Crossing the level of employee's performance: HPWS, affective commitment, human capital, and employee job performance in professional service organizations

Abstract

Extant research on high-performance work systems (HPWS) has primarily examined the effects of HPWS on firm-level performance from a macro perspective and mostly in manufacturing settings. This study extends this literature by integrating social exchange theory and human capital theory perspectives to examine how shop-level HPWS affect employee individual performance in the service context, especially focusing on the small-scale professional service organizations. Data collected from multiple sources included 97 hair salon shop owners and 284 hairdressers as well as objective job performance measured in terms of each hairdresser's average monthly service sales. Results from cross-level analysis indicated that the relationship between shop-level HPWS and employee job performance was mediated by employee affective commitment and their human capital. These findings shed new light on the mechanisms through which HPWS impact employee outcomes and serve to bridge between macro and micro perspectives of human resource management.

Keywords:

• high-performance work systems
• human capital theory
• job performance
• service organizations
• social exchange theory

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our thanks for financial support from National Science Council of Taiwan, and proofreading from Pei-chi Huang in an earlier version.