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Leaders as HR sensegivers: Four HR implementation behaviors that create strong HR systems
Human Resource Management Review xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
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Leaders as HR sensegivers: Four HR implementation behaviors that create strong HR systems ⁎
Lisa H. Nishii , Rebecca M. Paluch Cornell University, United States
AB S T R A CT While the problem of the gap between espoused and implemented HR practices has been widely recognized in the past, consideration of the role that leaders, and particularly direct managers, play in implementing HRM has not been well defined. In an effort to close this gap, we argue that more attention needs to be paid to the critical role of managers, as they are the ones who shape employees' climate perceptions by interpreting and providing meaning about the intended messages of HR practices as they relate to the specific job expectations of employees. In particular, we identify four HR implementation leader behaviors for facilitating a strong HR system. We expect that when leaders verbally articulate the intended meanings and expectations, role model desired behaviors, reinforce preferred behaviors, and assess followers' interpretations of the provided meanings so that further adjustments can be made in the meaning-making process, that cohesive climate perceptions that drive a strong HR system will ensue.
1. Introduction The strategic human resource management (SHRM) literature has developed considerably over the last three decades. Researchers have made the case that when organizations align employees with the organization's strategic goals through the adoption and implementation of appropriately designed HR systems, they tend to enjoy higher levels of organizational performance (Jackson and Schuler, 1995; Wright and McMahan, 1992). However, research support has not always been consistent, leading researchers to question whether this is because intended HR strategy – which has most often been the focus of data collection efforts –differs from the HR practices that actually get implemented in organizations (Lengnick-Hall, Lengnick-Hall, Andrade, and Drake, 2009; Nishii, Khattab, Shemla, & Paluch, 2018). Indeed, research has shown that implemented HR practices diverge substantially from intended HR practices (Khilji and Wang, 2006), and that perceptions of SHRM practices differ significantly across senior managers (Bartram, Stanton, Leggat, Casimir, and Fraser, 2007), and between managers and their subordinates (Liao, Toya, Lepak, and Hong, 2009; Ostroff and Bowen, 2016). These results point to a critical issue for the practice and research of SHRM: there is a clear gap between the formal articulation of HR strategies and their effective translation into the everyday implementation of clear HR messages as received by employees. This translation, however, is essential, because in the absence of shared HR messages, employees lack the decision-making premises (cf. Boswell, 2006) that are needed to align their behaviors with strategic objectives (cf. Bowen and Ostroff, 2004; Ostroff and Bowen, 2016). Although the problem of the implementation gap has become widely recognized, what is curious is that careful consideration of the role that leaders, particularly line managers, play in implementing HRM strategies has yet to be integrated (cf. Jackson, Schuler, and Jiang, 2013). Although some scholars have recognized that managers serve as HR practice implementers (e.g., (Bowen and
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Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (L.H. Nishii).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2018.02.007
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Please cite this article as: Nishii, L.H., Human Resource Management Review (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2018.02.007
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Ostroff, 2004; Kehoe and Wright, 2013; Nishii et al., 2018; Nishii and Wright, 2008; Sikora, Ferris, and Van Iddekinge, 2015), more elaborated theory about what that entails is lacking. Even in what many consider the most influential article on the process through which HR practices influence employee behavior, Bowen and Ostroff (2004) do not provide clear answers about the role of managers in the implementation of HR practices. They argued that HR systems that are characterized by distinctiveness, consistency and consensus yield shared climate perceptions among employees; in turn, shared climate perceptions facilitate coordinated action in the pursuit of organizational goals. Interestingly, although their framework focuses on the meanings that employees derive from HR systems as a function of the way they are implemented, they do not include in their framework explicit consideration of how managers should implement HR practices so as to cultivate desired climate perceptions. Instead, attributes of the organizational context, HR function, senior leaders, and the nature of the HR practices themselves – and not managers per se – take center stage in explaining whether an HR system enables the emergence of a strong climate through the key properties of distinctiveness, consistency and consensus. The implication here is that if strength-producing elements of the HR system are present, employees will naturally and reliably absorb intended HR-related messages. However, in reality, perceiving and interpreting these characteristics accurately is not so straightforward. According to the cognitive perspective on organizations (Pondy, 1978; Weick, 1979), organizations are essentially systems of activity for which employees have the daunting task of developing valid causal explanations (Pfeffer, 1981). Without the help of managers who provide explanations for the organization's activities, employees are likely to develop more idiosyncratic explanations (Nishii, Lepak, and Schneider, 2008; Pondy, 1978). In their follow-up article a decade later, Ostroff and Bowen (2016) note that much of how HR systems shape the key mediators in the HR to firm performance linkage remain unexplained, and draw greater attention to the role of leaders in determining the strength of the HR system. We agree, and propose that by making explicit the role that managers play in their framework, not just as HR practice implementers but also as the primary architects of employees' climate perceptions, we can capture more of the unexplained variance in the key multi-level linkages between