Transforming Ethiopian higher education institutions: Multilevel analysis of high-performance work systems, engagement, and justice

Abstract

Perceived HPWSs (PS-HPWSs) are increasingly indicated for understanding the relationship between organizational HPWSs and employee-level outcomes. However, the mediating effect of perceived HPWSs is inconsistent and unclear. Hence, relying on integrated HPWS strength and signal theories, we tested whether PS-HPWSs positively mediated the relationship between MR-HPWSs and engagement with data collected from multiple and multilevel sources of 102 department heads and 360 employees of three Ethiopian public higher education institutions from June 03/2023 to September 10/2023. We also tested the positive moderation impact of procedural justice between MR-HPWSs and PS-HPWSs and its conditional effect on engagement using the MLmed Beta macro SPSS package. Therefore, procedural justice moderates the mediation of PS-HPWSs between manager-rated HPWSs and employee engagement. Hence, this study will address the inconsistency of PS-HPWSs between manager-rated HPWSs through the moderation of procedural justice (one of nine features of HPWS strength); this in turn has an ample effect on engagement. Accordingly, further research should include one or more of the nine HPWS features as moderators of the mediating effect of PS-HPWSs.

Keywords

• SHRMP
• Managerial-rated HPWS
• PS-HPWS
• Procedural justice
• Engagement