Human Resource Practices and Job Performance in Pakistan, Analysis of a Hypothesized Model

Human resource management is an emerging field of study in Pakistan. The purpose of this study is to identify the best human resource practices in the context of Job performance and offer recommendations for future research. This study reviewed many published articles in the major academic journals, focusing on the most important human resource practices, the relations between human resource practices and job performance. This study finds that Pakistan-based research on the human resource practices has been actively discussed in the major theoretical debates in the literature, and that Pakistan-based studies have extended previous models by identifying additional intervening variables. A hypothesized model on the basis of extensive review of the literature has been developed. It is recommend that future research in this area be more responsive to emerging methodological concerns of the field, and pay more attention to Pakistan-specific issues that may have significant organizational consequences.


Introduction
The field of human resource management (HRM) was emerged as a sovereign intellectual field in the United States (US) since long.Relationship between human resource management practices and job performance in Pakistan as a major driving force for improving the productivity and efficiency is yet to be explored.To authenticate this view, a number of researchers have investigated theoretically, as well as empirically, how and whether HRM practices or a bundle of practices affect organizational outcomes (Delery and Dotty 1996;Huselid 1995;MacDuffie 1995).More recently, international researchers have examined the applicability of USbased findings in other national contexts (Bae and Lawler 2000;Guthrie 2001;Takeuchi et al. 2007).
As public sector organizations have experienced dramatic changes in their ways of managing people, academic interest in the organizational consequences of HRM has grown accordingly in Pakistan-based management.Recent reviews, such as those of rehman, Ajmal Waheed, and Hamid Rafiq (2010) reported the growing importance of Human Resource Management studies in Pakistan-based HRM literature.As this subject is attracting increasing number of researchers, it would be useful to closely examine the current standing of the research and identify the ways to effectively move the field forward.To serve these needs, this review recognizes the contributions of extant research on the HR-performance relationship in Pakistan, and offers recommendations for future research by reviewing empirical studies published both in prestigious international and local journals.Main focus on whether and how the Pakistan-based HRM literature has participated in current theoretical and methodological dialogue in the global HRM literature.Over the last twenty years, there has been an exponential growth in the number of studies on HR-Performance link that have appeared in prestigious international journals.Meyer (2006) has shown a great concern about the scholars who tend to be overly receptive to western theories and consequently, they have made limited contribution to the global scholarly discourse.By putting Pakistan-based HRM studies in the context of the global HRM, there is an opportunity to reflect on the relevance of the above-mentioned criticisms to the emerging stream of Pakistan-based HRM research.
Pakistan is a fast developing country in the South-Asia region.Apart from being a natural resources rich country, Pakistan is widely known as an open and forward-thinking country, willing to experiment with innovative HR practices and various models that will assist it in seeking an effective diversification of its economy.With the influx of multinational companies over the past decade, Pakistan has achieved an impressive mix of domestic and foreign companies.The growing competition in a Pakistan market (with a little over 170 million population) has made both domestic and foreign companies intensely productivity conscious.This, in turn, has generated a strong interest and enthusiasm among organizations to search actively for the best management practices in all fields, including HRM, to improve their efficiency and overall performance.Thus, Pakistan offers an appropriate setting to examine how a bundle of HR practice, such as job analysis, job design, job evaluation, job security which have received considerable attention in Western countries as a useful HR planning tool, affects job performance in a developing country.The present study may be seen as an opportunity to validate and extend the findings of HR-performance studies conducted in Western countries to a non-Western context.
The paper consists of four sections.The first section explains how the articles were selected.Then, a brief overview is provided of the important characteristics of the Pakistan-based HRM research literature.The third section discusses how Pakistan-based HRM research has interacted with the major debates in global HRM literature.Finally, this study will provide some recommendations for future research.The major purpose of this study is to survey the current status of empirical research about HRM, particularly on the issue of the HRM-job performance relationship.Empirical studies were reviewed those focus on HR-Performance link and to establish a framework in the context of a non-western country like Pakistan.