HR practice adoption, employees' attitudinal and behavioral responses, and organizational outcomes. What is required of managers is more than merely following commands from the HR function about how and when to implement HR practices; this alone would be unlikely to guarantee the emergence of a “strong HR system” and associated climate (Bowen and Ostroff, 2004). While they may capture the attention of employees when relied upon to guide specific events such as hiring, training, and formal performance evaluations, HR policies and practices as articulated by organizational leaders and the HR function are simply too molar and static to provide clarity for employees about the specific behavior-outcome expectancies that ought to guide their day-to-day work. Instead, what is required is that managers play an active role as “interpretive filters of HRM practices” (Bowen & Ostroff, 2004, p. 216) In fact, leadership should be construed as an attribution process (Podolny, Khurana, and Hill-Popper, 2004) wherein managers draw the attention of followers to particular aspects of the broader HR and organizational structure and transform cues that that are ambiguous, implicit, loosely coupled, and complex into a concrete pattern of meaning for followers (Quinn, 1980; Smircich and Morgan, 1982). Early support for this is evident in work by Den Hartog, Boon, Verburg, and Croon (2013) who found that the more managers communicate work- and organization-related information in a way that is understandable and useful to employees, the more employees' understanding of HRM aligns with those of their managers. While more research is needed to unpack the essential components of this communication process, the ultimate effects of a practice tend to conform to managerial legitimization and attributions about the practice (Green, 2004). Although this view of leadership bears some resemblance to leadership theories that are principally focused on how leaders motivate followers by articulating a vision with which followers can identify (Avolio, Reichard, Hannah, Walumbwa, and Chan, 2009; Avolio, Walumbwa, and Weber, 2009; Bass, 1985; Conger and Kanungo, 1998; Lord and Brown, 2001), the leadership literature has, for the most part, ignored and remained independent of SHRM research. Furthermore, as Uhl-Bien and her colleagues aptly noted, “much of leadership thinking has failed to recognize that leadership is not merely the influential act of an individual or individuals but rather is embedded in a complex interplay of numerous interacting forces” (Uhl-Bien, Marion, & McKelvey, 2007, p. 302). The HRM system is one such (major) force. At the most basic level, a leader whose means of motivating and regulating follower behaviors reinforce (and are reinforced by) the messages inherent in the HR system is likely to be rewarded with better employee well-being and engagement and more reliable performance than a leader whose behaviors are independent of (or even in opposition to) the broader HR system. Such a statement, however, is suggestive of the possibility that leadership and HR systems may function as independent influences on employee behavior that may or may not interact in ways that augment performance. Research on organizational climate assumes that a more active and interactive leadership role is necessary in the implementation of HR systems, and in so doing provides a nice bridge that is currently lacking between the SHRM and leadership literatures. Research on organizational climate has shown that leaders shape followers' experiences of climate and that this is true across a range of climates with different strategic foci; as such, leadership is now established as being fundamental to climate emergence (Schneider, Gonzalez-Roma, Ostroff, & West, in press). We build on this work, particularly that of Zohar and his colleagues on the supervisory behaviors that determine safety climate (Zohar, 2002; Zohar and Luria, 2004; Zohar and Polachek, 2014) and that of Schein (2017) on the interplay of organizational culture and leadership, to identify four HR implementation leader behaviors for facilitating a strong HR system (i.e., shared climate perceptions). We also drew heavily from Bandura's influential social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986; Wood and Bandura, 1989) about how individuals learn to exhibit desired behaviors to understand what managers must do to help translate the underlying strategic intentions of HR systems into shared perceptions of the behaviors that are desired, expected, and rewarded within a particular context (i.e., climate). Our key message is that managers serve as powerful “climate engineers” (Rentsch, 1990; Zohar, 2002) based on the critical incidents, activities, and pieces of organizational communication that they systematically notice, discuss, and react to, the behaviors that they measure and attempt to control and reward, and the ways in which they allocate scarce resources such as time and rewards. The four HR implementation leader behaviors include: (1) 2
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verbally articulating intended meanings and expectations; (2) role modeling desired behavior; (3) reinforcing desired behaviors; and (4) assessing followers' climate perceptions (i.e., their interpretation of intended meanings and expectations). We discuss each in turn, including how they relate to the HR “process mechanisms” that contribute to HR system strength as described in Bowen and Ostroff's (2004) model of HR implementation (e.g., distinctiveness, consistency, and consensus). 2. Articulating intended HR messages Within the SHRM literature, there is an implicit assumption that so long as HR systems are appropriately aligned with strategic goals, employees will know how to translate HR practices into guidelines for how, specifically, to direct their energy in the pursuit of these goals. However, when left to chance, individuals' idiosyncratic schemas, experiences, and needs are likely to lead to varied interpretations of those messages (Nishii et al., 2008; Nishii and Wright, 2008), with “meaning cultures” forming among individuals who discuss and come to share interpretations of organizational events (Rentsch, 1990). When managers assert themselves into this process by calling attention to certain events and guiding followers through the process of abstracting psychologically meaningful patterns across those events (Quinn, 1980), they greatly enhance the likelihood that employees develop shared interpretations about what the HR system communicates with