Human Resource Strategic Orientation, Employee Job Performance and Performance of State Corporations in Tanzania

Abstract

Employees‘ job performance is among the key elements for success in today‘s competitive business environments. Researchers in Strategic Human Resource Management (HRM) have established a relationship between HRM and organizational performance, but the relationship between HR strategies and organizational performance intervened by Employee Job Performance remains largely unexplored. The broad objective of this study was to establish the relationship among HR strategic orientation, employee job performance, organizational factors and performance of state corporations in Tanzania. Drawing from the theory of individual differences in job performance, resource- based view, Job characteristics theory and control theory, we tested a model that examines the mechanisms through HR strategic orientation (as a blend of bundles from both control and commitment HR strategies) facilitates employee task and contextual performance, moderated by organizational factors namely structure, culture and politics leading to organizational performance (financial and non- financial), together with mediating effect of employee job performance. A total of eight hypotheses were established to test for the relationships. A cross- sectional survey research design was adopted. Primary data was collected through a properly designed questionnaire while secondary data was obtained through published information. A multisource ratings data on employee job performance variable was obtained from 80 Supervisors and Self- reports from a sample size of 284 employees who perform core functions of the organization. Furthermore, 53 responses from Tanzania‘s state corporations HR managers on H R strategic orientation variable was obtained and used to analyze the hypothesized relationships. All the measurement items met the reliability test. We used factor analysis, correlations analysis and regression (both liner, hierarchical and multivariate) analyses to examine the direct and moderating effects of hypotheses. In addition, path analysis (Baron and Kenny, 1986) was followed to assess mediation effect of employee job performance variable. Results of this study provide support for the central hypo thesis of this study that employee job performance is a mechanism through which HR strategic orientation influences organizational performance. Specifically, this study has found out that; first, there was no direct and significant relationship between HR strategic orientation and the four organizational performance components (ROE, ROA, ROS and Non-financial). Second, there was a partial support for control and commitment HR strategies (individually) on the two dimensions of employee job performance. Findings also showed that interactive effect contributed significantly to employee job performance. Third, in terms of moderating variables, culture and politics moderated the relationship between HR strategic orientation and organizational performance while structure had no significant effect on the same. Fourth, path analysis for mediating effect was not performed due to failure to meet the requirements of Baron and Kenny (1986). Lastly, as hypothesized, this study reports a positive and significant joint effect of HR strategic orientation, employee job performance and organizational factors on performance of state corporations in Tanzania. This study has contributed to the theoretical foundation in the SHRM literature by adding another intervening variable (employee job performance) hence opening up a ̳black box‘ conundrum. A detailed discussion on the research findings was done to examine the relationships and compare with previous studies. It was recommended that a longitudinal survey to be carried out in order to establish the causal chain of these variables.