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1、 Academy of Management Journal 1996, Vol. 39, No. 4, 779-801.THE IMPACT OF HUMAN RESOURCEMANAGEMENT ON ORGANIZATIONALPERFORMANCE: PROGRESSAND PROSPECTSBRIAN BECKERState University of New York at BuffaloBARRY GERHARTVanderbilt UniversityWe describe why human resource management (HRM) decisions are li
2、kely to have an important and unique influence on organizational performance. Our hope is that this research forum will help advance research on the link between HRM and organizational performance. We identify key unresolved questions in need of future study and make several suggestions intended to
3、help researchers studying these questions build a more cumulative body of knowledge that will have key implications for both theory and practice.A rapidly changing economic environment, characterized by such phenomena as the globalization and deregulation of markets, changing customer and investor d
4、emands, and ever-increasing product-market competition, has become the norm for most organizations. To compete, they must continually improve their performance by reducing costs, innovating products and processes, and improving quality, productivity, and speed to market. With this Special Research F
5、orum on Human Resource Management and Organizational Performance, we hope to contribute to a better understanding of the role of human resource decisions in creating and sustaining organizational performance and competitive advantage.The conceptual and empirical work relevant to this question has pr
6、ogressed far enough to suggest that the role of human resources can be crucial (Arthur, 1994; Cutcher-Gershenfeld, 1991; Huselid, 1995; Huselid & Becker, 1996; Gerhart & Milkovich, 1990; Ichniowski, Shaw, & Prennushi, 1994; MacDuffie, 1995). However, given the importance and complexities of the issu
7、e, this body of work is relatively small, and most of the key questions are sorely in need of further attention. We hope that the publication of this special forum will encourage and reinforce interest in this area, as well asThe authors contributed equally and are listed in alphabetical order.We th
8、ank Lee Dyer, Mark Huselid, Susan Jackson, Charles Trevor, and Patrick Wright for comments on an earlier version of this article.779780Academy of Management JournalAugusthelp researchers in their decisions regarding what to study and how to study it. We also hope that it will demonstrate to senior h
9、uman resources (HR) and line managers that their HR systems represent a largely untapped opportunity to improve firm performance.How do human resource decisions influence organizational performance? In the simplest terms, they must either improve efficiency or contribute to revenue growth. Human res
10、ources, both as labor and as a business function, has traditionally been viewed as a cost to be minimized and a potential source of efficiency gains. Very seldom have HR decisions been considered a source of value creation, or what Hamel and Prahalad (1994) termed numerator management. Labor costs c
11、ontinue to be the single largest operating cost in many organizations (Saratoga Institute, 1994), and reductions in employment continue to be a major aspect of strategies to restructure operations and reduce these costs (e.g., Uchitelle & Kleinfield, 1996). Do these decisions create value, or just r
12、educe costs? Empirically, the challenge is to distinguish between staffing reductions that are purely cost-cutting measures and restructurings that require fewer employees but create value because the new structures are more appropriate for the firms particular strategies. The positive stock market
13、reactions to employment reductions reported in Davidson, Worrell, and Fox (this issue) are consistent with both interpretations.The new interest in human resources as a strategic lever that can have economically significant effects on a firms bottom line, however, aims to shift the focus more toward
14、 value creation. This new perspective, addressed by special issues and forums in this journal and in others Industrial Relations, Journal of Accounting and Economics), suggests that HR (both the function and the system) contributes directly to the implementation of the operating and strategic object
15、ives of firms.1 This new strategic role for HR has attracted interest in the subject beyond the traditionally narrower boundaries of human resource research. The strategic approach draws heavily on psychology, economics, finance, and strategy, and we feel that the best research will likely come from
16、 taking an interdisciplinary focus.Reflecting this multidisciplinary interest, the mechanisms by which human resource decisions create and sustain value are complicated and not well understood. Early efforts, such as utility analysis, sought to quantify the dollar value of improvements in employee s
17、election and other human resource activities (Boudreau, 1992; Brogden & Taylor, 1950; Cascio, 1991; Schmidt, Hunter, McKenzie, & Muldrow, 1979). However, these estimates typically have rather broad confidence intervals (Alexander & Barrick, 1987) and are not always as robust as one would like in the
18、 face of changes in assumptions (e.g., those regarding the standard deviation of performance in1 Indeed, it can be argued that this is one of the remaining core roles left for HR in organizations as much of the transactional work of the HR function is outsourced (Corporate Leadership Council, 1995).
