Demands or Resources? The Relationship Between HR Practices, Employee Engagement, and Emotional Exhaustion Within a Hybrid Model of Employment Relations

• Author: Edel Conway,Catherine Bailey,Kathy Monks,Kerstin Alfes,Na Fu
• Date: 01 September 2016
• Published date: 01 September 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21691

Human Resource Management, September–October 2016, Vol. 55, No. 5. Pp. 901–917

© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).

DOI:10.1002/hrm.21691

Correspondence to: Edel Conway, DCU Business School, Dublin City University, Glasnevin, Dublin 9, Ireland,

Phone:+353-1-7008895, E-mail: edel.conway@dcu.ie

DEMANDS OR RESOURCES?

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN

HR PRACTICES, EMPLOYEE

ENGAGEMENT, AND EMOTIONAL

EXHAUSTION WITHIN A HYBRID

MODEL OF EMPLOYMENT

RELATIONS

EDEL CONWAY, NA FU, KATHY MONKS,

KERSTINALFES, AND CATHERINE BAILEY

This article explores the ways in which employees may experience and respond

to tensions inherent in the mix of potentially confl icting human resource (HR)

practices that compose hybrid models of employment relations. By drawing

on the job demands–resources (JD-R) literature and viewing HR practices as

“demands” and “resources,” we explore the impact of performance manage-

ment and employee voice practices on employee well-being, as exemplifi ed by

engagement and emotional exhaustion, in a large public-sector organization in

Ireland. Our fi ndings suggest that employee voice mechanisms may act as a

resource in both enhancing engagement and in counterbalancing the demands

presented by a performance management system, thus reducing the deleteri-

ous effects of emotional exhaustion. Our study extends understanding of hybrid

models of human resource management (HRM) and of the ways in which employ-

ees manage the contradictory signals that such models may send in terms of

performance expectations. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Keywords: hybrid HR models, HR practices, employee engagement, job

demands–resources, emotional exhaustion, employee voice, performance

management

902 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2016

Human Resource Management DOI: 10.1002/hrm

The new performance

management and

measurement

systems imposed

under NPM

emphasize

the monitoring

of individual

performance through

targets, performance

indicators, and

control systems

designed to increase

efficiency and

productivity.

we focus on how employees’ experiences of the

signals (Bowen & Ostroff, 2004) sent in regard to

performance expectations via two HR practices,

performance management and employee voice,

are related to well-being as measured by employee

engagement and emotional exhaustion. We focus

on these two HR practices as core elements in the

hybrid model of employment relations that has

emerged in the public sector. The new perfor-

mance management and measurement systems

imposed under NPM emphasize the monitor-

ing of individual performance through targets,

performance indicators, and control systems

designed to increase efficiency and productivity

(Bach, 2011; Department of Public Expenditure

and Reform, 2011; Diefenbach, 2009). In con-

trast, long-established voice mechanisms empha-

size the notion of improved performance through

employees having a say in decision making about

their work activities and wider workplace issues

through either individual or collective pro-

cesses (Farndale, Van Ruiten, Kelliher, & Hope-

Hailey, 2011; Wilkinson & Fay, 2011). While

both practices are designed to achieve the goal of

performance enhancement that is central to pub-

lic-sector reform, their differing orientations have

the potential to send mixed signals to employees

about expected behavior.

To explore these tensions, we consider

employees’ experiences of performance manage-

ment and employee voice practices in regard to

two aspects of well-being: engagement and emo-

tional exhaustion. A focus on these outcomes is in

line with calls for the adoption of a more worker-

friendly approach to bring the worker “center

stage” in any analysis of HR practices (Guest,

2011, p. 5). However, rather than focusing solely

on the positive versus negative or “good” versus

“bad” debates (Harley, Sargent & Allen, 2010), we

draw on the job demands–resources (JD-R) litera-

ture (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007) to view perfor-

mance management as a potential demand and

employee voice as a potential resource in regard to

employee experiences of well-being.

Our analysis begins by examining HRM within

NPM, thus providing insights into the internal

and external contexts that have been identified

as important to understanding both the shaping

of HR practices (Paauwe, 2009) and the processes

of engagement (Bakker, Albrecht, & Leiter, 2011).

We then examine the literature on engagement

and emotional exhaustion and develop a number

of hypotheses for testing. Our findings point to

the valuable role of voice mechanisms in acting

as a resource to both employees and organizations

by increasing levels of engagement and reducing

exhaustion, and by acting as a counterbalance to

One of the long-term impacts of the

global economic crisis that began in

2008 has been the speeding up and, in

some cases, radical transformation of

the processes of public-sector reform.

Since 2008, to both cut costs and improve perfor-

mance within their public sectors, governments

throughout the world have imposed new working

arrangements, cut pay, altered radically the terms

and conditions of employment, and initiated

redundancy and severance schemes (Bach, 2011;

Truss, 2013). Such changes have been enforced

in public-sector contexts that have traditionally

been viewed as epitomizing ideal working condi-

tions based on principles of justice, equality, and

fairness and exemplified in incre-

mental salaries, equality of opportu-

nity, excellent pensions, guaranteed

job security, and employee voice

(Diefenbach, 2009; MacCarthaigh,

2008; Truss,2013).

The recent radical reforms come

on top of ongoing changes to public

sectors that have been broadly con-

stituted under the umbrella term new

public management (NPM). Many of

the NPM reforms resulted from the

importation of private-sector poli-

cies and practices that now sit along-

side those that are considered core

to a public-sector ethos. Research

investigating this type of hybridity

has mainly been conducted at an

organizational level (Denis, Ferlie,

& Van Gestel, 2013), with little

attention paid to how employees

experience and respond to hybrid

forms of human resource man-

agement (HRM; Colley, McCourt,

& Waterhouse, 2012; Roche,

Teague, Coughlan, & Fahy, 2011).

Yet hybrid forms, with their mix

of disconnected and potentially

conflicting human resource (HR) practices, may

send mixed signals to employees in regard to

expected behavior. As such, they provide fruitful

ground for exploring some of the tensions within

HRM that have been identified as an important,

yet neglected, area for research (Boxall, Ang, &

Bartram, 2011; Ehrnrooth & Bjorkman, 2012;

Jenkins & Delbridge, 2013; Thompson & Harley,

2007; Van De Voorde, Paauwe, & Van Veldhoven,

2012).

Our research to explore these tensions is

based on a survey undertaken in 2011 of 2,348

employees working in a large public-sector orga-

nization in Ireland. In undertaking our analysis,