Exposure, participation in human resource management practices and employee attitudes

Existing evidence on Human Resource Management (HRM) strategy has been limited to separate analyses of the relationship between exposure to or participation in HRM and employee attitudes which affect overall firm performance. This paper is the first to integrate the two perspectives in a single analysis. Using employer-employee matched data with both exposure and participation measures, we find that a high exposure to HRM is not sufficient to improve employee attitudes when the level of employee participation in HRM is taken into account. Furthermore, based on a Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition, the results suggest that employee involvement in HRM practices affects the value employees place on their personal, occupational and workplace characteristics.