Human resources practices and organizational commitment: A test of the Mediation Model among non-managerial employees of the garment sector of Sri Lanka

Abstract

Organizational commitment of employees has been a focal concern of management in every organization irrespective of their nature. A special consideration is given to the commitment of non managerial employees since it has lined with much of organizational outcomes such as performance, productivity, and quality. It has been noted that Human Resource Management (HRM) practices are the main determent of commitment of employees in an organization. The Mediation Model (Meyer and Smith, 2000) is widely accepted as a model for managing organizational commitment of employee, both by researchers and practitioners. The model explains the organizational commitment of employees incorporating the HRM practices. This study was done to test whether the Mediation Model can be held valid among the non-managerial employees in Sri Lanka. A sample of 150 non-managerial employees was drawn randomly with the aim of testing the model. A combined instrument was developed to measure each variable of the model namely, quality of HRM practices, procedural justice and organizational support, and affective, continuous and normative commitment. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data in testing of the main hypothesis of the study. It was revealed that the relation between quality of HRM practices and organizational commitment were largely moderated by the degree of perception of employees’ on organizational support and procedural justice. However, the findings support the previous claims made by researches on Mediation Model that HRM practices can be valuable tool in managing and maintaining organizational commitment but their effect are neither direct nor unconditional.