Special Issue: Call for papers
Exploring trade-offs between employee well-being and organizational performance:
The role of Human Resource Management
Editors: Karina Van De Voorde, Marc Van Veldhoven and Riccardo Peccei
In this special issue we invite theoretical and empirical contributions on trade-offs between employee
well-being and performance, and the role that HRM plays therein.
The impact that systems of HR practices have on organizational performance is at the very heart of
HRM scholarship and has attracted by far the greatest attention in the HRM literature over the past 25
years (e.g., Combs et al., 2006). Starting in the late 1990s, researchers also began to focus more directly
on employee-centered outcomes (such as employee well-being) and to look more explicitly at the effect
that HR practices have on employee well-being (e.g., Guest, 1999). The role of employee well-being as
a mechanism through which HR practices affect organizational performance has also been increasingly
studied (Peccei, 2004). There is now a considerable body of research examining the effects of HR
practices on both employee and organizational outcomes (Jiang et al., 2012; Peccei et al., 2013).
The empirical evidence to date about the triangle of relationships between HRM, employee well-being
and organizational performance shows that HRM has a positive effect on different aspects of
organizational performance (including productivity, profits, customer satisfaction) through establishing
positive employee happiness effects (including job satisfaction and commitment) (Jiang et al., 2012;
Van De Voorde et al., 2012). However, despite this rosy pattern of results, a relatively small number of
empirical studies indicate that HR practices involve higher levels of work intensification, which
negatively affect the health well-being (including exhaustion, stress, and burnout) of the workforce
(Jackson et al., 2014; Van De Voorde et al., 2012). These findings indicate the possibility of a complex
pattern of effects and trade-offs between HRM and different aspects of well-being and organizational
performance outcomes: HR practices may, for example, benefit organizational performance and one
type of well-being while harming another type of well-being.
Despite growing indications of the existence of trade-offs, many questions remain (Boxall et al., 2016;
Paauwe, 2009; Peccei et al., 2013). A first set of questions has to do with how different combinations
of HR practices are associated with different aspects of both well-being and organizational
1
performance. Different sub-dimensions of HR systems have been shown to affect employee and
organizational outcomes in disparate ways (Jiang et al., 2012). Which specific (sets of) HR practices
contribute to optimizing and or satisficing specific outcomes, however, remains unclear. Hence,
research needs to examine how different combinations of HR practices are associated with different
aspects of both well-being and organizational performance. For example, what are the main HR
practices that help to sustain happy and efficient workplaces? To what extent do some HR practices
counteract positive or negative well-being and performance effects of other HR dimensions?
Second, our understanding of the actual processes and mechanisms that underpin the link between
HRM, well-being and organizational performance is still quite limited. More research needs to explore
in what ways (bundles of) HR practices affect different types of employee and managerial outcomes.
Particularly important here is a better understanding of how HR practices may translate into lower
employee health well-being. For instance, do performance-oriented HR practices result in decreased
employee health well-being by increasing job pressures and lowering the quality of work life of
employees?
A third set of questions concerns possible contingency factors of the HRM - well-being - organizational
performance relationship. Although a range of individual, processual, organizational, cultural and
institutional factors may affect the link between HRM, employee-well-being and organizational
performance, there is little systematic research on the conditions under which HRM affects well-being
and organizational performance. For example, does the relationship between HRM, employee wellbeing and organizational performance differ across societal (e.g. institutional and cultural) contexts?
And, do organizational factors (e.g. firm size) or individual differences (e.g. employee age) explain
why certain HR practices are more effective in optimizing different aspects of wellbeing and
organizational performance?
The overarching goal of this special issue is to enrich our theoretical and empirical understanding of the
trade-offs between employee well-being and organizational performance and the role of HRM therein,
taking full account of the multilevel nature of the phenomena involved. Besides generating theoretical
knowledge on the nature of the trade-offs involved, we are interested in studies generating
methodologically rigorous but actionable knowledge that can be applied by practitioners to design and
implement HRM in such a way that organizational and individual employee concerns and interests are
optimized and aligned.
Submission deadline: 1 March 2017 at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/hrmj, indicating “Exploring
trade-offs between employee well-being and organizational performance: The role of Human Resource
Management” as the Special Issue.
2
Please direct questions about the submission process, or any administrative matter, to the editorial
office hrmj@nuigalway.ie Queries related to the focus of papers or other queries related to the call for
papers should be directed to the guest editors. Karina Van De Voorde (f.c.v.d.voorde@uvt.nl), Marc
Van Veldhoven (m.j.p.m.vanveldhoven@uvt.nl) or Riccardo Peccei (riccardo.peccei@kcl.ac.uk)
References
Boxall, P., Guthrie, J. P., and Paauwe, J. (2016). Editorial introduction: progressing our understanding
of the mediating variables linking HRM, employee well-being and organisational performance.
Human Resource Management Journal, 26: 103–111. doi: 10.1111/1748-8583.12104.
Combs, J., Liu, Y., Hall, A., and Ketchen, D. (2006). How much do high‐performance work practices
matter? A meta‐analysis of their effects on organizational performance. Personnel Psychology,
59: 501-528.
Guest, D. E. (1999). Human resource management the workers' verdict. Human Resource Management
Journal, 9: 5-25.
Jackson, S. E., Schuler, R. S. and Jiang, K. (2014). An aspirational framework for strategic human
resource management. Academy of Management Annals, 8: 1-56.
Jiang, K., Lepak, D., Hu, J. and Baer, J. (2012). How does human resource management influence
organizational outcomes? A meta-analytic investigation of mediating mechanisms. Academy of
Management Journal, 55: 6, 1264–1294.
Paauwe, J. (2009). HRM and performance: Achievements, methodological issues and prospects.
Journal of Management Studies, 46: 129-142.
Peccei, R. (2004). Human resource management and the search for the happy workplace. Inaugural
address. Rotterdam: Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM).
Peccei, R, Van De Voorde, K, and Van Veldhoven, M. (2013). HRM, well-being and performance: A
theoretical and empirical review. In J. Paauwe. D. Guest and P.W. Wright (Eds.), HRM and
performance: Achievement & Challenges, pp. 15-47. Padstow, UK: Wiley.
Van De Voorde, K., Paauwe, J. and Van Veldhoven, M. (2012). Employee well-being and the HRM–
organizational performance relationship: A review of quantitative studies. International Journal
of Management Reviews, 14: 4, 391-407.
3