A universalistic perspective for explaining the relationship between HRM practices and firm performance at different points in time

Purpose – According to the universalistic perspective, organizations from different sectors, across industries, and through different time periods should use a series of select human resource management practices (HRMP). The main purpose of this paper is to investigates whether there is any difference in the relationship between HRMPs and organizational performance across time (stable or not). Design/methodology/approach – The data for this study are taken from two cross‐sectional surveys. The firms included in this research were selected from a sample of organizations from the public and private sectors based on firms that were included in Dun's Guide, Israel 1995/6 and 1999/2000 , the Israeli Business Directory . In 1996, questionnaires were completed by 102 of the 230 designated companies. In 2000, using an identical sampling methodology and a similar questionnaire, the result was 104 useable responses of the 275 firms. Findings – In general, results for both periods of time indicated that several HRMP contribute to enhanced organizational performance. Firms exhibited higher organizational performance when they treated their employees as assets and invested in their abilities, enhanced their power in the decision making process and used them as the main source for new employment. Originality/value – From the theoretical perspective we suggest that researchers and HR managers have to take into account the culture context in each country when they try to export successful HRMP from one country to another. A major practical contribution of this research is that it demonstrates the importance of training and employee participation vis‐à‐vis organizational performance.