How employees perceive HRM practices: differences between public and private organizations

Abstract

In recent years, there is a general consensus regarding the importance of Human Resource Management (HRM) practices for the success or failure of organizations (Kehoe & Wright, 2013). The contextual theory (Johns, 2006) argues that the contexts in which human activity take place– nations, organizations, industries, and professions–are crucial, and have an impact on the nature of that activity. In such cases, omnibus and discrete context can have an impact (Johns, 2006), and workers might experience the same process differently in different contexts. Implementing HRM best practices without taking into consideration various contexts (Jackson & Schuler, 1995), may produce different and sometimes conflicting perspectives from those expected (Nishii, Lepak & Schneider, 2008). Our objective is to determine if there are any differences in how employees perceive HRM in public and private organizations, and to characterize the nature of those differences if they exist.