regard to desired employee behaviors. This entails first directing followers' attention to key pieces of information on which they should focus; that is, to help them sort through the “noise” inherent in the array of information available in an organizational context and decipher the priorities that are the most strategically important. Because they are in a position of power over their employees, managers' views about what is worthy of attention serve as an important frame of reference for their followers' understanding of the organizational environment (Pfeffer, 1981; Smircich and Morgan, 1982). It is not enough, however, to simply call attention to organizational communications about HR practices. Managers need to engage in sensegiving, a process through which they shape the development of followers' cognitive representations or schemas that make the retention and later application of learned information possible. This entails transforming information about organizational systems and events and restructuring it into patterns or rules (Rentsch, 1990) using causal explanations and rationalizations (Pfeffer, 1981; Pondy, 1978). It involves making clear connections between the broader messages communicated by specific HR practices about what is valued with more micro, task-related goals (Boswell, 2006). If employees do not understand or know how to contribute to strategic goals, it is impossible for them to do so effectively. As such, articulation involves providing interpretive representations and cognitive connections that go above and beyond what is embedded in the content of statically defined HR practices. Employees' comprehension of HR-related messages is enhanced when they understand not just what an HR practice is designed to achieve (Den Hartog et al., 2013), but also why those outcomes are important for the organization, and by derivation, also for each individual employee. When managers articulate the what, how, and why of HR practices and link them with task-related expectations and goals for individual employees, they not only help reduce uncertainty for employees (Kernan and Hanges, 2002) but also promote the internalization of the rules derived from the HR system. When employees understand these HR-based rules of messages deeply and internalize them, they are better able to apply and adjust them appropriately to guide behavior even in changing situational circumstances (Wood and Bandura, 1989). This process of articulation corresponds with the distinctiveness of HR-related messages as described in Bowen and Ostroff's (2004) model of HR system strength (i.e., by directly impacting the visibility, understandability, and perceived relevance of those messages). 3. Role modeling HR-system expectations for behavior Through their own behaviors, leaders model what followers interpret to be appropriate or normative behavior (Gelfand, Leslie, Keller, and de Dreu, 2012). Perhaps more importantly, employees scrutinize the way that HR practices are attended to and implemented by their manager to figure out which espoused goals are given the highest priority (Schein, 2017), especially in the face of competing demands (Zohar and Luria, 2004). Because employees are faced with an abundance of staged espousals regarding corporate values and HR priorities, they rely on their informal interactions with their managers to disentangle superficial espousals from those they deem to be legitimate and genuine (Zohar and Polachek, 2014). In other words, when the behavioral expectations that are articulated by managers correspond with the patterns that employees extract through their observation of managerial actions, espoused messages are perceived by employees as having greater legitimacy and validity (Bowen and Ostroff, 2004), and desired behavioral responses become more likely (Simons, 2002; Simons and McLean Parks, 2000). If managers do not “walk the talk,” they risk communicating to employees that HR practices are merely symbolic as opposed to substantive (Nishii et al., 2018; Pfeffer, 1981; Zajac and Westphal, 1994). For example, an espoused value for the high-performance HR practice of empowering employees will have little positive impact on the voice behaviors of employees whose manager is not consistently tolerant towards employees who express their own opinions. The clearer the behavior-outcome contingencies or patterns modeled by direct managers, the easier it is for employees to apply them accurately to their own behavior (Wood and Bandura, 1989). As described by Zohar and Luria (2004), low levels of variability in managerial reaction in similar situations combined with simple observable patterns in terms of the number of situational contingencies that alter managerial reactions contribute to crisp, shared perceptions of behavioral expectations (i.e., climate). 4. Reinforcing HR-system expectations for behavior Managers play a particularly important role in shaping the perceived instrumentality associated with engaging in desired behaviors because they, and not HR per se, are the ones who are in a position to be able to evaluate employees' daily behaviors and consistently 3
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and repeatedly link them to consequences in a timely fashion. For employees, feedback from the environment – especially in the form of rewards or sanctions from the manager – serves as an important source of input about how to modify their behavior in order to better achieve their goals. The behaviors that a manager explicitly rewards – either informally through verbal praise or more formally through monetary incentives or promotions – will capture more attention from followers. Naturally, the more positive reinforcement employees receive about their enacted behaviors, the more effort they will exert to master those behaviors (Wood and Bandura, 1989). Although positive reinforcement of desired behaviors is assumed to be especially important for employee learning because it helps to build the efficacy beliefs that drive success (Wood and Bandura, 1989), strong negative reactions on the part of managers also have a powerful conditioning effect on behavior (Schein, 2017). This is because strong emotional arousal strengthens the neural connections associated with that experience (Strauss and Quinn, 1997). However, for either form of reinforcement – positive or negative – to be understood accurately by employees, they must be accompanied by clearly articulated rationales (Schein, 2017). Finally, though it perhaps goes without saying, in order to be effective, managers must be consistent (both across situations and employees) in the behaviors that they reinforce. If a subset of employees receives positive evaluations despite engaging in behaviors that the manager has articulated as being undesirable, the strength of the HR system will be jeopardized. 