Employee high-performance work systems-experience attributions of well-being and exploitation: a multilevel study of Greek workplaces
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-06-2021-0230 |
| Published date | 11 November 2021 |
| Date | 11 November 2021 |
| Pages | 1030-1047 |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations,Employment law |
| Author | Anastasia Katou |
Employee high-performance
work systems-experience
attributions of well-being and
exploitation: a multilevel study
of Greek workplaces
Anastasia Katou
Department of Business Administration, School of Business Administration,
University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece
Abstract
Purpose –This paper aims to theoretically propose and empirically test a research framework that
investigates the relationshi p between high-performance work sy stems (HPWSs) and organizatio nal
performance through the serially mediating mechanisms of employee HPWS-experience attributions of well-
being and exploitation, attitudes, and behaviors.
Design/methodology/approach –Multilevel structural equation modeling through Mplus was applied to a
sample of 1,112 employees working at 158 Greek organizations.
Findings –The modeling’s findings indicate that the serially mediating mechanism of employee HPWS-
experience attributions of well-being, attitudes and behaviors impr oves organizational performance.
Meanwhile, the serially mediating mechanism of employee HPWS-experience attributions of exploitation,
attitudes and behaviors was found to weaken organizational performance.
Practical implications –This study shows that, to improve employees’well-being and weaken employee
exploitation through employees’HPWS-experience attributions, senior and line managers should gain
competencies and communication skills through training and development programs, successfully
communicating HPWS messages to employees.
Originality/value –This study may be the first study to elucidate the serially mediating mechanisms of
employees’well-being and exploitation through employees’HPWS-experience attributions, attitudes and
behaviors in the relationship between HPWSs and organizational performance.
Keywords HPWS, Organizational performance, Employee HPWS-experience attributions of well-being,
Employee HPWS-experience attributions of exploitation, Greece
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Over the last 30 years or so, the concept of high-performance work systems (HPWSs) has
emerged in research (e.g. Arthur, 1994; Delery, 1998; Huselid, 1995), and many studies have
explored the relationship between HPWSs and organizational performance (Garg, 2019).
These studies have focused mainly on two aspects: what comprises HPWSs and how HPWSs
influence organizational performance. Generally, researchers have accepted that the what
aspect comprises carefully selected human resource (HR) policies and practices that have
collectively established HPWS conten t (Gibson and Birkinshaw, 2004). To im prove
organizational performance, this content has been expected to reflect a system architecture
that facilitates employees’abilities and skills, motivation and incentives, and opportunities to
perform—the so-called AMO system structure (Appelbaum et al., 2000; Boselie et al., 2005).
The how aspect, meanwhile, has referred to the mechanisms through which HPWSs
facilitate organizational performance (Takeuchi et al., 2007). Given that multiple mechanisms
ER
44,5
1030
This paper forms part of a special section “Employee Experience and Well-Being in International
Workplaces”, guest edited by Wided Batat.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0142-5455.htm
Received 2 June 2021
Revised 11 September 2021
22 October 2021
Accepted 25 October 2021
Employee Relations: The
International Journal
Vol. 44 No. 5, 2022
pp. 1030-1047
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-06-2021-0230
have been proposed to explain HR practices’transformation into organizational performance,
these mechanisms have been regarded as the “black box”of this relationship (Purcell et al.,
2003). The literature’s most commonly discussed mechanisms in the relationship between
HPWSs and organizational performance have been the serially mediating mechanisms of
employees’attitudes (e.g. motivation and organizational commitment), which—in turn—
influence employees’behaviors (e.g. work engagement and organizational citizenship
behavior) and finally affect organizational performance (e.g. perceived performance and
objective performance) (Guest, 1997).
Over the last decade, studies have considered the why aspect of HPWSs. This focus has
examined how employees judge organizations’motivations in introducing specific HR
policies and practices (Nishii et al., 2008; Wang et al., 2020). This why focus, grounded in
attribution theory, explains how people deduce causes about an individual’s behavior or an
event (Heider, 1958; Kelley, 1973; Weiner, 1979). Some employees may view HR policies and
practices as organizational efforts to improve their well-being. On the other hand, other
employees could attribute organizations’intentions in applying specific HR policies and
practices to reducing production costs, possibly resulting in employee exploitation (Nishii
et al., 2008). In terms of human resource management (HRM) strategy, the trade-off between
employees’well-being and employee exploitation has been considered a critical issue in
determining organizations’competitive advantage (Kowalski and Loretto, 2017).
The current research seeks to contribute to the HR literature (e.g. Beijer et al., 2019;
Bos-Nehles et al., 2020; Katou et al., 2020) by theoretically integrating and empirically
examining what HPWS aspects influence employees’well-being or exploitation, why HPWSs
can cause employees’well-being or exploitation, and how the mechanisms of employees’
attitudes and behaviors mediate the relationship between HPWSs and organizational
performance. In particular, this study offers four contributions to the literature.
First, the connection between HPWSs and employees’attributions has been understudied
(Cao et al., 2020), and this connection’s role in predicting organizational performance has been
overlooked. Therefore, the current study fills this gap by examining the differential impacts
of employee HPWS attributions of well-being and exploitation on organizational
performance. We argue that these two employee HPWS mechanisms not only drive
employee HPWS perceptions but also, according to experiential theory, are augmented by
experiences (Plaskoff, 2017). As a result, we propose the term employees’HPWS-experience
attributions in this study.
Second, althoughit is generally understood that HPWSstrongly influences organizational
performance (Sanders and De Cieri, 2021), the formation of the mechanisms that mediate this
relationship requires further investigation. Therefore, the current study fills this gap in the
literature by structuring the formation of these mechanisms through three serially connected
mediatingconcepts (i.e. employees’HPWS-experienceattributions,attitudes and behaviors)that
the literaturehas discussed individually.Thus, our research frameworkreflects the connection
between employees’HPWS-experience attributions, attitudes and behaviors, minimizing our
model’s possiblemisspecification due to missing information (Katouet al.,2020).
Third,this study considers Greekworkplaces, which are characterizedby an individualistic
and independentemployee culture (Papalexandris,2008) and Greeks’pronouncedtendency to
criticize everything, possibly following their ancient Greek ancestors(Cicero 59, 2021). To our
knowledge, studies examining the relationship between HPWSs and org anizational
performance while focusing on the Greek workplace context are lacking (Kloutsiniotis and
Mihail, 2018).Therefore, the current study answersthis special issue’s call to shed light on the
black box between HPWSs, employees’experiential well-being and exploitation attributions,
and organizationalperformance while specifically referencing under-examined cultures.
Finally, given employees’nesting in organizations, our methodology is multilevel
structural equation modeling (MSEM). Our adoption of this approach itself constitutes an
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