High Performance Human Resource Practices, Identification with Organizational Values and Goals, and Service-Oriented Organizational Citizenship Behavior: A Review of Literature and Proposed Model

Increasing competition within the hospitality industry has recognized the importance of service quality as a key business differentiation strategy. Proactive involvement of employees is a vital component of the service delivery, which in turn, enhances customer satisfaction and loyalty. Hence, hospitality organizations, particularly hotels, need to encourage their employees to perform voluntary behaviors that go “beyond their call of duty”. These behaviors are referred to as service-oriented organizational citizenship behaviors (hereafter labeled as SO-OCBs). A review of the literature indicates that an organization’s human resource management (henceforth labeled as HRM) practices are instrumental in establishing the tone of the employee-employer relationship, which subsequently affects employees’ display of discretionary functional service-related behaviors. Specifically, high-performance HRM practices can nurture a relational employment relationship, leading to internalization of organizational values and goals. This, in turn, would induce employees to engage in greater SO-OCBs. However, conceptual and empirical work explaining the mechanism by which high-performance HRM practices relate to SO-OCBs remains scarce. Therefore, this paper aims to construct a model linking a set of high-performance HRM practices (selective hiring, communication, appraisal, and reward) and SO-OCBs. Identification with organizational values and goals is posited as a mediator in the proposed relationship. A discussion of the literature to support the proposed framework is furnished.