5. Assessing followers' understanding of HR messages Assessing followers' understanding of HR-related messages involves both a cognitive process of perceiving relevant cues from employees as well as a meta-cognitive process through which managers evaluate those cues to determine what adjustments need to be made in their other HR implementation behaviors (articulating, role modeling, reinforcing) to enhance outcomes. Such cues may be explicit, as evident in employees' expression of confusion or dissatisfaction about a particular HR practice, or may instead be implied in employees' behaviors that managers observe (e.g., when something that was intended has not been done, an employee fails to achieve a goal that was expected, conflict among employees). Whatever the source, these cues offer a valuable opportunity for managers to engage in dialogue with employees about the behavioral expectations derived from the HR system. The ability to engage in true dialogue during the process of assessing followers' understanding of the HR environment is what sets good managers apart. This is because dialogue involves listening with empathy (McCormick, 1999), which does not necessarily mean expressing agreement. It involves setting aside one's own understanding long enough to listen patiently and carefully to others so that it becomes possible to imagine how the other person must be thinking or feeling. This process is what allows managers to understand their followers' mental frameworks (Selman, 1980) and unearth their deep-rooted assumptions (Yankelovich, 2001), and ultimately to develop a metaunderstanding that informs the leader how to change his/her articulations and role modeling in a way that will facilitate shared understandings. By carefully listening to employees' questions or concerns, managers can understand how to construct and reconstruct messages in ways that clarify the underlying intent of HR practices and help followers to make meaningful adjustments to their cognitive representation of the HR system. This lies in stark contrast to the manager who sees things entirely through their own lens in terms of what they want, which prevents them from being able to understand others' perspectives. Employees who enjoy a close relationship with their manager are advantaged in this regard because they have more opportunities to engage in “epistemological hypothesis-testing” (Zohar & Luria, 2004, p. 323) or to clarify behavioral expectancies and strategic priorities. Dialogue creates an opportunity for both managers and employees to engage in deeper systematic processing as opposed to surface-level heuristic processing of HR practices which is important for enhancing consistency through more stable and predictive behaviors (Eagly and Chaiken, 1993; Guzzo and Noonan, 1994). Of course, these discussions should also be approached with the goal of helping managers to understand how they can better close the gap between the HR-related messages that they (or the broader organization) espouse and those that their employees report receiving through the manager's enacted behaviors. 6. Conclusion While prior research has emphasized the importance of creating strong HRM systems through consistent and cohesive employee perceptions (Bowen and Ostroff, 2004; Nishii et al., 2008), little extant research or theory has provided guidance on the important role of leadership in shaping these systems. We offer four HR implementation behaviors for leaders, and specifically direct managers, that we argue are imperative to building a strong HRM system. Although we necessarily had to choose an order in which to discuss these four HR implementation behaviors, it is important to note that this ordering is somewhat arbitrary, as we see them as iterative and interactive behaviors in which managers must continuously engage. Indeed, accumulated research about the shockingly weak relationship between line managers' reports of HR practices and those of their employees (approximately 0.20; Ostroff and Bowen, 2016) suggests that it would behoove organizations to invest in better preparing managers to engage in all of these behaviors. Competitive advantage is not likely to come from having the right practices in place, but rather from having managers who are able to successfully translate those HR practices into a clear and compelling message about what they mean for employees on a day-to-day basis. Providing opportunities for managers to interact with one another to engage in their own sensemaking about the HR implementation process – in particular to discuss implementation or translation challenges and identify preferred responses – will not only promote managerial learning about the implementation process, but will also help promote the consensus needed among them to drive HRM system strength. Acknowledgment I would like to acknowledge the impact of the late David P. Lepak in shaping the ideas presented here. It was his enthusiasm and 4
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Human Resource Management Review journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/hrmr
Leaders as HR sensegivers: Four HR implementation behaviors that create strong HR systems ⁎
Lisa H. Nishii , Rebecca M. Paluch Cornell University, United States
AB S T R A CT While the problem of the gap between espoused and implemented HR practices has been widely recognized in the past, consideration of the role that leaders, and particularly direct managers, play in implementing HRM has not been well defined. In an effort to close this gap, we argue that more attention needs to be paid to the critical role of managers, as they are the ones who shape employees' climate perceptions by interpreting and providing meaning about the intended messages of HR practices as they relate to the specific job expectations of employees. In particular, we identify four HR implementation leader behaviors for facilitating a strong HR system. We expect that when leaders verbally articulate the intended meanings and expectations, role model desired behaviors, reinforce preferred behaviors, and assess followers' interpretations of the provided meanings so that further adjustments can be made in the meaning-making process, that cohesive climate perceptions that drive a strong HR system will ensue.
