The relationship between high performance work systems and employee proactive behaviour: role breadth self‐efficacy and flexible role orientation as mediating mechanisms

• Author: Juan Carlos Bou‐Llusar,Inmaculada Beltrán‐Martín,Vicente Roca‐Puig,Ana Belén Escrig‐Tena
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12145
• Date: 01 July 2017
• Published date: 01 July 2017

The relationship between high performance work

systems and employee proactive behaviour: role

breadth self-efficacy and flexible role orientation as

mediating mechanisms

Inmaculada Beltrán-Martín, Juan Carlos Bou-Llusar, Vicente Roca-Puig

and Ana Belén Escrig-Tena, Departmentof Business Management and Marketing,

Universitat Jaume I

Human Resource Management Journal, Vol 27, no 3, 2017,pages 403–422

Drawingon the contextual perspective,this study provides novelempirical evidence on howthe organisational

context(specifically,the firm’s human resourcestrategy) has an effecton employee proactivity.We use matched

data frommanagers and employees in 102Spanish professional servicefirms to examine how highperformance

work systems contribute to enhance employee proactive behaviours through two motivational variables: role

breadth self-efficacy and flexible role orientation. Results of a multilevel study demonstrate that role breadth

self-efficacymediates between HPWS and employeeproactivity, but flexiblerole orientation does not mediate

this relationship.

Contact: Inmaculada Beltrán-Martín, Department of Business Management and Marketing,

Universitat Jaume I, Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Económicas, Departamento de

Administraciónde Empresas y Marketing, 12071 Castellón, Spain. Email: ibeltran@emp.uji.es

Keywords: HPWS; proactive behaviours; role breadth self-efficacy; flexible role orientation;

multilevel

INTRODUCTION

Proactive behaviour “is about taking control to make things happen rather than

watching things happen”(Parker et al., 2010: 828). It refers to employee behaviours

that are self-starting, change oriented and future focused. As work becomes more

decentralised and pressures for innovation increase, proactive behaviour takes on an

increasingly critical role in organisational success (Crant, 2000; Thomas et al., 2010).

Previous research has shown that employee proactive behaviours positively contribute to

individual outcomes, such as employee creativity, task performance and career initiative

(e.g. Seibert et al., 2001; Hermann and Felfe, 2014). They are also beneficial for

organisational innovation and success (e.g. Kickul and Gundry, 2002), because they induce

individuals to study their environments thoroughly and help them to anticipate potential

problems (Thomas et al., 2010).

Given the benefits of proactive behaviour, identifying its antecedents has become a critical

issue in the literature (Maden, 2015).There is now a body of research analysingthe influence of

individualcharacteristics such as intrinsicmotivation, goal orientationor organisational tenure

on proactivity (see, for example, Frese and Fay, 2001; Sonnentag, 2003; Belschak and Den

Hartog, 2010). However, few studies have analysed the role of contextual variables of the

organisation as enablers of employee proactive behaviour (Batističet al., 2016). This is

surprising because the contextual perspective (Johns, 2006) has revealed how situational

HUMAN RESOURCEMANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL27, NO 3, 2017 403

©2017 John Wiley& Sons Ltd

Please cite this article in press as: Beltrán-Martín, I., Bou-Llusar, J.C., Roca-Puig, V. and Escrig-Tena, A.B. (2017) ‘The relationship between high

performanceworksystems andemployee proactivebehaviour:role breadth self-efficacyandflexible role orientationas mediatingmechanisms’.Human

ResourceManagementJournal 27: 3, 403–422

doi: 10.1111/1748-8583.12145

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opportunities and constraints at the firm level play a key role in promoting or hindering

relevant employee behaviours.

From the contextual perspective, organisational context can be viewed as a large set of

constraints and opportunities (sometimes countervailing one another) that gives meaning to

the occurrence (or lack of occurrence) of organisational behaviour (Johns, 1991). The large

number of facets that make up the organisational context, some of which promote specific

proactive behaviours while others hinder them, makes it difficult to study the contextual

influences on proactive behaviours unless a broad and systematic description and

measurement of the relevant contextual variables are adopted (Johns, 2006). We focus on HR

practices as relevant contextual variables that may influence proactive behaviour (Crant, 2000;

Maden, 2015). These practices contribute to delineate the roles in the organisation, shape the

pattern of interactions between and among managers and employees (MacDuffie, 1995) and

create and supportindividual employee behavioursand competences (Gratton et al.,1999). For

instance, the extant empirical evidence has demonstrated that HR practices related to job

design, in particularhigher autonomy and job complexity, contributeto proactivity (Axtell and

Parker, 2003; Parker et al., 2006).

Despite the relevance of HR practices in fostering desired behaviours among employees

in the firm, further research is still needed to improve insights on what managers can do to

delineate a HR strategy that enhances the proactivity of their workforce. This article

contributes to analysis on the influence of HR practices on proactivity in two ways. First, as

Parker (2000) highlights, there is a need to examine the joint influence of a set of HR

practices on proactivity. Our study focuses particularly on how high performance work

systems (HPWS) influence employee proactivity. The focus on HPWS (as a set of

interconnected HR practices) rather than on isolated HR practices allows us to capture the

complementarities and contradictions among the HPWS components, under the premise

that a HPWS practice may be more effective at stimulating the desired employee behaviour

when it is implemented in concert with other HPWS practices (Johns, 1991, 2006; Ichniowski

et al., 1997). It also gives us a better understanding of the variety of mechanisms through

which the opportunities and constraints in the organisational context influence individual

proactive behaviour.

Second, our study examines the mechanisms through which the HPWS–proactive

behaviour relationship occurs. Parker (2000) suggested that the influence of contextual

variables on emp loyee proactive b ehaviour is med iated by employees ’psychological states.

This model differs from other theoretical frameworks which considered that individual and

organisational variables directly influence proactivity (e.g. Crant, 2000). When deciding on

which potential mediating mechanisms to consider, it should be taken into account that

proactive behaviours are motivation driven. As a result,several authors (e.g. Arefin et al.,2015;

Caesens et al., 2016) have suggested that motivationalvariables should be considered in order

to understandwhy HR practices promote proactivity.Following the suggestionsby Parker and

colleagues, we will consider two motivational variables to explain the influence of HPWS on

employee proactive behaviour, namely, role breadth self-efficacy (RBSE) –employees’

confidence intheir ability to successfullyfulfil broad roles, and flexiblerole orientation (FRO) –

employees’engagement in broad, open-ended and interdependent roles (Parker et al., 1997;

Parker, 1998, 2000).

To address these questions, our study takes a multilevel perspective to explain how far

the context in which behaviour occurs affect employees’proactive behaviours (Johns, 2006;

Hitt et al., 2007). We propose a specific type of multilevel model –a cross-level model

(Preacher et al., 2010) –because our focal units (organisation and employees) belong to

HPWS and proactivebehaviour

404 HUMANRESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL,VOL 27, NO 3, 2017

©2017 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.