The moderating effect of cultural context in the relation between HPWS and performance: an exploratory study in Spanish multinational companies

Abstract

The efficiency of high performance work systems (HPWS) has been a special object of study for the last two decades. Analysis of their behaviour has involved the consideration of diverse factors that might be supposed to moderate their efficiency, among which internal company factors stand out. However, contextual perspective has not been considered in great detail. From a contingent approach, the cultural context of the country in which a firm is located ought to influence the effectiveness of their HPWS, and these systems should, therefore, adapt to their setting. However, from a universalist perspective, the competitive potential of these systems would be independent of their context of application. For companies that set up business in other countries and have to decide between transferring their human resource management system (HRMS) intact or adapting it to the new context of application, it is a matter of great importance to know which of these two perspectives is to be implemented. This article, using a sample of subsidiaries of Spanish multinational enterprises (MNEs), analyses the influence of cultural context as a moderating variable between HPWS and performance. The results we obtained, on the one hand, once again reveal the positive influence of HPWS on firm performance and, on the other hand, bear out the universalist perspective, as they do not, in general, detect a significant influence of cultural context as a moderating variable. Nevertheless, specific cultural characteristics of the countries where firms are located do appear to increase the positive influence of HPWS, and this opens up an interesting line of study.

Keywords:

• best practices
• HPWS
• multinational enterprises
• national culture
• Spain