1. Introduction The strategic human resource management (SHRM) literature has developed considerably over the last three decades. Researchers have made the case that when organizations align employees with the organization's strategic goals through the adoption and implementation of appropriately designed HR systems, they tend to enjoy higher levels of organizational performance (Jackson and Schuler, 1995; Wright and McMahan, 1992). However, research support has not always been consistent, leading researchers to question whether this is because intended HR strategy – which has most often been the focus of data collection efforts –differs from the HR practices that actually get implemented in organizations (Lengnick-Hall, Lengnick-Hall, Andrade, and Drake, 2009; Nishii, Khattab, Shemla, & Paluch, 2018). Indeed, research has shown that implemented HR practices diverge substantially from intended HR practices (Khilji and Wang, 2006), and that perceptions of SHRM practices differ significantly across senior managers (Bartram, Stanton, Leggat, Casimir, and Fraser, 2007), and between managers and their subordinates (Liao, Toya, Lepak, and Hong, 2009; Ostroff and Bowen, 2016). These results point to a critical issue for the practice and research of SHRM: there is a clear gap between the formal articulation of HR strategies and their effective translation into the everyday implementation of clear HR messages as received by employees. This translation, however, is essential, because in the absence of shared HR messages, employees lack the decision-making premises (cf. Boswell, 2006) that are needed to align their behaviors with strategic objectives (cf. Bowen and Ostroff, 2004; Ostroff and Bowen, 2016). Although the problem of the implementation gap has become widely recognized, what is curious is that careful consideration of the role that leaders, particularly line managers, play in implementing HRM strategies has yet to be integrated (cf. Jackson, Schuler, and Jiang, 2013). Although some scholars have recognized that managers serve as HR practice implementers (e.g., (Bowen and
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Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (L.H. Nishii).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2018.02.007
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Please cite this article as: Nishii, L.H., Human Resource Management Review (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2018.02.007
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Ostroff, 2004; Kehoe and Wright, 2013; Nishii et al., 2018; Nishii and Wright, 2008; Sikora, Ferris, and Van Iddekinge, 2015), more elaborated theory about what that entails is lacking. Even in what many consider the most influential article on the process through which HR practices influence employee behavior, Bowen and Ostroff (2004) do not provide clear answers about the role of managers in the implementation of HR practices. They argued that HR systems that are characterized by distinctiveness, consistency and consensus yield shared climate perceptions among employees; in turn, shared climate perceptions facilitate coordinated action in the pursuit of organizational goals. Interestingly, although their framework focuses on the meanings that employees derive from HR systems as a function of the way they are implemented, they do not include in their framework explicit consideration of how managers should implement HR practices so as to cultivate desired climate perceptions. Instead, attributes of the organizational context, HR function, senior leaders, and the nature of the HR practices themselves – and not managers per se – take center stage in explaining whether an HR system enables the emergence of a strong climate through the key properties of distinctiveness, consistency and consensus. The implication here is that if strength-producing elements of the HR system are present, employees will naturally and reliably absorb intended HR-related messages. However, in reality, perceiving and interpreting these characteristics accurately is not so straightforward. According to the cognitive perspective on organizations (Pondy, 1978; Weick, 1979), organizations are essentially systems of activity for which employees have the daunting task of developing valid causal explanations (Pfeffer, 1981). Without the help of managers who provide explanations for the organization's activities, employees are likely to develop more idiosyncratic explanations (Nishii, Lepak, and Schneider, 2008; Pondy, 1978). In their follow-up article a decade later, Ostroff and Bowen (2016) note that much of how HR systems shape the key mediators in the HR to firm performance linkage remain unexplained, and draw greater attention to the role of leaders in determining the strength of the HR system. We agree, and propose that by making explicit the role that managers play in their framework, not just as HR practice implementers but also as the primary architects of employees' climate perceptions, we can capture more of the unexplained variance in the key multi-level linkages between HR practice adoption, employees' attitudinal and behavioral responses, and organizational outcomes. What is required of managers is more than merely following commands from the HR function about how and when to implement HR practices; this alone would be unlikely to guarantee the emergence of a “strong HR system” and associated climate (Bowen and Ostroff, 2004). While they may capture the attention of employees when relied upon to guide specific events such as hiring, training, and formal performance evaluations, HR policies and practices as articulated by organizational leaders and the HR function are simply too molar and static to provide clarity for employees about the specific behavior-outcome expectancies that ought to guide their day-to-day work. Instead, what is