The HRM Process Approach: The Influence of Employees’ Attribution to Explain the HRM-Performance Relationship

In an experimental study and a field study, we studied whether high-commitment human resource management (HC-HRM) is more effective when employees can make sense of HRM (attribute HRM to management). In the experimental study (n = 354), employees’ HC-HRM perceptions were evoked by a management case, and their attributions were manipulated with an information pattern based on the three dimensions of the covariation principle of the attribution theory: distinctiveness, consistency, and consensus. As expected, the results showed that the effect of HC-HRM on affective organizational commitment was stronger when employees understood HRM as was intended by management. This experimental finding was confirmed in a cross-level field study (n = 639 employees within 42 organizations): the relationship between HC-HRM, on one hand, and affective organizational commitment and innovative behavior, on the other hand, was stronger under the condition that employees could make sense of HRM.