19、1996Becker and Gerhart781dollars). Moreover, there is some doubt regarding whether managers decisions are particularly responsive to information about the estimated dollar value of alternative decisions, especially as the estimation procedures become increasingly complex and difficult to understand
20、(Latham & Whyte, 1994).Empirical research on the subject of this special forum will likely encounter some similar obstacles in making the translation from research to policy implications. However, a potential advantage in this respect is that most of the papers herein look directly at the impact of
21、HR decisions on performance outcomes that have clear meaning and relevance to managers, such as stock performance, productivity, profits, quality, and organizational survival. In addition, this research suggests that HR can go beyond its traditional organizational role to become a strategic partner
22、in most organizations. The subject of this special forum should be of equal interest to senior line executives and senior human resource executives. Indeed, creating this strategic impact very likely requires a system focus and a degree of attention to alignments both within HR systems (internal fit
23、) and with operating and strategic objectives (external fit) that necessarily involves a closer relationship between HR and line managers.In the remainder of this article, we review theoretical work suggesting that an HR system can be a unique source of sustained competitive advantage, especially wh
24、en its components have high internal and external fit (Baird & Meshoulam, 1988; Lengnick-Hall & Lengnick-Hall, 1988). This review leads us to a discussion of issues in assessing fit. Next, we make some suggestions that we hope will aid in building a cumulative body of knowledge, something that is cr
25、ucial for advancing theory and for making more meaningful and influential policy recommendations. Specifically, we focus on addressing the significance of findings, the relative emphases on theory and empirical research (and replication), and the measurement of effectiveness. We also describe some o
26、f the typical specification errors research in this area is susceptible to and some thoughts on how to avoid such errors. Finally, we summarize some of the key policy and research implications of the special forum and the broader body of work on human resources and organizational performance.HR AS A
27、 UNIQUE SOURCE OF SUSTAINED COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGERecent theoretical work in business strategy has given a boost to the prominence of HR in generating sustained competitive advantage. According to the resource-based view of the firm (e.g., Barney, 1986, 1991, 1995), firms can develop sustained compet
28、itive advantage only by creating value in a way that is rare and difficult for competitors to imitate. Although traditional sources of competitive advantage such as natural resources, technology, economies of scale, and so forth, create value, the resource-based argument is that these sources are in
29、creasingly easy to imitate, especially in comparison to a complex social structure such as an employment system. If that782Academy of Management JournalAugustis so, human resource strategies may be an especially important source of sustained competitive advantage (Lado & Wilson, 1994; Pfeffer, 1994;
30、 Wright & McMahan, 1992).The concept of the HR system as a strategic asset has implications for both the characteristics and the effects of such a system. Strategic assets are the set of difficult to trade and imitate, scarce, appropriable, and specialized resources and capabilities that bestow the
31、firms competitive advantage (Amit & Shoemaker, 1993: 36). Unlike capital investments, economic scale, or patents, a properly developed HR system is an invisible asset (Itami, 1987) that creates value when it is so embedded in the operational systems of an organization that it enhances the firms capa
32、bilities. This interpretation is also consistent with the emphasis on core competencies developed by Prahalad and Hamel (1990), who argued that conventional measures of economic rents such as the difference between the market and book value of assets (i.e., Tobins q) reflect core competencepeople-em
33、bodied skills (Hamel & Prahalad, 1994: 232).Why might it be especially difficult to imitate human resource strategies that are deeply embedded in an organization? Two of the key factors are causal ambiguity and path dependency (Barney, 1991; Collis & Montgomery, 1995). First, it is difficult to gras
