Employee experiences of HRM through daily affective events and their effects on perceived event‐signalled HRM system strength, expectancy perceptions, and daily work engagement

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12236
• Date: 01 July 2019
• Author: Suja Chacko,Neil Conway
• Published date: 01 July 2019

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Employee experiences of HRM through daily

affective events and their effects on perceived

event‐signalled HRM system strength, expectancy

perceptions, and daily work engagement

Suja Chacko |Neil Conway

School of Management, Royal Holloway,

University of London

Correspondence

Neil Conway, School of Management, Royal

Holloway, University of London, Egham,

Surrey TW20 0EX, UK.

Email: neil.conway@rhul.ac.uk

Abstract

The importance of events to individual experiences and

behaviour within organisational research is increasingly

acknowledged. This research examines whether daily posi-

tive and negative affective HRM events signal employee

perceptions of HRM system strength, which are expected

to relate to daily work engagement via clear performance–

reward expectancies. Employees completed a daily diary

over ten working days and reported positive and negative

daily HR events as they arose. Positive HR events associ-

ated with higher perceived event‐signalled HRM system

strength compared with negative HR events, and expec-

tancy perceptions partially mediated the effects of per-

ceived HRM system strength on daily work engagement.

The study's novel contributions include documenting the

common occurrence of affective HRM events, identifying

such events as an important antecedent to perceived

event‐signalled HRM system strength, and extending

understanding of the daily consequences of perceived

HRM system strength by showing how their effects on daily

work engagement are mediated by expectancies.

KEYWORDS

affective events, attributions, diary, expectancy, perceived HRM

system strength, workengagement

Received: 9 May 2017 Revised: 16 February 2019 Accepted: 22 February 2019

DOI: 10.1111/1748-8583.12236

Hum Resour Manag J. 2019;29:433–450. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltdwileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrmj 433

1|INTRODUCTION

How do employees make sense of human resource management (HRM) in their everyday work? Research has exam-

ined the signalling effects of high‐performance work practices and finds that, rather than passively receiving HR prac-

tices, employees make attributions about why certain HR practices exist (Nishii, Lepak, & Schneider, 2008; Sanders &

Yang, 2015). Emphasising the power of communicating unambiguous messages to employees, Bowen and Ostroff's

(2004) HRM system strength theory proposes that when HR systems are strong, that is, high in distinctiveness, consis-

tency and consensus, it creates a ‘strong situation’(Kelley, 1971) which leads employees to make clear causal attribu-

tions about the links between employee performance and rewards. Ostroff and Bowen (2016) distinguish between

HRM system strength as a feature of higher‐level HRM systems (where their original HRM system strength was situ-

ated) and employee perceived HRM system strength, which is our focus here and refers to individual‐level idiosyncratic

perceptions. At the individual employee level, what matters is whether employees subjectively perceive system

strength features in their environment, not whether HRM practices are, say, actually aligned at the systems level

(Delmotte, De Winne, & Sels, 2012; Sanders, Dorenbosch, & de Reuver, 2008), although the systems level may well

shape employee perceptions. Previous research on perceived HRM system strength focuses on employees' general

perceptions of HRM systems (e.g., Bednall, Sanders, & Runhaar, 2014; Delmotte et al., 2012; Sanders et al., 2008); here

we focus on employee perceptions of everyday HRM events and the extent to which they signal HRM system strength.

The process of employees perceiving a strong HRM system must unfold over time and to some extent reflect how

employees react to signals from the HRM system on a daily basis and make attributions. However, previous research

has assumed employee perceptions of HRM system strength to be a relatively stable construct (e.g., Katou, Budhwar,

& Patel, 2014; Sanders & Yang, 2015; Van De Voorde & Beijer, 2015) and used theories and research designs con-

sistent with such an assumption, such as associating perceived HRM system strength with attitudes and general ten-

dencies and using survey designs. Research has yet to consider links between perceived HRM system strength and

daily personal experiences. This is a major omission as daily experiences are fundamental to triggering attributions

(Martinko, Douglas, & Harvey, 2006), which underpin how perceived event‐signalled HRM system strength affects

expectancies and work engagement. Bowen and Ostroff (2004, p. 208) also note the importance of daily activities

in communicating system strength: “The creation of a strong organizational situation requires that situational charac-

teristics be salient and visible throughout much of employees' daily work routines and activities”.

The extent to which events communicate information about perceived HRM system strength is important in

terms of shaping more general employee perceptions of HRM system strength (as experiences of events stack‐up

to affect more general and enduring beliefs, Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996); however, we argue that events that signal

perceived HRM system strength (hereon referred to as perceived event‐signalled HRM system strength) are also

important at the daily level, shaping daily work engagement via performance–reward expectancies.

In doing so we contribute to previous research firstly by introducing the importance of events as anantecedent to

perceived HRM system strength. Affective events are viewed as a paradigm shift in understanding affect and behav-

iour at work (Weiss & Beal, 2005) and therefore affective HRM events are important to how employees perceive

HRM system strength; however, at present there is no research examining perceived HRM system strength arising

from the everyday behaviour of HRM signal senders. We therefore contribute by being one of the very few studies

to consider empirically, antecedents to perceived HRM system strength (Van De Voorde & Beijer, 2015, consider

HPWS as an antecedent) and by being the first event‐level study to identify daily events as an important antecedent

to perceived HRM system strength. We demonstrate that perceived HRM system strength fluctuates within‐person

over time at the daily level in response to relatively common HRM events. We focus on HRM events salient to

employees, where salience was assessed by the event's valence (i.e., whether it was perceived as positive or nega-

tive), using a daily diary research design novel to HRM research.

Our second contribution is to extend understanding of the consequences of perceived event‐signalled HRM sys-

tem strength by testing expectancies at the daily level as an explanation of the link between perceived event‐

signalled HRM system strength and work engagement. Examining expectancies is important because they are crucial

434 CHACKO AND CONWAY