The Framework of First-Line Manager's HR Role Identity and HR Implementation
Citation:
Kou, Xuan, The Framework of First-Line Manager's HR Role Identity and HR Implementation, Trinity College Dublin, School of Business, Business & Administrative Studies, 2023Download Item:
Abstract:
The field of Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) has accentuated the crucial
role first-line managers (FLMs) play in promoting both employees and organizational performance
through their effective implementation of adopted HR practices. The discourse on SHRM is
typically based on the premise that if the designed HR systems at the organization level can be
appropriately adopted and implemented, the organization will achieve performance goals. Yet,
research evidence has recently highlighted a potential gap between organizations’ espoused HR
strategies and the HR practices actually experienced by employees. This is so because HR practices
may be carried out with considerable variation across workgroups even within organizations, with
the FLM being the implementer of such HR practice. Therefore, research on how FLMs identify
themselves as the HR implementer becomes critical.
Drawing on role identity and social context theories, this thesis introduces a framework of
FLM’s HR role identity that extends the current theorization of what precedes their effective HR
implementation. This thesis suggests that FLMs’ role identity will guide their HR implementation
behavior by attaching the HR role to their self-concept. Although the framework of social context
has emphasized the importance of contextual factors in influencing employee attitudes and
behaviors, the process through which particular types of HR involvement would promote or
prohibit role perceptions is still an undeveloped area of inquiry. This thesis recommends that, by
examining HR involvement of immediate superiors and peers that impact FLMs’ HR role identity
and consequent HR implementation behaviors, the questions of why some FLMs believe they are
HR implementer while others do not and why FLMs react differently to their HR role can be
answered.
Hypotheses are tested through survey data collected from 105 FLMs and 518 team
members in 9 Chinese companies. The results showed general support for the proposed research
model. Therefore, the current thesis advances the existing research on FLM in the following ways.
First, this study develops the concept of FLM’s HR role identity and suggests it as a more stable
cognitive process of FLMs to generate a self-view toward their HR role. Second, this research
includes FLMs’ perceptions of immediate superiors’ and peers’ HR involvement as important
contextual factors that facilitate or impede the salience of FLMs’ HR role identity. More
specifically, immediate superiors’ HR orientation and peers’ HR implementation are found to
positively influence FLMs’ HR role identity, while immediate superiors’ bottom-line mentality
and peers’ cynicism about HR have negative effects on FLMs’ HR role identity. In addition,
immediate superiors’ and peers’ workplace status is found to strengthen the positive effects of their
HR involvement and FLMs’ HR role identity. Third, this research adds to the FLM literature by
characterizing multiple forms of FLMs’ HR implementation behaviors within workgroups – strict
implementation, externally adaptive implementation, and internally adaptive implementation –
and establishes that FLMs’ HR role identity triggers different behavioral patterns depending on
their motivational processes (i.e., goal orientations). Finally, this research considers intra-team
acceptance and FLMs’ workplace status as important outcomes of FLMs’ HR implementation.
Taken together, this thesis develops several propositions that serve as the baseline for future
endeavors.
Description:
APPROVED
Author: Kou, Xuan
Advisor:
Pak, JongwookPublisher:
Trinity College Dublin. School of Business. Discipline of Business & Administrative StudiesType of material:
ThesisCollections
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