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Introduction
The increasing interest around human resource management (HRM) has caused a significant body of empirical research to emerge, examining the impact of different HRM practices on organizational performance. However, minimum attention has been given to the conception or understanding of the specific mechanisms through which HRM practices influence performance. Despite the fact that this line of research plays a major role in that it points to the importance of human resources, limited research has been conducted that can provide real insights for organizations wishing to gain a competitive advantage through people.
Reviewing the literature which examines the whole theoretical spectrum of HRM practices, one can notice that the researchers' approaches seem to be more descriptive and confined within the limits of linking directly the HRM practices with performance. Most of them mainly, describe what HRM practices do and their impact on performance (at various levels of the company). There is a limited amount of research which attempts to explore how HRM practices essentially work and, hence, to realize the processes through which these practices can lead to competitive advantage.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating processes between the existence and application of HRM practices and the creation of competitive advantage and increased performance. The authors make an effort to create a conceptual framework which captures this process, by examining the relationships of:
- knowledge management (KM) and organizational learning (OL) with HRM practices; and
- HRM practices with organizational capabilities (OC) and performance.
Overview of HRM-performance link
A significant body of research has suggested specific HRM practices that can improve employee motivation and commitment. As argued, these practices are expected to promote such inimitable attributes in human resources that can help an organization to obtain a competitive advantage and enhance its performance ([76] Huselid, 1995; [100] MacDuffie, 1995; [40] Delaney and Huselid, 1996; [52] Frits and MacDuffie, 1996; [63] Guest, 1997; [72] Hoque, 1999; [106] Michie and Sheehan, 2001; [184] Ahmad and Schroeder, 2002; [64] Guest et al. , 2003).
During the years, all these practices that lead to superior performance were given various names by different authors: "best HRM practices" ([122] Pfeffer, 1994), "high performance work systems or practices" ([3] Appelbaum and Batt, 1994; [4] Appelbaum et al....