Unravelling the Path to Organizational Commitment: The Mediating Role of Perceived Organizational Support and the Moderating Role of Career Stages in High-performance Work Systems

The study explains how and when high-performance work practices (HPWPs) positively relate to organizational commitment. Specifically, it tries to unleash the black box mechanism between perceived HPWPs and organizational commitment through mediating and moderating factors from the social exchange perspective. A quantitative research design and a cross-sectional approach are used to collect data with the help of a self-administered questionnaire from 250 employees of different cities in Punjab, Pakistan. According to the findings, when employees are in the maintenance stage instead of the establishment and advancement stages, HPWPs are significantly positively associated with perceived organizational support (POS). It expands our understanding of human resources (HR) practices and empirically investigates the significance of career stages in this context. The contribution of this study is twofold; first, our study adds to the body of empirical work on HPWPs and the discussion of organizational commitment. It includes a more comprehensive understanding of social exchange relationships in the form of social, human and cultural capital that we know as POS, which organizations provide to employees. Second, by examining the function of POS in an HPWP environment, it identifies the antecedents of POS through HR practices at the employee level. It shows that POS generates strong working relationships among employees through the HPWPs process.