HIGH COMMITMENT HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AND EMPLOYEE SERVICE BEHAVIOUR: TRUST IN MANAGEMENT AS MEDIATOR

This study approaches human resource management (HRM) practices as high commitment HRM (HCHRM) practices and examines their relationship with employee service behaviour and trust in management. High commitment HRM has been viewed as commitment enhancing HRM practices. Employee service behaviour incorporates both in-role or job assigned service performance, and extra-role or voluntary or citizenship service performance of employees. Trust in management is visualised as employees’ belief in management actions as beneficial to them. High commitment HRM practices have been presented as a higher-order reflective construct influencing employee service behaviour. Trust in management has been considered as a mediator in the relationship between HCHRM practices and employee service behaviour. The research area is the banking industry of Bangladesh.

The results of the analysis of the data from 365 bank line managers show a positive relationship between HCHRM and, both, in-role and extra-role service behaviour. Trust in management significantly mediates the relationship between HCHRM and in-role service behaviour, and does not mediate the relationship between HCHRM and extra-role service behaviour. This study contributes to the understanding of employees’ perceptions of HRM practices and their impact on service behaviour. If employees believe that HRM practices help increase their commitment, they express such belief by enhancing their assigned as well as voluntary performance in the organisation. As all banks provide almost similar banking services, service motives along with actual services of bank employees may give them a unique identity in the industry. Further, commitment-focussed HRM practices might promote employee service performance and create competitive advantage in the banking organisations. In addition, employees’ positive attitude toward the management in terms of their trust in the management might further HRM-employee performance relationship. With employees perceiving organisational commitment towards them through HRM practices, the HRM practices would make them feel that the management cares for them, which, overall would positively influence their service performance.