required is that managers play an active role as “interpretive filters of HRM practices” (Bowen & Ostroff, 2004, p. 216) In fact, leadership should be construed as an attribution process (Podolny, Khurana, and Hill-Popper, 2004) wherein managers draw the attention of followers to particular aspects of the broader HR and organizational structure and transform cues that that are ambiguous, implicit, loosely coupled, and complex into a concrete pattern of meaning for followers (Quinn, 1980; Smircich and Morgan, 1982). Early support for this is evident in work by Den Hartog, Boon, Verburg, and Croon (2013) who found that the more managers communicate work- and organization-related information in a way that is understandable and useful to employees, the more employees' understanding of HRM aligns with those of their managers. While more research is needed to unpack the essential components of this communication process, the ultimate effects of a practice tend to conform to managerial legitimization and attributions about the practice (Green, 2004). Although this view of leadership bears some resemblance to leadership theories that are principally focused on how leaders motivate followers by articulating a vision with which followers can identify (Avolio, Reichard, Hannah, Walumbwa, and Chan, 2009; Avolio, Walumbwa, and Weber, 2009; Bass, 1985; Conger and Kanungo, 1998; Lord and Brown, 2001), the leadership literature has, for the most part, ignored and remained independent of SHRM research. Furthermore, as Uhl-Bien and her colleagues aptly noted, “much of leadership thinking has failed to recognize that leadership is not merely the influential act of an individual or individuals but rather is embedded in a complex interplay of numerous interacting forces” (Uhl-Bien, Marion, & McKelvey, 2007, p. 302). The HRM system is one such (major) force. At the most basic level, a leader whose means of motivating and regulating follower behaviors reinforce (and are reinforced by) the messages inherent in the HR system is likely to be rewarded with better employee well-being and engagement and more reliable performance than a leader whose behaviors are independent of (or even in opposition to) the broader HR system. Such a statement, however, is suggestive of the possibility that leadership and HR systems may function as independent influences on employee behavior that may or may not interact in ways that augment performance. Research on organizational climate assumes that a more active and interactive leadership role is necessary in the implementation of HR systems, and in so doing provides a nice bridge that is currently lacking between the SHRM and leadership literatures. Research on organizational climate has shown that leaders shape followers' experiences of climate and that this is true across a range of climates with different strategic foci; as such, leadership is now established as being fundamental to climate emergence (Schneider, Gonzalez-Roma, Ostroff, & West, in press). We build on this work, particularly that of Zohar and his colleagues on the supervisory behaviors that determine safety climate (Zohar, 2002; Zohar and Luria, 2004; Zohar and Polachek, 2014) and that of Schein (2017) on the interplay of organizational culture and leadership, to identify four HR implementation leader behaviors for facilitating a strong HR system (i.e., shared climate perceptions). We also drew heavily from Bandura's influential social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986; Wood and Bandura, 1989) about how individuals learn to exhibit desired behaviors to understand what managers must do to help translate the underlying strategic intentions of HR systems into shared perceptions of the behaviors that are desired, expected, and rewarded within a particular context (i.e., climate). Our key message is that managers serve as powerful “climate engineers” (Rentsch, 1990; Zohar, 2002) based on the critical incidents, activities, and pieces of organizational communication that they systematically notice, discuss, and react to, the behaviors that they measure and attempt to control and reward, and the ways in which they allocate scarce resources such as time and rewards. The four HR implementation leader behaviors include: (1) 2
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verbally articulating intended meanings and expectations; (2) role modeling desired behavior; (3) reinforcing desired behaviors; and (4) assessing followers' climate perceptions (i.e., their interpretation of intended meanings and expectations). We discuss each in turn, including how they relate to the HR “process mechanisms” that contribute to HR system strength as described in Bowen and Ostroff's (2004) model of HR implementation (e.g., distinctiveness, consistency, and consensus). 2. Articulating intended HR messages Within the SHRM literature, there is an implicit assumption that so long as HR systems are appropriately aligned with strategic goals, employees will know how to translate HR practices into guidelines for how, specifically, to direct their energy in the pursuit of these goals. However, when left to chance, individuals' idiosyncratic schemas, experiences, and needs are likely to lead to varied interpretations of those messages (Nishii et al., 2008; Nishii and Wright, 2008), with “meaning cultures” forming among individuals who discuss and come to share interpretations of organizational events (Rentsch, 1990). When managers assert themselves into this process by calling attention to certain events and guiding followers through the process of abstracting psychologically meaningful patterns across those events (Quinn, 1980), they greatly enhance the likelihood that employees develop shared interpretations about what the HR system communicates with regard to desired employee behaviors. This entails first directing followers' attention to key