Toward a strategic human resource management model of high reliability organization performance

Abstract

In this article, we extend strategic human resource management (SHRM) thinking to theory and research on high reliability organizations (HROs) using a behavioural approach. After considering the viability of reliability as an organizational performance indicator, we identify a set of eight reliability-oriented employee behaviours (ROEBs) likely to foster organizational reliability and suggest that they are especially valuable to reliability-seeking organizations that operate under ‘trying conditions’. We then develop a reliability-enhancing human resource strategy (REHRS) likely to facilitate the manifestation of these ROEBs. We conclude that the behavioural approach offers SHRM scholars an opportunity to explain how people contribute to specific organizational goals in specific contexts and, in turn, to identify human resource strategies that extend the general high performance human resource strategy (HPHRS) in new and important ways.

Keywords:

• Human resource
• reliability
• performance
• work system

Acknowledgements

Funding for this research was provided by the Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies (CAHRS) and the Benjamin Miller Scholarship Fund, both of which are affiliated with the ILR School, Cornell University.