مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد پیشبرد تفکر چندسطحی در تحقیقات مدیریت منابع انسانی – الزویر 2017

Abstract

Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) researchers have recently turned their attention to using various levels of analysis in examining the relationship between HRM and performance. Despite several calls for research that integrates multiple levels of analysis, HRM research has yet to apply a multilevel approach to its full advantage. In our view, the paucity of multilevel research is rooted in the lack of what we label multilevel thinking: the application of multilevel principles. In this conceptual paper, we develop 9 guidelines based on tailored multilevel HRM principles that offer a course of action for scholars who are interested in conducting multilevel HRM research. Following Kozlowski and Klein (2000), we build these principles around the what, how, where, when, and why questions in multilevel HRM research. Based on an analysis of 88 empirical multilevel HRM studies, we identify the approaches commonly applied when using multilevel principles, explain the weaknesses in current multilevel HRM studies, and offer what we consider good examples of a rigorous approach.

Introduction

Motivated by the evidence that human resource management (HRM) can have a positive effect on firm performance (Combs, Liu, Hall, & Ketchen, 2006; Jiang, Lepak, Hu, & Baer, 2012), strategic HRM researchers have recently turned their attention to the various levels at which this interaction occurs. In the past, HRM scholars tended to focus on single-level effects, among others, on the effect of organizational HRM policies on organizational-level performance. There have been regular calls for multilevel HRM research (e.g. Boselie, Dietz, & Boon, 2005; Kepes & Delery, 2007; Wright & Boswell, 2002), and an increasing number of studies have examined HRM–performance relationships across various levels of analysis (Jiang, Takeuchi, & Lepak, 2013). Integrating levels of analysis, so-called multilevel research, grew out of two ideas. First, organizational HRM policies influence organizationlevel performance by affecting lower-level variables such as individual-level attitudes and behaviors (Ostroff & Bowen, 2000; Paauwe, 2009; Wright & Boswell, 2002). Second, these cross-level relationships reflect the reality that strategic HRM (SHRM) is inherently multilevel and, consequently, that its assumptions are built upon multilevel theory (Kozlowski & Klein, 2000; Ostroff & Bowen, 2000).