Shut the fridge door! HRM alignment, job redesign and energy performance

• Author: Kevin Daniels,Sian Christina,Patrick Waterson,Olga Tregaskis,Andrew Dainty
• Published date: 01 July 2017
• Date: 01 July 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12144

Shut the fridge door! HRM alignment, job redesign

and energy performance

Sian Christina , Andrew Dainty , and Patrick Waterson, Loughborough

University

Kevin Daniels and Olga Tregaskis , University of East Anglia

Human Resource Management Journal, Vol 27,no 3, 2017, pages 382–402

Anchored within the strategic HRM and alignment literature, and drawing on efficiency and legitimacy

perspectives of organisational behaviour, we investigated a HRM intervention targeted at energy reduction

goals in a large multinational retailer. The HRMintervention was focused on embedding the environmental

and economic performance goals of the firm within the workplace through redesigning thejob so that energy

tasks werealigned with trainingand performance managementsystems, as well as organisational performance

goals. Using a randomised control trial design, we tracked changes in energy behaviours and energy

consumptionin 769 retail stores (685 in the interventioncondition, 84 in the control condition). The findings

provide evidence that changing the alignment of HRM practices can influence both worker behaviour and

organisational outcomes, including environmental outcomes. This work contributes to debates concerning

the impact of HRM alignment on both the work and organisational performance context.

Contact: Sian Christina, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK. Email:

sianchristina@gmail.com

Keywords: job design; strategicHRM; sustainable HRM; organisational performance

INTRODUCTION

Despite significant reductions in carbonemissions over the past 10 years in both the US

and Europe, world energy consumption is currently expected to grow by 56 per cent

between 2010 and 2040 (European Environment Agency, 2013). The opportunity for

commercial organisations to contribute to global energy efficiency is considerable (Howard-

Grenville et al., 2014). In addition to obvious economic benefits to reducing energy spend in

times of volatileprice and security issues, organisations are widelyconsidered to have a social

responsibility to environmental issues (Aguilera et al., 2007). Understanding how firms can

deliver economic and societal value has led calls for more contextually nuanced theory and

scrutiny of the process of strategy implementation that takes account of a broader definition

of performance (Beer et al.,2015).

The contribution of HRM to the area of organisational sustainability has, to date, been

deemed insufficient (Jackson and Seo, 2010; Dubois and Dubois, 2012). There are continuing

theoretical and empirical questions concerning the strategic processes and implementation

explaining whether and how HRM influences organisational outcomes (Guest and Conway,

2011). The field is further hampered by a lack of research using research designs with powers of

382 HUMAN RESOURCEMANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL27, NO 3, 2017

© 2017 The Authors.Human Resource ManagementJournal Published by JohnWiley & Sons Ltd

Pleasecite this articlein press as: Christina,S., Dainty, A., Daniels,K., Tregaskis,O. and Waterson, P. (2017)‘Shut the fridge door! HRMalignment, job

redesignand energy performance’.Human ResourceManagementJournal 27:3,382–402

doi: 10.1111/1748-8583.12144

This is an openaccess article under the termsof the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use,

distributionand reproduction in any medium,provided the original workis properly cited.

The copyrightline for this article was changedon 3 March 2017 after originalonline publication.

bs_bs_banner

strong causal inference (Boselie et al., 2005; Tregaskis et al., 2013). The focus on organisational

outcomes in terms of benefits to owners and shareholders has sharpened the research evidence

on HRM and firm productivity and efficiencies (Becker et al., 1997), but it also places economic

agencyas the dominantexplanation oforganisationalbehaviour.More contextualapproaches to

HRM highlight the institutional systems firms operate within and the influence of values and

norms of multiple stakeholders in legitimising, or not, organisational behaviour (Oliver, 1991;

Scott, 1995; Paauwe and Boselie, 2003; Beer et al., 2015). But legitimacy arguments have received

less attention in the HRM implementation literature. Contextual approaches in the HRM field

have concentrated on theorisation and empirical studies comparing domestic HRM practices

across national institutional contexts (Tregaskis and Brewster, 2006) or focusing on the

configuration of HRM practices in multinational firms operating a cross a range of institutional

environments (Edwards et al., 2013). There is a gap in our understanding of how firms

implement strategic goals that are both economic and environmental and in our theorisation of

how pluralist performance outcomes might be accommodated. Thus, an examination of how an

organisation implements its strategic goals for energy reduction through changes in its

alignment of HRM processes provides a useful context to address these gaps and further the

evidence base on the HRM–performance relationship beyond economic organisational

effectiveness (Wright et al., 2001; Cohen et al., 2012; Merriman and Sen, 2012; Beer et al., 2015).

The present study contributes to the literature in three ways. First, it is widely understood

that it is the alignment of HRM practices that contribute to organisational outcomes (Guest,

1997; Boxall and Purcell, 2011). However, critics of the generalised ‘best practice’approaches to

HRM suggest there needs to be a greater nuancing of the theory of alignment with respect to

both the link between HRM and the performance context (Edwards et al., 2013) and HRM and

how workis organised (Boxall,2012). Boxall andMacky (2009) point tothe need for a more fine

grained understanding of how internal alignment of HRM can impact organisational goals,

while Beer et al. (2015) identify the multidimensional nature of the performance context where

societal and employee outcomes are considered alongside economic returns. In response to

these theoretical weaknesses, we use strategic efficiency and legitimacy perspectives to explain

how organisational goals on social and efficiency outcomes can be embedded in the workplace,

through alignment of HRM processes (training and performance management) and job redesign

(how the work is organised), to change employee behaviour. In so doing, we unpack and

provideevidence of, thecausal processlinking organisational outcomesto employeebehaviours

through HRM alignment; and consider how the dual logics of efficiency and social legitimacy

are accommodated. Second, many studies examining the links between HRM and

organisational outcomes are hampered by research designs with relatively weak powers of

causal inference (see e.g. Boselie et al., 2005; Combs et al., 2006; Paauwe, 2009 for reviews). By

using a randomised control trial (RCT) design, we provide evidence that changes in HRM can

lead to changes in worker behaviour and objectively measured indicators of organisational

outcomes (metered energy consumption adjusted for climatic conditions). Third, we contribute

to the debates around the contribution of HRM to sustainability issues in organisations (Taylor

et al., 2012; Renwick et al., 2013; Unsworth et al., 2013) and specifically how firms can reflect

wider stakeholder interests within organisational goals and implement these through integrated

HRM systems (Cohen et al., 2012; Merriman and Sen, 2012; Beer et al. , 2015).

HRM POLICY, PRACTICE AND OUTCOMES

It is widely understood that human capabilities should influence organisational outcomes

(Paauwe, 2009;Guest and Conway, 2011), and that HRM systems should focus on developing

Sian Christina,Andrew Dainty, KevinDaniels, Olga Tregaskisand Patrick Waterson

HUMAN RESOURCEMANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL27, NO 3, 2017 383

© 2017 The Authors.Human Resource ManagementJournal Published by JohnWiley & Sons Ltd