Strategic and international human resource management

The impact of expatriate supporting practices and cultural intelligence on cross-cultural adjustment and performance of expatriates in Singapore

Wu P-C, Ang SH. 2011, International Journal of Human Resource Management, 22(13): 2683-2702.

We test the relationships between corporate expatriate supporting practices, cross-cultural adjustment, and expatriate performance. Specifically, we propose that facets of cultural intelligence moderate the expatriate supporting practices–expatriate adjustment relationship. Analyzing 169 expatriates residing in Singapore, we found that expatriate supporting practices were positively related to adjustment as well as performance. Further, we demonstrated that metacognitive and cognitive cultural intelligence negatively moderated the links between expatriate supporting practices and adjustment, while motivational cultural intelligence had a positive moderating effect. These findings have implications for organizations providing support for expatriates and the expatriate selection and training processes.

Analysing the ‘black box’ of HRM: Uncovering HR goals, mediators and outcomes in a standardised service environment

Boxall P, Ang SH, Bartram T. 2011,Journal of Management Studies, 48(7): 1504-1532.

This multi-level study analyses the ‘black box’ of HRM in an Australian cinema chain, a standardized service environment. Management’s espoused goals for the casual workers who run the cinema service include attempts to build customer-oriented behaviour, both directly and via empowerment, and also efforts to ensure compliance with company policies and to enhance employee commitment. Our analysis of an employee survey and supervisory performance ratings shows that it is behavioural compliance that is positively associated with rated performance rather than customer-oriented behaviour. While customer service is an important value, it is willing engagement with a highly scripted, efficiency-oriented work process that makes it happen, not a more empowering form of work design. On the other hand, the management process also fosters a level of employee commitment, which has some value in a tight labour market. The study demonstrates the way in which actual models of HRM can contain a complex and ‘contradictory’ set of messages, consistent with critical accounts of the labour process and suggesting that notions of ‘internal fit’ need to recognize such tensions. It underlines the importance of identifying the multiple goals in management’s espoused theories of HRM and then assessing their links via managerial behaviour and employee responses to performance outcomes.

The effects of high-performance work systems on hospital employees’ work attitudes and intention to leave: A multi-level and occupational group analysis

Ang SH, Bartram T, McNeil N, Leggat SG, Stanton P. 2013, nternational Journal of Human Resource Management, 24(16): 3086-3114.

Using a multi-level analysis of a sample of 193 employees matched to 58 managers in a regional Australian hospital, this paper examines the effects of management and employee perceptions of high-performance work systems (HPWS) on HR outcomes. These relationships are examined across four distinct occupational groups. The findings suggest that only when management’s implementation of HPWS is similar to employees’ espoused HR practices that HPWS are translated into greater engagement, job satisfaction, affective commitment and less intention to leave. The results have implications for the management of employees in the healthcare sector and the implementation of HPWS for different occupations within an organisation.