Transformative HR practices and employee task performance in high-tech firms: The role of employee adaptivity

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship of perceived transformative human resource (HR) practices and employee task performance. Drawing on evidence-based approach, the transformative HR practices intend to transform employees’ behavior to cope with organizational change. This study intends to answer how does the perceived transformative HR practices influence employees’ behavioral capability to enhance their task performance. This investigation proposes that the perceived transformative HR practices positively affect employees task performance, however, employee adaptivity mediates the relationship between them.

The authors used a random sample of 224 employees, from a large high-tech company in China, to test the hypotheses. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to determine the perceived transformative HR practices in the context of a high-tech firm. The authors performed multiple linear regression analysis to examine the proposed model.

The results of this study indicate that the perceived transformative HR practices positively influence employee adaptivity and task performance. Furthermore, employee adaptivity mediates the relationship between the perceived transformative HR practices and employee task performance. Therefore, employee adaptivity illuminates and explains the underlying mechanism of how the perceived transformative HR practices lead to employee task performance.

Data collected from single firm may limit the generalizability of the findings and cross-sectional research design may raise the concern of common method bias. Future studies should test and validate the operationalization of the perceived transformative HR practices in different research contexts and with larger sample size. Organizations should design and implement transformative HR practices to cope with change. Furthermore, organizational managers should encourage and facilitate employee adaptivity to achieve better performance.

This study contributes to change management and the HR literature by identifying and operationalizing the perceived transformative HR practices as a predictor of employee adaptivity and task performance. Through the underlying mechanism of employee adaptivity between the perceived transformative HR practices and employee task performance, this study provides a new perspective to look at the HR-performance relationship in the change process.