pieces of information on which they should focus; that is, to help them sort through the “noise” inherent in the array of information available in an organizational context and decipher the priorities that are the most strategically important. Because they are in a position of power over their employees, managers' views about what is worthy of attention serve as an important frame of reference for their followers' understanding of the organizational environment (Pfeffer, 1981; Smircich and Morgan, 1982). It is not enough, however, to simply call attention to organizational communications about HR practices. Managers need to engage in sensegiving, a process through which they shape the development of followers' cognitive representations or schemas that make the retention and later application of learned information possible. This entails transforming information about organizational systems and events and restructuring it into patterns or rules (Rentsch, 1990) using causal explanations and rationalizations (Pfeffer, 1981; Pondy, 1978). It involves making clear connections between the broader messages communicated by specific HR practices about what is valued with more micro, task-related goals (Boswell, 2006). If employees do not understand or know how to contribute to strategic goals, it is impossible for them to do so effectively. As such, articulation involves providing interpretive representations and cognitive connections that go above and beyond what is embedded in the content of statically defined HR practices. Employees' comprehension of HR-related messages is enhanced when they understand not just what an HR practice is designed to achieve (Den Hartog et al., 2013), but also why those outcomes are important for the organization, and by derivation, also for each individual employee. When managers articulate the what, how, and why of HR practices and link them with task-related expectations and goals for individual employees, they not only help reduce uncertainty for employees (Kernan and Hanges, 2002) but also promote the internalization of the rules derived from the HR system. When employees understand these HR-based rules of messages deeply and internalize them, they are better able to apply and adjust them appropriately to guide behavior even in changing situational circumstances (Wood and Bandura, 1989). This process of articulation corresponds with the distinctiveness of HR-related messages as described in Bowen and Ostroff's (2004) model of HR system strength (i.e., by directly impacting the visibility, understandability, and perceived relevance of those messages). 3. Role modeling HR-system expectations for behavior Through their own behaviors, leaders model what followers interpret to be appropriate or normative behavior (Gelfand, Leslie, Keller, and de Dreu, 2012). Perhaps more importantly, employees scrutinize the way that HR practices are attended to and implemented by their manager to figure out which espoused goals are given the highest priority (Schein, 2017), especially in the face of competing demands (Zohar and Luria, 2004). Because employees are faced with an abundance of staged espousals regarding corporate values and HR priorities, they rely on their informal interactions with their managers to disentangle superficial espousals from those they deem to be legitimate and genuine (Zohar and Polachek, 2014). In other words, when the behavioral expectations that are articulated by managers correspond with the patterns that employees extract through their observation of managerial actions, espoused messages are perceived by employees as having greater legitimacy and validity (Bowen and Ostroff, 2004), and desired behavioral responses become more likely (Simons, 2002; Simons and McLean Parks, 2000). If managers do not “walk the talk,” they risk communicating to employees that HR practices are merely symbolic as opposed to substantive (Nishii et al., 2018; Pfeffer, 1981; Zajac and Westphal, 1994). For example, an espoused value for the high-performance HR practice of empowering employees will have little positive impact on the voice behaviors of employees whose manager is not consistently tolerant towards employees who express their own opinions. The clearer the behavior-outcome contingencies or patterns modeled by direct managers, the easier it is for employees to apply them accurately to their own behavior (Wood and Bandura, 1989). As described by Zohar and Luria (2004), low levels of variability in managerial reaction in similar situations combined with simple observable patterns in terms of the number of situational contingencies that alter managerial reactions contribute to crisp, shared perceptions of behavioral expectations (i.e., climate). 4. Reinforcing HR-system expectations for behavior Managers play a particularly important role in shaping the perceived instrumentality associated with engaging in desired behaviors because they, and not HR per se, are the ones who are in a position to be able to evaluate employees' daily behaviors and consistently 3
