The Combined Effect of Professional and Community Strategic Orientations on the Adoption of High-Commitment HRM in Nonprofit Organizations

Abstract

High-commitment human resource management (HRM) includes practices, such as autonomy, information, suggestion-making, recognition, equity of rewards, training, and career management. Drawing on notions of horizontal and vertical fit, previous research highlights the relationship between strategic orientation and the adoption of high-commitment HRM. We further examine this relationship in nonprofit organizations (NPOs), given their dual professional and community strategic orientation. Based on a sample of 200 NPOs, our study shows that (a) high-commitment HRM practices form a coherent higher-order construct; (b) professional and community strategic orientations have additional effects on the adoption of high-commitment HRM; (c) the effect of professional strategic orientation on the adoption of high-commitment HRM is partially indirect through community strategic orientation. NPOs often feel the need to reconnect with their core values. High-commitment HRM constitutes an innovative way to unite employees by and for shared values and offers the possibility of reconciling professional and community orientations.

Keywords

human resource management professional strategic orientation community strategic orientation dual strategic orientation

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