examining imprinting factors for perceived HR strength and HR and functional attribution streams by year of publication.

Figure 2. Conceptual framework for future research.

Babar, S., Obaid, A., Sanders, K., & Tariq, H. (2020). How perceptions of performance appraisal quality relates to HR strength and employee performance: The moderating role of faith in religion[Paper Presentation]. In British Academy of Management 2020 Conference Proceedings. Innovating for a Sustainable Future (Virtual Conference). British Academy of Management. https://virtual.oxfordabstracts.com/#/event/1520/submission/436

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Farndale, E., Metto, Z., & Nakhle, S. (2020). Human resource management systems and work engagement: Exploring the impact of employee paternalistic values. Management Revue, 31(4), 489–509. https://doi.org/10.5771/0935-9915-2020-4-489

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Jorgensen, F., & Van Rossenberg, Y. (2019). Employee & manager perceptions of T&D: (Dis)agreement from an uncertainty reduction perspective. Academy of Management Proceedings, 2019(1), 15988. https://doi.org/10.5465/AMBPP.2019.15988abstract

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Arvey, R., Davis, G., & Nelson, S. (1984). Use of discipline in an organization: A field study. Journal of Applied Psychology, 69(3), 448–460. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.69.3.448

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Chen, N., & Young, M. (2013). Effect of personal injustice on attributions for the success of others. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 35(2), 200–211. https://doi.org/10.1080/01973533.2013.764297

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Chiang, F., & Birtch, T. (2007). Examining the perceived causes of successful employee performance: An East-West comparison. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 18(2), 232–248. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585190601102406

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Guest, D., Sanders, K., Rodrigues, R., & Oliveira, T. (2021). Signalling theory as a framework for analysing human resource management processes and integrating human resource attribution theories: A conceptual analysis and empirical exploration. Human Resource Management Journal, 31(3), 796–818. https://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12326

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Heavey, A. (2012). Unpacking HR attributions: An examination of potential predictors of HR attributions, trends over time, and the moderating role of HR information sources. Cornell University. https://hdl.handle.net/1813/30973

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Hewett, R., Shantz, A., & Mundy, J. (2019). Information, beliefs, and motivation: The antecedents to human resource attributions. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 40(5), 570–586. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2353

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Kaplan, S., & Reckers, P. (1993). The examination of the effects of accountabilty tactics on performance evaluation judgements in public accounting. Behavioral Research in Accounting, 5, 101–123.

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Montag-Smit, T., & Smit, B. (2021). What are you hiding? Employee attributions for pay secrecy policies. Human Resource Management Journal, 31(3), 704–728. https://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12292

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Raemdonck, I., & Strijbos, J. W. (2013). Feedback perceptions and attribution by secretarial employees: Effects of feedback-content and sender characteristics. European Journal of Training and Development, 37(1), 24–48. https://doi.org/10.1108/03090591311293275

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Sanders, K., Yang, H., & Li, X. (2021). Quality enhancement or cost reduction? The influence of high-performance work systems and power distance orientation on employee human resource attributions. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 32(21), 4463–4490. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2019.1675740

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Sanders, K., Yang, H., & Patel, C. (2021). Handbook on HR process research. Edward Elgar Publishing.

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Van De Voorde, K., & Beijer, S. (2015). The role of employee HR attributions in the relationship between high-performance work systems and employee outcomes. Human Resource Management Journal, 25(1), 62–78. https://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12062

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Data availability statement

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.