34、p the precise mechanisms by which the interplay of human resource practices and policies generates value. To imitate a complex system, it is necessary to understand how the elements interact. Are the effects additive or multiplicative, or do they involve complex nonlinearities? As our later discussi
35、on of fit and synergy indicates, researchers are a long way from understanding the precise nature of these interactions. Without being able to understand how an HR system works, it is not possible to imitate it (by, for instance, reverse engineering it). It is even difficult for a competing firm to
36、imitate a valuable HR system by hiring away one or a few top executives because the understanding of the system is an organizational capability that is spread across many (not just a few) people in the firm.Second, these HR systems are path dependent. They consist of policies that are developed over
37、 time and cannot be simply purchased in the market by competitors. A competitor can understand that a system is valuable but is precluded from immediate imitation by the time required to fully implement the strategy (assuming the system could be understood). Further, there may be limits on managemen
38、ts ability to successfully replicate socially complex elements such as culture and interpersonal relationships.As Table 1 indicates, the studies contained in this volume are consistent in their support of a link between HR and performance, suggesting that HR decisions do influence value creation. Wh
39、ether these value-creating HR practices are sufficiently rare and inimitable to create sustained competitive advantage probably depends in part on the nature of their overall configuration and fit, a topic discussed below.Is There One Best Way, Many Best Ways, or Does It Depend?Much of the research
40、on the link between HR and firm performance has looked at single HR practices such as compensation (e.g., Gerhart & Milkov-CD CD 05TABLE 1 Studies Included in the Research Forum, by Key CharacteristicsSupport for HRMLevel of AnalysisEffects?StudyFirm Business Unit Facility Effectiveness Measure(s) M
41、ainFitLongitutinal Data? gDavidson, Worrell, & FoxYesNoNoStock priceYesNot testedYesWelbourne & AndrewsYesNoNoStock price SurvivalYesNot testedYesDelery & DotyYesNoNoProfitabilityYesWeakNoDelaney & HuselidYesNoNoSurveyYesWeakNoYoundt, Snell, Dean & LepakNoNoYesSurveyYesMixedNoBanker, Lee, Potter, &
42、SrinivasanNoNoYesSalesCustomer satisfactionProfitYesYesYesBanker, Field, Schroeder, & SinhaNoNoYesProductivity Product qualityYesNot testedYesCO CO784Academy of Management JournalAugustich, 1990) or selection (e.g., Terpstra & Rozell, 1993). The implicit assumption is that the effects of different H
43、R decisions are additive, an idea that is inconsistent with the emphasis on internal fit in the resource-based view of the firm. With its implicit systems perspective, the resource-based view of the firm suggests the importance of complementary resources, the notion that individual policies or pract
44、ices have limited ability to generate competitive advantage in isolation, but in combination . . . they can enable a firm to realize its full competitive advantage (Barney, 1995: 56). This idea, that a system of HR practices may be more (or less) than the sum of the parts, appears in discussions of
45、synergy, external and internal fit, bundles, holistic approaches, configurations, contingency factors, and so forth (Amit & Shoemaker, 1993; Delery & Doty, this issue; Doty, Glick, & Huber, 1993; Dyer & Reeves, 1995; Gerhart, Trevor, & Graham, 1996; Huselid, 1995; Legnick-Hall & Legnick-Hall, 1988;
46、Meyer, Tsui, & Hinings, 1993; Milgrom & Roberts, 1995). In contrast, others are more apt to suggest that there is an identifiable set of best practices for managing employees that have universal, additive, positive effects on organizational performance (e.g., Applebaum & Batt, 1994; Kochan & Osterma
47、n, 1994; Pfeffer, 1994; Schmidt, Hunter, & Pearlman, 1981). Youndt, Snell, Dean, and Lepak (this issue) maintain that the two approaches are in fact complementary.Pfeffer (1994) argued that the empirical support for contingencies is sufficiently weak that a best practice perspective should be the pr
48、eferred approach. However, even within the best practices approach, researchers have much to learn about what constitutes a high performance HR strategy. Studies of so-called high performance work systems vary significantly as to the practices included (see Table 2) and sometimes even as to whether a practice is likely to be positively or negatively related to high performance. For example, Arthurs (1994) high performance employment system, which he termed a commitment system, specifies a low emphasis on variable pay, whereas the high performance emp