Perception of Ability-Motivation-Opportunity oriented HRM practices and organizational commitment: The role of task uncertainty.

• Author: Ujma, Michal

INTRODUCTION

Organizational decision-makers and boards of directors in particular, among others, expect employees to commit to firm performance. However, individual actions rarely lead to above-average organization-level outcomes. Collective actions are clearly necessary for firm performance to occur. That is why organizations invest in human resource management (HRM) practices that focus on developing competencies, abilities and motivation, and create appropriate conditions for employee behaviors beneficial for the whole organization. HRM practitioners, trying to justify their value to organizations, invest their time and efforts in developing a concise, holistic set of HRM practices targeted towards achieving organizational outcomes. However, literature recommendations and scholarly activities have so far failed to recommend a universally

effective set of practices. While a single HRM practice does not lead to any significant increase in performance levels, scholars have focused on diverse theoretical approaches--including best practice perspective, situational and configurational theories, and finishing with systems' level approach (Delery & Doty, 1997; Pauwe & Farndale, 2017). In 1995, Huselid published a ground-breaking paper demonstrating how a degree of sophistication in a human resource management (HRM) system influences the market value per employee, and the results of this study are constantly discussed in the literature (Glaister, Karacay, Demirbag, & Tatoglu, 2018). While answering the question regarding the influence per se, this study does not clearly explain how precisely HRM translates to organizational level outcomes. In the following years, scholars have focused on investigating mechanisms helping to understand the influence of HRM on organizational performance. Among diverse theories, researchers have recently come to the conclusion that HRM practices should focus on developing individual abilities and motivation and should help organizations to develop conditions that utilize these abilities and motivation for the purpose of organizational-level outcomes. This conception has been labeled AMO (understood as the ability to introduce human resource management policies, the individual motivation to do so, and the opportunity created within the organization (Rauch & Hatak, 2016), following previous studies carried out by Applebaum, Bailey, Berg and Kalleberg (2000) or Boon, Eckardt, Lepak, and Boselie (2018).

Delving into the relationship between HRM practices and AMO, the paper focuses on the HRM practices that concentrate on the development of one particular element of AMO, namely organizational commitment, which is perceived as the manifestation of individual motivation. However, to our best knowledge, the relationship between HRM and AMO does not exist in a vacuum, as there are diverse organizational and task characteristics that impact the effectiveness of HRM practices. From the plethora of organizational, team, and individual situational factors, we have chosen task uncertainty, a rarely investigated aspect of individual functioning within the organization (Sund, 2008). In particular, the main aim of the paper is to gain a better understanding of the influence of HRM practices on individual commitment, considering task uncertainty as the important moderator of the relationship between HRM practices and commitment. To achieve this aim, we are using data from 164 employees working in 32 teams in international recruitment and selection agency departments located in Poland.

In the paper, we start with the literature review on the links between HRM practices, AMO theory and its linkages with firm performance. Further, we delve into the task uncertainty effect on the stated relationship. Next, we present the methodology and empirical research results followed by a discussion encompassing the implications for theory and practice as well as future research directions.

