Abstract
We use human resources (HR) system strength theory to argue that transformational leadership leads to employee consensus on a unit’s high-performance work system (HPWS), that consensus helps align employee attitudes, and that a compression in attitudes facilitates strategy execution and unit-level outcomes. Empirical tests based on a 4-year linked employee–customer panel data set, involving 255 do-it-yourself stores, support our predictions. Transformational leadership is positively related to HPWS consensus. Consensus is negatively associated with unit-level job satisfaction dispersion, which in turn relates positively to unit-level customer satisfaction. Our study makes important contributions to the strategic HR and HR system strength literatures, highlighting the roles of leadership and employee consensus in strategy execution.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1469-1497 |
| Number of pages | 29 |
| Journal | Journal of Management |
| Volume | 46 |
| Issue number | 8 |
| Early online date | 14 Jan 2019 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Nov 2020 |
Bibliographical note
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).Keywords
- employee consensus
- high performance work systems
- human resource system strength
- job satisfaction dispersion
- linked employee–customer panel data
- transformational leadership