Journal and Article Selection
This study carefully selected journals on the basis of three criteria.First, most influential management journals were chosen.Four empirical journals with the highest rankings were selected referring to the impact factor scores in the 2006 journal citation report by ISI Web of Science, Academy of Management Journal, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Human Resource Management Journal and International Journal of Management.Second, Journal of organizational Behaviour, Journal of Management, and International Journal of Hospitality and Management and Human Performance were added because these have shown to be the most popular outlets for HR-Performance research.Third, one leading psychology journals, Journal of Applied Psychology was also included.
In total, 18 articles have been identified from the major academic journals.Table 1 summarizes the number of articles published in these journals year-wise.According to the review, publications in the year 2000 and onward were selected.In general, the academic interest in the subject of HRM seems to be growing, as HR managers and researchers are paying great attention to the role of HRM in the global context.In reviewing the articles examining the relationship between human resource practices and performance, this study first sought to code the articles on a number of dimensions like topic, human resource practice discussed and major findings.A summary of the articles is provided in table 2. Selected articles have been tabulated to review the topic of article, HR practice discussed and major findings.
Within the global literature on the HR-performance relationship, it has been observed that scholarly debates remained on two issues: Universally recognized effective HR systems, or the best practice -best fit debate.Mediating mechanism between HR systems and performance, or 'the Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM).

Theoretical Foundations and Methodology
Attention has been given to the questions addressing Pakistan-based HRM research, one is whether the established relationship between human resources practices and job performance would work and whether the alignment between human resource management and organizational strategy will affect organizational performance in the emerging economy of Pakistan?Three out of 18 studies explicitly referred to the significance of job analysis, two articles referred to the job design, one job evaluation, one job security, four job performance, two job satisfaction and five on turnover as their major theoretical background.
Based on the review of the articles mentioned above, linking human resource practices with the job performance, a hypothesized model has been developed and presented in Figure 1.In fact many of the approaches and concepts have been into a composite model.In this model there are eight (08) variables out of those four (04) are independent variables one ( 01) is dependent variables whereas one ( 01) is an intervening variable remaining two (02) are the outcome of dependant variable.All the human resource practices included in the model have been derived from the research conducted in the west but applied in the non-western country.
Using data from the public sector regulatory authorities Rehman (2010) demonstrated that human resource practice like job analysis, job design, job evaluation, job security were positively associated with the employee job performance.Relying on the qualitative data of 568 employees from the public sector organization of Pakistan, Rehman Safdar (2010) suggested that HR practices job analysis and job design were necessary for Public Sector organizations to enhance job performance.These articles claimed that their measures of the Human Resource practices in Pakistan are consistent with the indices used in western studies, suggesting that the argument of human resource practices universal effectiveness is cross-nationally proven to be valid.In summary, several Pakistan-based HRM studies support the best practice argument, and provide initial evidence that these HR practices were likely to promote employee's job performance which leads towards the organizational performance even in transitional economies with collectivistic culture.

