A comparative study of the effects of ‘best practice’ HRM on worker outcomes in Malaysia and England local government

Abstract

This paper presents the findings of a cross-cultural comparison of the effects of ‘best practice’ HRM using employees from a matched sample of local government service departments in England and Malaysia (England n = 569, Malaysian n = 453). The paper tests the universal ‘best practice’ thesis, and also assesses the perceived level of up-take of HR practices in the two samples. The research also considers the effects of the psychological climate and employees' perceptions of trust on five work-related outcomes, namely job satisfaction, motivation, organizational citizenship behaviour, stress and quit intentions. The findings reveal that the Malaysian workers perceived the up-take of HR practices to be higher in comparison to their counterparts in England. A less consistent pattern emerged with regards to perceptions of climate. OLS regression revealed that consistent with the universal thesis, a bundle of HR practices significantly predicted employee outcomes in the hypothesized directions in both samples. Therefore, these findings provide strong support for the universal thesis.

Keywords:

• best practice HRM
• employee outcomes
• international comparative study
• Malaysia and England local government
• universal thesis

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Dr Peter Morgan, Cardiff Business School, for his advice and guidance on appropriate statistical techniques. We should also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful recommendations.