ILR Impact Brief - Employee Attributions about HR Practices Lead to Customer Satisfaction

Excerpt] The perceived reasons why management chooses a set of HR practices are linked to employee satisfaction, commitment, and on-the-job behavior. Employees individually make their own attributions about the purposes behind the practices, which are, in turn, associated with employees’ attitudes: a perception that management cares about service (or product) quality and employee well-being is associated with positive attitudes, but a sense that management is intent on cost cutting or employee exploitation is associated with negative attitudes. Furthermore, individual attitudes are shared within work units and in their aggregate are associated with “organizational citizenship behaviors;” i.e., group-level satisfaction and commitment are associated with intra-unit helping behaviors, which are linked to enhanced unit performance and customer satisfaction.