LITERATURE REVIEW

HRM and the firm performance: The missing link

HRM scholars and practitioners face the continuous challenge of demonstrating how HRM practices contribute to organizational performance (Kehoe & Wright, 2013). HRM, understood as the set of organizational policies crafted in order to maximize employee performance and commitment to meet organizational goals, has a long tradition in management and psychological literature (see Alagaraja, 2012). However, for years, human resource management researchers have struggled to identify the impact of HRM on diverse facets of organizational performance (Melton & Meier, 2016, pp. 118-130). HRM was linked with different individual, team and organizational level outcomes, including job satisfaction (Den Hartog, Boon, Verburg & Croon, 2013), employee commitment and engagement (Bal, Kooij & De Jong, 2013), individual (Alfes, Truss, Soane, Rees & Gatenby, 2013) and organizational performance (Bou-Llusar, Beltran-Martin, Roca-Puig & Escrig-Tena, 2016, Bryl, 2018), intentions to stay (Bal et. al., 2013) or leave (Van Dierendonck, Lankester, Zmyslona, & Rothweiler, 2016) the team or organization, as well as motivation (Jiang, Lepak, Hu & Baer, 2012) and innovativeness (Fay, Shipton & Patterson, 2015; Tesfaye & Kitaw, 2018) to mention a few. Nonetheless, studies have led to inconclusive results, and in consequence, to increased ambiguity and confusion among both scholars and practitioners (Kehoe & Wright, 2013). This can be attributed to the fact that HRM itself is a distant variable to diverse individual, team and organizational level outcomes. Thus, scholars have focused on various mechanisms that translate HRM practices employed by the organization to fuel diverse aspects of performance (Boxall, Guthrie, & Paauwe, 2016). The search for the mechanisms translating human resource management practices into organizational performance has gone in different directions. Some scholars were searching for the reasons for exceptional organizational performance in the resource-based theory approach which focuses on valuable, rare, inimitable and organizable competencies (Jankowska, Mroczek-Dabrowska, Gorynia, & Dzikowska, 2016; Kang, Snell, & Swart, 2012). However, these endeavors have led to inconclusive, or even mutually excluding, results. Another, widely accepted mechanism that forms a path from HRM practices to organizational level outcomes is the AMO theory, which we perceive and define as the ability to introduce human resource management policies, the individual motivation of decision-makers to do so, and the opportunities for employees created within the organization (Rauch & Hatak, 2016). In the paper we focus on the latter approach, concentrating attention on the AMO theory and HRM practices that foster ability, motivation, and lead to increased opportunities for employees to demonstrate behaviors profitable for the organization.

On the wings of AMO theory

The origin of the AMO model lies in the continuous scientific discourse between industrial psychologists, who believe that performance is a function of hiring and training, and social psychologists, who assume that motivation is necessary to ensure performance (Maclnnis & Jaworski, 1989). Actually, the roots of AMO can be found in Vroom's (1964) works, where he claims that performance is a function of both ability and motivation. However, this approach omits the external environment influence and focuses only on personal (individual) characteristics. This model was enriched by Blumberg and Pringle (1982) by the opportunity element reflecting working conditions, tools, materials, leader behaviors, procedures and time. These authors argued that individual performance is a result of capacity (C, i.e. abilities), willingness (W, i.e. motivation), and opportunity (O). All three elements are necessary for performance (P) to occur, if we assume that P = f(O x C x W). Also, a low level of any of these dimensions would strongly, negatively affect levels of individual performance. The AMO framework was first, initially proposed 11 years after Blumberg and Pringle's (1982) work by Bailey (1993), and later developed by Applebaum et al. (2000).

More recently, Kaufman (2015) has argued that in order to achieve better performance, perceived as individual productivity, creativity, and discretionary effort, companies should focus on boosting the ability and motivation of employees while creating opportunities by giving them the necessary autonomy, tools, and power to make decisions. According to Jiang et al. (2012), these three processes help to translate human resource management practices (or systems, broadly speaking) into organizational performance.

There are also other conceptualizations in regard to HRM practices. Complicating the landscape of AMO, Lin and Tang (2016) argue, that to understand complex relationships between HRM practices and performance, there is a necessary distinction to be made between High Performance Work Systems (HPWS) and High Commitment Work Systems (HCWS). HPWS, as the management approach, focuses on the direct influence on performance through attitudinal structuring, for example, skill formation, quality control, and performance management. On the other hand, HCWS focuses rather on encouraging employee commitment and involvement through practices such as in-company welfare and long-term commitment.

Ability--motivation--opportunity (AMO) theory, as proposed by Applebaum et al. (2000) focuses on helping to choose from HRM practices that foster organizational performance. According to Gerhart (2005) proper choice of HRM practices is essential for the conscious shaping of employee abilities (i.e. selection, hiring, and training), motivation (for example, performance-related pay), and opportunities to act (emphasizing teamwork, or suggestion systems). Later, Katou, and Budhwar (2010) divide HRM practices into three groups: HRM systems that influence ability to perform, motivation to perform, and an opportunity...