High‐involvement HRM, job satisfaction and productivity: A two wave longitudinal study of a Spanish retail company

• Author: Unai Elorza,Alaine Garmendia,Aitor Aritzeta,Damian Madinabeitia‐Olabarria
• Date: 01 January 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12307
• Published date: 01 January 2021

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

High-involvement HRM, job satisfaction

and productivity: A two wave longitudinal

study of a Spanish retail company

Alaine Garmendia

1

| Unai Elorza

1

| Aitor Aritzeta

2

|

Damian Madinabeitia-Olabarria

1

1

Innovation, Organisational Model and

Strategic HR Management, Mondragon

Unibertsitatea, Spain

2

Basic Psychological Processes, University of

the Basque Country, San Sebastian, Spain

Correspondence

Alaine Garmendia, Mondragon Unibertsitatea,

Loramendi 4, Apartado 23-20500 Mondragon,

Spain.

Email: agarmendia@mondragon.edu

Abstract

The strategic human resource management literature lacks

longitudinal studies, and the causal associations between

human resource management (HRM) and organisational

performance (OP) remain underexplored. We tested cross-

lagged relationships between high-involvement work sys-

tems (HIWS), job satisfaction, and store productivity based

on a large longitudinal dataset from the retail sector com-

prising two waves of data. The first wave (2011) included

6,016 employee responses from 104 stores, and the second

wave (2015) included 5,842 employee responses from 94

stores. The quantitative study suggested counterintuitive

negative associations. A subsequent qualitative study indi-

cated that the association may have been conditioned by

the recessionary action taken by the company in response

to financial difficulties. The longitudinal research design, the

compilation of data during difficult economic situations, and

in a relatively unexplored sector such as the retail industry

help to shed some light on the universalism of the HRM-OP

relationship and its boundary conditions.

KEYWORDS

causality, economic crisis, high-involvement work systems,

productivity, retail, strategic human resource management

Received: 30 May 2019 Revised: 9 April 2020 Accepted: 26 May 2020

DOI: 10.1111/1748-8583.12307

Hum Resour Manag J. 2021;31:341–357. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrmj © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 341

What is currently known

•Employee attitudes towards the retail company may determine how they approach customers, and they

can be a determining factor in company success.

•There is little empirical evidence regarding the effect of advanced HR practices on employee attitudes

and organisational outcomes in retail settings.

Scholars have questioned the universalism of advanced HR systems and have highlighted the need to

understand them in context.

•One area of criticism concerns the poorly understood causality in the HRM–OP relationship and the lack

of longitudinal studies in the field.

What this paper adds

•Empirical data to test the HRM-OP linkage in retail.

•Longitudinal data combined with qualitative interviews with the company’s management in order to

understand the whole process from a temporal perspective.

•Analysis of the HRM–OP linkage in an employee-owned company in a difficult economic situation, that

is, considering two contextual factors, ownership, and crisis.

The implications for practitioners

•Retail managers should not expect a direct increase in sales from the implementation of high-involve-

ment HR practices in all contexts or at all time periods.

•Over the long run, however, investment in HRM is crucial given its clear positive relationship with

employee job satisfaction in retail.

1|INTRODUCTION

The field of strategic human resource management (SHRM) has demonstrated that advanced HR systems are posi-

tively related to organisational performance (OP) (Combs, Liu, Hall, & Ketchen, 2006; Jiang & Messersmith, 2018;

Subramony, 2009). However, as the field has evolved, several scholars have identified methodological limitations

due to the absence of longitudinal studies (Fabling & Grimes, 2010; Guest, 2011; Jiang & Messersmith, 2018;

Saridakis, Lai, & Cooper, 2017). To date, most studies have been based on cross-sectional data (with some excep-

tions such as Roca-Puig, Bou-Llusar, Beltrán-Martín, & García-Juan, 2018; Shin & Konrad, 2017), and so do not allow

any inference of causality. Thus, the first aim of this study was to make a methodological contribution to the debate

on causality. To this end, we tested the causal effect of an advanced HR system, namely high-involvement work sys-

tem (HIWS), on store productivity from a longitudinal perspective, based on a two-wave dataset including a total of

11,858 responses from employees at 104 branches of a large Spanish retail company.

Most studies have focused solely on the analysis of a forward causality relationship (i.e., the effect of HIWS on

OP). Based on the idea that more profitable organisations have more resources to invest in HRM, empirical research

has provided support for testing reverse causality as well, that is, the effect of OP on HRM (Guest, Michie, Conway,

& Sheehan, 2003; Piening, Baluch, & Salge, 2013; Shin & Konrad, 2017; Wright, Gardner, Moynihan, & Allen, 2005).

342 GARMENDIA ET AL.