Sample:
The sample for this research was drawn from the employees of public sector authorities regulating telecommunication, power, oil & gas, electronic media and corporate, capital and baking sectors of Pakistan and some of the organizations being controlled by these regulators.Fifteen (15) organizations were selected for the research.50 questionnaires were distributed amongst each organization.The platform which helped to choose the sectors and the organizations was the data taken from Pakistan Public Administration Research Centre, Establishment Division, Annual Statistical Bulletin of Autonomous Bodies Employees and website of these organizations.Organizations response rate % (N= 568) out of 750.Detail is given below in table-3 Measure: No prior instrument was accessible to measure the sensitivity of HR practices like job analysis from the point of view of public sector organisations of Pakistan, a new instrument was developed on the basis of an exhaustive review of literature on human resource management and personal management practices.Clifford (1994) studied that organisations that frequently carry out job analysis get a better awareness of their employees' skills, knowledge and abilities, strengths and weaknesses, to initiate timely and accurate decisions to improve the deficiencies in their skills and job behaviour.Importance of Job analysis for this study was measured on 6-point Likert scale has responses ranging from 0 (Not performed) to 5 (when it is felt essential).
Practice of Job analysis for this study was measured on 6-point Likert scale having responses ranging from 0 (Not performed) to 5 (when it is felt essential).Since the present study was interested in the frequency or regularity with which organisations perform job analysis, the survey participants were requested to report as to how often their organizations conducted job analyses.The responses were recorded as , when it is felt essential, after four to five years, after every three years, every two years, every year, and not performed.Job design was measured with 5 items on a 5-point likert scale, respondents were asked to respond to the different aspects of their jobs.The Appendix-A provides detail of items which has been used to measure job design.The measure has good reliability properties.Cronbach's alpha value was 0.78 .Job evaluation was measured with 2 items on a 5-point likert scale, respondents were asked to respond to the worth of job in terms of their financial needs and salary.The measure has moderate reliability properties.Cronbach's alpha value was 0.62 Job security was measured with 5 items on a 5-point likert scale, respondents were asked to respond to the different aspects of security in their jobs.The Appendix-A provides detail of items which has been used to measure job security.The measure has moderate reliability properties.Cronbach's alpha value was 0.60.Job performance was measured in two dimensions i.e., working performance and monetary performance.Working performance was defined in terms of employee retention, achievement of the goals of organization, employee productivity and objectivity of performance evaluation system.Monetary performance was measured in terms of monetary and non-monetary benefits of the employees.Job performance was measured with 6 items on a 5point likert scale, respondents were asked to respond to the different aspects of their jobs like performance enhancement on job, objective achievement and consistency with the goals of the organization, objectivity of the performance evaluation system, monetary and non-monetary benefits.The measure has good reliability properties.Cronbach's alpha value was 0.77.
Job satisfaction was assessed Respondents indicated the degree to which they were satisfied with the six factors inner satisfaction, respect, sense of fulfilment, peer support, cared by the organization.Five point likert scale was used. 1 (strongly disagree), 2(disagree), 3 (neither agree nor disagree), 4 (agree) and 5 (strongly agree).Cronbach's alpha was calculated to test the reliability of the data and was found to be 0.72.Retention was measured with 6 items, respondents were asked to respond, on a 5-point likert scale, 1 (strongly disagree), 2 (disagree), 3 (neither agree nor disagree), 4 (agree) and 5 (strongly agree).The Appendix-A provides detail of items which has been used to measure job retention.The measure has moderate reliability properties.Cronbach's alpha value was 0.57.Recruitment KSA was measured with 5 items on a 5-point likert scale, respondents were asked to respond to the different aspects of their skills, knowledge and abilities.The Appendix-A provides detail of items which has been used to measure Recruitment.The measure has good reliability properties.Cronbach's alpha value was 0.73

Figure 1: Theoretical Frame wor
When regression analyses was performed for all HR practices, except Job analysis 2 on job performance, it was observed that the p-value < 0.001 and R-adjusted 0.426 shows that the variables together excluding JA 2 have a significant impact on job performance.Regression coefficients of JA 1 (0.044 ), Job Design (0.279), Job Evaluation (0.060 ) and job satisfaction (0.155 ) were having significant and positive impact on job

Independent variables
performance with p-value 0.043, < 0.001, 0.000, < 0.001 and 0.034 respectively while Job Satisfaction and Job Retention again have not a significant impact on job performance as per research model.The value of Rsquared was 0.434, Adjusted R-squared 0.426 and Standard Error of Estimates was 0.496.

