A comparative study of the effects of ‘best practice’ HRM on worker outcomes in Malaysia and England local government

Abstract

This paper presents the findings of a cross-cultural comparison of the effects of 'best practice' HRM using employees from a matched sample of local government service departments in England and Malaysia (England n ¼ 569, Malaysian n ¼ 453). The paper tests the universal 'best practice' thesis, and also assesses the perceived level of up-take of HR practices in the two samples. The research also considers the effects of the psychological climate and employees' perceptions of trust on five work-related outcomes, namely job satisfaction, motivation, organizational citizenship behaviour, stress and quit intentions. The findings reveal that the Malaysian workers perceived the up-take of HR practices to be higher in comparison to their counterparts in England. A less consistent pattern emerged with regards to perceptions of climate. OLS regression revealed that consistent with the universal thesis, a bundle of HR practices significantly predicted employee outcomes in the hypothesized directions in both samples. Therefore, these findings provide strong support for the universal thesis.

HR practices and turnover intention: the mediating roles of organizational commitment and organizational engagement in a selected region in Malaysia

“…Caldwell et al 1990;Chew and Chan 2008;Lam, Chen and Takeuchi 2009;Gould-Williams and Mohamed 2010). It is plausible for employees to stay with the same employer, given good people management that takes care of their employment benefits and welfare.…”

The effect of human resource management high performance work practices on organisational outcomes: a Sri Lankan perspective

“…To some extent this is the result of a lack of consensus in terms of what constitutes HRM practices, HPWPs and effective performance criteria as well as appropriate measures of each of these (Marchington and Wilkinson, 2005). While Pfeffer and others, as noted above, have claimed that HPWPs positively influence organisational performance, that more HPWPs leads to improved outcomes (Guest et al, 2000;Gould-Williams and Mohamed, 2010;Marchington and Grugulis, 2000) and that certain practices are more effective than others (West et al, 2002), there are contradictory studies that indicate an absence of evidence linking HPWPs in HRM to improved organisational performance (Guest et al, 2003). The findings are further complicated by the influence of contingent and contextual factors within organisations so that relationships evident in some may not be applicable to others (Browning, Edgar, Gray and Garrett, 2009).…”

“…They are strongly influenced by HR practices related to communication, social interaction, selection, training and development, compensation, empowerment and job design, and in unison serve to improve employee performance (Kroon and De Voorde, 2013). In addition to being a factor influencing the strength of HRM practices within an organization, the extent to which management practices and organization strategies link with HR can also be an indicator of its success in contributing to overall performance (Gould-Williams and Mohamed, 2010). This highlights the need to consider the impact of HR practice on each of individual, sectional (division, department, branch) and overall organisational outcomes when assessing its contribution to performance outcomes (Marchington and Grugulis, 2000).…”

“…More recent literature is inclined to advocate multiple practices in configurational bundles, however the composition of the bundles varies between studies (Marchington and Wilkinson, 2005). The most common practices linked to HPWPs are recruitment and selection, training and development, performance management and teamwork (Browning et al, 2009;West et al, 2002;Kroon, Van De Voorde and Timmers, 2013;Gould-Williams and Mohamed, 2010) although information-sharing (Bruce, 2013;Kuvaas and Dysvik, 2010), employee empowerment (Kuvaas and Dysvik, 2010) and compensation (Bosalie et al, 2005;Boxall and Macky, 2009;Bruce, 2013) are also considered, but to a lesser extent. Of greater significance than which specific practices constitute the HPWP offering is the impact that they will have upon employees" behaviour and attitudes as these are the determinants of the extent to which they can influence performance outcomes (Park et al, 2003).…”

“…On the other hand, HR practices are, by definition, designed to add value to the human element of an organization, therefore outcomes related to employee characteristics need to be considered in conjunction with financial data. These include job satisfaction, intention to quit, job-related stress and prevalence of organisational citizenship behaviour (Gould-Williams and Mohamed, 2010;Brownin et al, 2009). Of particular importance are the elements that build the productive capacity of employees, succinctly expressed in the theoretical foundation of AMO (Boxall and Purcell, 2008 ): individual ability (Collings et al, 2010), motivation (Marchington and Grugulis, 2000) and the opportunity to perform (OU.S.…”