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and repeatedly link them to consequences in a timely fashion. For employees, feedback from the environment – especially in the form of rewards or sanctions from the manager – serves as an important source of input about how to modify their behavior in order to better achieve their goals. The behaviors that a manager explicitly rewards – either informally through verbal praise or more formally through monetary incentives or promotions – will capture more attention from followers. Naturally, the more positive reinforcement employees receive about their enacted behaviors, the more effort they will exert to master those behaviors (Wood and Bandura, 1989). Although positive reinforcement of desired behaviors is assumed to be especially important for employee learning because it helps to build the efficacy beliefs that drive success (Wood and Bandura, 1989), strong negative reactions on the part of managers also have a powerful conditioning effect on behavior (Schein, 2017). This is because strong emotional arousal strengthens the neural connections associated with that experience (Strauss and Quinn, 1997). However, for either form of reinforcement – positive or negative – to be understood accurately by employees, they must be accompanied by clearly articulated rationales (Schein, 2017). Finally, though it perhaps goes without saying, in order to be effective, managers must be consistent (both across situations and employees) in the behaviors that they reinforce. If a subset of employees receives positive evaluations despite engaging in behaviors that the manager has articulated as being undesirable, the strength of the HR system will be jeopardized. 5. Assessing followers' understanding of HR messages Assessing followers' understanding of HR-related messages involves both a cognitive process of perceiving relevant cues from employees as well as a meta-cognitive process through which managers evaluate those cues to determine what adjustments need to be made in their other HR implementation behaviors (articulating, role modeling, reinforcing) to enhance outcomes. Such cues may be explicit, as evident in employees' expression of confusion or dissatisfaction about a particular HR practice, or may instead be implied in employees' behaviors that managers observe (e.g., when something that was intended has not been done, an employee fails to achieve a goal that was expected, conflict among employees). Whatever the source, these cues offer a valuable opportunity for managers to engage in dialogue with employees about the behavioral expectations derived from the HR system. The ability to engage in true dialogue during the process of assessing followers' understanding of the HR environment is what sets good managers apart. This is because dialogue involves listening with empathy (McCormick, 1999), which does not necessarily mean expressing agreement. It involves setting aside one's own understanding long enough to listen patiently and carefully to others so that it becomes possible to imagine how the other person must be thinking or feeling. This process is what allows managers to understand their followers' mental frameworks (Selman, 1980) and unearth their deep-rooted assumptions (Yankelovich, 2001), and ultimately to develop a metaunderstanding that informs the leader how to change his/her articulations and role modeling in a way that will facilitate shared understandings. By carefully listening to employees' questions or concerns, managers can understand how to construct and reconstruct messages in ways that clarify the underlying intent of HR practices and help followers to make meaningful adjustments to their cognitive representation of the HR system. This lies in stark contrast to the manager who sees things entirely through their own lens in terms of what they want, which prevents them from being able to understand others' perspectives. Employees who enjoy a close relationship with their manager are advantaged in this regard because they have more opportunities to engage in “epistemological hypothesis-testing” (Zohar & Luria, 2004, p. 323) or to clarify behavioral expectancies and strategic priorities. Dialogue creates an opportunity for both managers and employees to engage in deeper systematic processing as opposed to surface-level heuristic processing of HR practices which is important for enhancing consistency through more stable and predictive behaviors (Eagly and Chaiken, 1993; Guzzo and Noonan, 1994). Of course, these discussions should also be approached with the goal of helping managers to understand how they can better close the gap between the HR-related messages that they (or the broader organization) espouse and those that their employees report receiving through the manager's enacted behaviors. 6. Conclusion While prior research has emphasized the importance of creating strong HRM systems through consistent and cohesive employee perceptions (Bowen and Ostroff, 2004; Nishii et al., 2008), little extant research or theory has provided guidance on the important role of leadership in shaping these systems. We offer four HR implementation behaviors for leaders, and specifically direct managers, that we argue are imperative to building a strong HRM system. Although we necessarily had to choose an order in which to discuss these four HR implementation behaviors, it is important to note that this ordering is somewhat arbitrary, as we see them as iterative and interactive behaviors in which managers must continuously engage. Indeed, accumulated research about the shockingly weak relationship between line managers' reports of HR practices and those of their employees (approximately 0.20; Ostroff and Bowen, 2016) suggests that it would behoove organizations to invest in better preparing managers to engage in all of these behaviors. Competitive advantage is not likely to come from having the right practices in place, but rather from having managers who are able to successfully translate those HR practices into a clear and compelling message about what they mean for employees on a day-to-day basis. Providing opportunities for managers to interact with one another to engage in their own sensemaking about the HR implementation process – in particular to discuss implementation or translation challenges and identify preferred responses – will not only promote managerial learning about the implementation process, but will also help promote the consensus needed among them to drive HRM system strength. Acknowledgment I would like to acknowledge the impact of the late David P. Lepak in shaping the ideas presented here. It was his enthusiasm and 4
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