Discussion
The existence of a set of universally effective HR practices has been one of the critical and continuing subjects of debate in HRM.Proponents of the universalistic, or 'best practice' approach, argue that there are an inherently effective set of HR practices, and suggest that the more similar an organization's HR systems are to the ideal HR systems, the more likely the organization will achieve high performance (Huselid, 1995;Pfeffer, 1994).Recent studies argued that the link between HRM and performance was moderated not only by organizational characteristics, but also by external contextual factors.Empirical studies have demonstrated that the effectiveness of high-involvement HR practices is moderated by a number of organizational and environmental contingencies, such as strategic orientation (Delery and Doty, 1996), target segments of the market (Batt 2002), industry characteristics (Datta, Guthrie and Wright, 2005), and historical context (Appellbaum and Batt, 1994) and recruitment, KSA ( Rehman et al;2010) Employing theoretical frameworks mainly developed in US-based research, scholars have explored the crossnational relevance of best practice -best fit debate.For example, some researchers argued that highperformance HR practices increased organizational performance, regardless of the geographical regions in which the organizations were operating.Empirical findings supported this argument in several countries, such as New Zealand (Guthrie 2001), European nations (Horgan and Muhlau 2006), Japan (Takeuchi et al, 2007), South Korea (Bae and Lawler 2000) and Pakistan ( Rehman et;2010 ).Other researchers, however, questioned the cross-national validity of the US-based HRM models, and found evidence for the significant effects of contextual variables, such as institutional constraints (Lowe, Delbrigge, and Oliver, 1997) and culture (Kirkman and Shapiro, 2001).

Contribution of Pakistan-based research:
Pakistan is an interesting and important context in which to reexamine and extend the debate on HR best practices.First, the organization-environment relationship in Pakistan is different from that of liberal market economies, such as the US (Shenkar and Glinow, 1994;Whitley 2000).In Pakistan, the boundary between autonomous bodies and Governments organizations is less defined.
Although marketization has changed the nature of the business-government relationship in a fundamental way, local and federal governments still have strong influence over many aspects of the management of economic organizations.Therefore, organizations may not always have the autonomy to 'strategically' choose their HR policies (Wei and Lau 2008).
In addition, non-market factors, such as business-government relations, have a significant impact on organization performance (Peng, 2003).Therefore, there is a possibility that the relationship between HR systems and organization performance might be different in the transitional economy of Pakistan.Second, Pakistanis people have unique cultural values that may affect the cross-national validity of US-based models on the relationship between HR systems and organization performance.For example, Pakistani employees may be comfortable with a hierarchical environment, and they may work more effectively under competent leaders than in self-managed.If this is the case, high-involvement work systems that emphasize the delegation of decision power to the top management may not function as well as they did in countries with low-powerdistance culture.Third, Pakistan is adopting a new set of HR practices under a different historical background to those of developed countries.Therefore, the same set of practices may carry different socially constructed meanings in Pakistan to those in other countries.
However, Pakistan has followed quite different trajectory.In the process of economic transformation, Pakistan authorities condemned state-socialist HR practices as sources of inefficiency.Therefore, some practices, such as job security, which is often considered as an element of the best HR practice, are considered a symbol of the inefficient old system (Xiao and Biorkman, 2006).The unique characteristics of Pakistan described above collectively suggest that Pakistan-based studies may offer valuable information for the cross-national validity of the existing theories.If a model developed in another country is shown to be valid in Pakistan as well as elsewhere, there can be more confidence about the universality of the knowledge.The uniqueness of Pakistan also offers great opportunities for scholars to identify interesting boundary conditions for the existing models.
This review suggests that to date, the Pakistan-based research has contributed to the field of HRM in three ways.First, it provides initial evidence that the best HR practices may lead to positive organizational outcomes in marketized Pakistan.Second, Pakistan-based research provides evidence for the cross-national validity of strategic contingency models; specifically, several studies demonstrated that the business strategy moderates the HR-performance relationship in Pakistan as in other countries.Third, Pakistan-based studies have identified several interesting contextual factors that have rarely been examined in prior studies, so the research extends understanding of the relationship between high-performance work practices and organization performance.
These points are discussed in greater detail below.Cross-national validity of the best practice approach Pakistan-based studies published in some journals commonly suggest that the HR practices have a positive impacts on Job performance in Pakistan.Rehman and Waheed (2010) demonstrated that job analysis is significantly and positively related to job performance measures of public sector organizations in Pakistan.Rehman, Waheed, and Rafiq (2010) showed that HR practices were positively associated with job performance outcomes in the public sector organizations in Pakistan.

