抄録
Previous studies on strategic HRM (SHRM) tended to focus on examining the effectiveness of organizational-level HRM practices and their impact on a firm's economic performance. A number of extant studies have empirically demonstrated that some forms or a bundle of HRM practices (i.e., HRM systems) increased organizational performance, and thereby the performance implications of a certain type of HRM systems, which is referred to as high-performance work systems (HPWS), have gradually been accepted by both researchers and practitioners. Questions still remain, however, regarding the inner mechanisms of the HPWS effects on employees' work attitudes and performance. In this study, we attempted to offer and test a unique multilevel model that incorporates both the mediating role of the leader-member exchange (LMX) relationships and the moderating role of organizational climate into the process by which the use of an establishment's HPWS is related to employees' job satisfaction, involvement, and performance. Using the longitudinal data collected from 396 employees and their immediate supervisors in 31 Japanese establishments at three points in time, the study has demonstrated that the quality of LMX relationships mediates the relationships between the use of HPWS and employees' satisfaction, involvement, and performance. Moreover, organizational climate pertaining to organizational goal clarity was found to moderate the positive cross-level relationship between HPWS and the LMX quality. Findings were used to discuss a new perspective in the application of a social exchange theory to the understanding of HRM-performance relationships.
