한국생산성학회

Organizational theories help better understand how organizations behave in order to achieve their goals assuming different boundary conditions: organizational goals, rationality in human choice behavior, influence of organizational environments, etc. However, we observe that a majority of organizational theories have increasingly emphasized the influence of environmental uncertainties on organizational choice decisions and activities. In this paradigm, interestingly, we can find that different theories explain the same organizational phenomena in various ways with their unique assumptions. These diverse interpretations, on the one hand, may facilitate the accumulation of knowledge to better understand an organizational phenomenon while, on the other hand, they may lead students to face ambiguities in interpreting said phenomenon. This diversity in interpretations is frequently captured in organizational practices literatures. In particular, studies about the impact of human resource (HR) practices on firm performance in strategic human resource management (SHRM) literatures are a good example. A research question in this study is to examine why this phenomenon is prevalent in this field. In order to answer this question, this study seeks to identify the main theoretical arguments and review previous empirical findings on this topic. Then, this study proposes an integrative framework that may more accurately explain the impact of HR practices on firm performance, reconciling conflicting theoretical perspectives. This study argues that while investigating the relationship between HR practices and firm performance, researchers need to consider not only the adoption of HR practices based on rational models but also the institutionalization of HR practices in organizations. After developing a theoretical framework and research hypotheses predicting the effects of progressiveness and institutionalization of HR practices on performance, this study tests the hypotheses using a sample of Korean firms and shows the positive relationship between progressiveness and institutionalization of HR practices and firm performance as well as interaction effects of these two variables on firm performance.