The effect of human resource management system on employees’ commitment: The mediating role of the AMO model

Zeyad Almutawa, Nuttawuth Muenjohn and Jiaying Zhang
Additional contact information
Jiaying Zhang: RMIT University, Australia

Journal of Developing Areas, 2016, vol. 50, issue 6, 17-29

Abstract: Although the field of Human Resource Management has been extensively studied in the previous decades, still remaining theoretical and methodological questions are yet to be answered. These questions were found to evolve around how to conceptualize and operationalize HRM as well as the mechanism through which HRM affects performance. Consequently, numerous models were proposed to address these questions and among which the AMO model is considered the one that grasp the attention of many scholars. The current study, therefore, aims to address these questions by investigating the mediating effect of employees’ Ability (A), Motivation (M), and Opportunity to participate (O) model on the relationship between HRM system and employees’ affective commitment. An abstract level of HRM system was operationalized and hypothesized to have an indirect effect on employees’ affective commitment via the AMO model. A cross-sectional data was gathered through a questionnaire survey distributed to 800 employees working in the telecommunications sector in Kuwait. Structural equation modelling (SEM) via AMOS22 was used to build and test the hypothesized model. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) has revealed that the abstract level HRM system is better conceptualized as having three categories namely, Skill enhancing HRM practices, Motivation enhancing HRM practices, and Empowerment enhancing HRM practices. Moreover, the results have indicated that HRM system significantly and positively affect employees’ ability, motivation, and opportunity to participate. More importantly, the results have supported that the relationship between HRM system and employees’ affective commitment is partially mediated by the AMO model. This study has contributed to the field of Human Resource Management by empirically justifying the critical role that employees’ ability, motivation, and opportunity to participate (AMO) have in increasing employees’ affective commitment. Accordingly, the current study is directing the attention of the telecommunications companies’ managers toward designing their HRM system in ways that increase the three dimensions of the AMO model, which inn turn could result in increased level of commitment.

Keywords: HRM system; AMO model; Affective commitment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M12 M54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://muse.jhu.edu/article/626790

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jda:journl:vol.50:year:2016:issue6:pp:17-29

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Developing Areas from Tennessee State University, College of Business Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Abu N.M. Wahid ().