Researching Employee Reactions to High Performance Work Systems in the Service Sector: The Role of Organisational Justice Theory.

This study explores the relationship between organisational-level High Performance Work Systems (HPWS) and individual employee-level behaviours. Data was collected from 188 employees in three companies in the Republic of Ireland (RoI). The findings show that employees in organisations with a high investment in HPWS report lower job satisfaction, affective commitment and higher perceptions of job pressure than those in organisations with a medium or low investment in HPWS. Using cross-level analyses, perceptions of relational distributive and relational procedural justice were found to mediate the relationship between HPWS and employee outcomes of job satisfaction and affective commitment. Interactional justice and relational procedural justice partially mediated the relationship between organisational-level HPWS and employee work pressure. By using justice theory, the research contributes to the body of knowledge concerning the causal processes between HR practice and performance outcomes. Introduction Over the last twenty years, a burgeoning body of literature has emerged on the ways in which human resource (HR) practices impact positively on an organisation’s ‘bottom line’. Prominent within this literature is the concept of high performance work systems (HPWS) which claims to have strong beneficial effects on both employee and organisational performance. However, the field is plagued with casual ambiguity and theoretical underdevelopment. Guest (2011) argues that the rush to empiricism to prove that HRM can add to performance has been at the cost of conceptual understanding and explanation. The primary criticism leveled at HPWS research concerns its lack of theoretical development and the need for a better articulation of what can explain the “black box” phenomenon in other words, how and why a particular HR system can enhance (or not) firm-level performance (Becker and Huselid, 2006; Boselie et al., 2005). What is known is that improved organisational performance can only be achieved through employees who display greater effort and behavioural attributes to help the firm succeed (Guest, 1997). Yet research that integrates employee attitudes and behaviours is surprisingly limited. Of the 104 studies examined by Boselie et al. (2005), only 11 used employee survey data. Few studies have yet to properly test the association between HPWS and employee outcomes (Boon et al., 2011) and those that have, have failed to develop theory to underpin this HPWS-employee outcome relationship (Wood and de Menezes, 2011). Guest (2011) notes that whilst researchers are finally acknowledging that multiple stakeholders, including employees, are necessary to advance understanding, more research is needed to examine the underlying processes and mechanisms involved in HPWS effects. Consequently, in this paper, we address three core research questions: (a) what and how do employees experience HPWS? ; (b) which mechanisms influence the relationship between HR practices, employee attitudes and performance outcomes? , and finally (c), how can such a relationship be explained and better interrogated? The article contributes to knowledge by researching the neglected role of employees as the primary recipients of HPWS. The research also extends the theoretical understanding of why HPWS may impact employee outcomes by integrating the role of organisational justice as a potential mediator to explain the ‘black box’ of HPWS: that is, to assist in understanding the