Achieving Effectiveness and Innovation in U.S. Public Organizations Through Ability-enhancing and Opportunity-enhancing Soft/Commitment High Performance Work Practices
Abstract
It is well-established in the management literature that HPWPs improve productivity in the private sector. But does HPWPs work in the public sector? A thorough literature search revealed only 45 HPWPs studies done in the public sector. The first purpose of this dissertation is a thorough literature review of these 45 studies. Out of these 45 studies, only 12 had samples obtained from the U.S. Hence, it can be argued that there is much to be discovered about HPWPs in the U.S. public sector. The second purpose of this dissertation is to categorize HPWPs in the U.S. public sector based on soft/hard HR and Ability, Motivation and Opportunity (AMO) Model. The third purpose of this dissertation is to develop theoretically sound hypotheses and test them empirically. Five hypotheses were developed based on public service motivation (PSM) theory, AMO Model and new institutionalism theory and four other hypotheses were developed based on RBV and human capital theory. Two distinct samples were used to test the hypotheses (one based on U.S. public organizations and the other based on faculty data from U.S. and non U.S. universities). The results revealed that ability-enhancing HPWPs mainly training and development lead to higher productivity and fair pay and selective hiring actually lead to lower productivity. The moderating role of institutionalism was also uncovered in the aforementioned relationships. Also, the results showed slack (university endowment) was significantly related to university rankings and class size. More importantly, the results revealed that universities with higher implementation of HPWPs had greater innovation.
Subject Area
Management
Recommended Citation
Saha, Kingshuk, "Achieving Effectiveness and Innovation in U.S. Public Organizations Through Ability-enhancing and Opportunity-enhancing Soft/Commitment High Performance Work Practices" (2020). ETD Collection for University of Texas, El Paso. AAI27962385.
https://scholarworks.utep.edu/dissertations/AAI27962385