ABSTRACT
Organizational survival and growth in today's dynamic and increasingly competitive marketplace in tandem with the relative decline of traditional sources of competitive advantage (e.g., technology, access to capital, economies of scale) have highlighted the importance of employee attitudes and behaviors as sources of competitive advantage. Consequently, how to manage employees in such a way that they become a competitive resource has become the focus of strategic human resource management (HRM) (Appelbaum, Bailey, Berg and Kalleberg 2000; Lepak, Liao, Chung and Harden 2006). Increasingly, effective or strategic management of employees is defined in terms of high performance work systems (HPWS), which describe “systems of human resource (HR) practices designed to enhance employees’ skills, commitment, and productivity” (Datta, Guthrie and Wright 2005, 135). Much research has since provided impressive evidence documenting the influence of HPWS on organizational performance (see Aryee, Walumbwa, Seidu and Otaye 2012; Combs, Liu, Hall and Ketchen 2006) as well as the mechanisms that underpin the HPWS-performance relationships (Aryee et al. 2012; Chuang and Liao 2010; Liao, Toya, Lepak and Hong 2009; Sun, Aryee and Law 2007).
