The influence of line managers and HR department on employees' affective commitment

Abstract

Based on social exchange theory, we investigate the impact of HRM investments made by two important HR actors, line managers and HR department, on employees' affective commitment. More specifically, we examine the independent and joint impact of line managers' enactment of HR practices, their relations-oriented leadership behaviour and the HR department's service quality. Accordingly, we consider the largely neglected HRM role of line managers. In addition, we focus on perceived HRM, which is seen as a determining factor in employees' attitudinal and behavioural reactions. Data for this study were collected from 1363 employees, working in three service organizations. The results indicate that line managers can enhance employees' affective commitment by both the effective enactment of HR practices and the effective relations-oriented leadership behaviour. High service quality by the HR department also has a positive effect on employees' affective commitment. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Keywords:

• affective commitment
• human resource management
• line managers
• relations-oriented leadership behaviour
• service quality

Notes

1. We also ran the analyses with the two-factor solution for perceived HR department's service quality: HR department's effectiveness and HR department's services (Nehles et al. 2008). The main effects of the two factors are significant and of equal size, whereas the interaction effects with the line manager components are insignificant. Since both factors are equally important and since the discriminant validity test points in the direction of only one factor, we do not report these results in detail.