A Longitudinal Test of Two Competing Perspectives About the Effects of HR Systems on Firm Performance

This study was conducted to contribute to the human resource management (HRM) literature by testing the validities of two competing perspectives on configurational features of human resource (HR) systems: universalistic and fit perspectives. Propositions were set up based on the two competing perspectives. First, drawing on the universalistic perspective, it was expected that the effectiveness of an HR system would be proportional to the extent of use of a set of high-performance HR practices. Second, drawing on the fit perspective which takes into account the interactions among HR practices, it is expected that the effects of an HR system on firm performance would depend on the degree of fit among HR practices composing the HR system. The hypotheses based on the first proposition were not supported, while the hypotheses based on the second proposition were supported. Two key features of this study are that it relies on a broad array of HR practices rather than a small set of high-performance HR practices to empirically derive HR systems and that it is a longitudinal study.