Future Research Directions:
The strength of the present study can serve as a useful guide for future research efforts.One avenue for future research would be to expand the current model with other relevant moderating variables such as an organization's HR strategy and management's leadership style.The possible contribution of flexible working environment, employees empowerment and other best HR practices to job performance also needs to be considered in future research.Empirical investigations of the interaction effects of such HR practices, in particular, will help further elaborate the process by which these HR practices contribute to job performance.A challenging opportunity for future research is to document, with appropriate measures and research designs, of HR practices, job analysis is indeed a key practice in 'systems of high-performance HR practices' identified in the HR literature (Greer, 2001).
The second avenue for future research would be to establish and examine the research hypotheses with casestudy and longitudinal designs.It would be worthwhile to see how the performance of an employee changes over time as it implements a bundle of HR practices or an individual HR practice.Research in this direction might begin with small-scale pre-post types of study to compare the performance of an employee at different points, before and after they implement a certain HR practice.The present study may serve as an impetus for HR professionals and practitioners alike to undertake such studies.

Conclusion
Human resource management is an emerging field of study in Pakistan.This study reviewed recently published articles on the most important topic of HRM, the relations between HRM and performance.This qualitative review suggests that Pakistan-based HRM studies have actively participated in major theoretical debates in HRM literature.Pakistan-based HRM studies demonstrated that major findings of US-based HRM models can be extended to Pakistan, despite the different institutional and cultural environments.In addition, Pakistan-based studies have extended previous HRM models, by identifying additional intervening variables.However, it was observed that this body of literature has not yet responded to the recently emerging methodological concerns in HRM.It is suggested that future work in this line of study needs to employ a more exploratory research strategy, and to address Pakistan-specific HR issues that may have significant organizational consequences.
This study reveals a diverse aspect of a practical operation of human resource management in Pakistan.It shows that human resource planning; the most critical element of personnel function is emerging.The task of acquiring sound and credible employees belongs to the Human Resources Management (HRM).Since, HRM is a known field under the concept of management, it is expected that several theories, models and tools have been developed to promote its manifestations.Among these theories one is Job Analysis, which is an organized study of a job to categorize its major components.The job analysis process normally observe the job which is being carried out, asking employees and supervisors questions about the job, tasks, working conditions and KSA (Knowledge, Skills and Abilities).
In an increasingly competitive and turbulent market, organizations are largely dependent on their employees for success.The challenge of identifying the right man for the right job, individuals to fill public sector positions is to be met.A large number of potential workforce is available in the employment market but the challenge for organizations is to identify and select those candidates who could perform effectively and efficiently.The research highlighted that the starting point in any recruitment process is an accurate analysis of the job.This important aspect of human resource management was being ignored particularly in public sector jobs.Selection and the assessments chosen for the selection process should be done on the basis of the requirements of the job.Knowledge is essential on part of the organization in terms of what constitutes good job performance; what kind of knowledge, skills and abilities are required and what measures would be effective in assessing these.
Generally, the findings of this study were found reliable with the studies conducted in western countries on the contribution of human resource practices related to the job performance.Consequently, the worth of present study lies in the reality that it offers a requisite rationale of theoretical models built on the basis of studies conducted in the western organizations.The present study illustrates the efforts looking for establishing a Human Resource-Performance linkage by developing a specific conceptual framework to demonstrate the progression by which the practice of job analysis and job performance might be correlated and by testing it with empirical data from a non-western country.It should be emphasized that the likelihood of Job Analysisjob Performance relationship has not been expansively explored in the South-Asia or even in the western context.