HRM practice and employee attitudes: different measures – different results Fiona Edgar and Alan Geare Department of Management, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand Abstract Purpose – To test the relationship between HRM practice and employee work-related attitudes and examine whether different approaches to measurement of HRM gives different results. Design/methodology/approach – HRM practice was measured in three ways: additive measures of numbers of HRM practice, employer reports and employee reports of strength of practices. Employee attitudes were measured using organisational commitment, job satisfaction and organisational fairness scales. Matched data sets tested the relationships. Findings – Statistically significant results were obtained between HRM practice and employee attitudes, but only when employee reports of the strength of HRM practice were used to measure HRM. Research limitations/implications – This study emphasises that care must be taken in HRM research to use suitable data sources, with employees being a valuable, but under-used, source. Practical implications – Effective HRM policies and practices should be measured by their perceived quality, not simply by the number of practices introduced. Originality/value – This study highlights that there are perceptual differences as to the strength of HRM practices and emphasises the importance of allowing employee voice in HRM research. Keywords Human resource management, Employee attitudes, Behaviour Paper type Research paper Introduction The concept of human resource management (HRM) has received focussed attention for around 20 years, with the catalyst being that “many US companies found they were being rivalled and in some instances overtaken, in markets they had dominated” (Ehrlich, 1994, p. 492). As Lodge (1985, p. 319) observes: By the early 1980s there was still little disagreement that US corporate managers, employees and trade unions would have to change their ways in order to compete successfully for markets in America and abroad. Harvard university academics introduced a new compulsory component of HRM into their MBA syllabus and reinforced this so-called “Harvard Model” with influential books and articles (Beer et al., 1984; Walton, 1985b; Walton and Lawrence, 1985). While there would surely have been a genuine desire to help US business, US society, and even US employees, there was also “a long-term effort to ensure that the Harvard Business School faculty provided leadership in human resource management” (Walton and Lawrence, 1985, p. xx). The Harvard concept stresses that HRM should lead to employee commitment – not simply as a means to employer objectives of improved productivity and profits, but The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister www.emeraldinsight.com/0048-3486.htm PR 34,5 534 Received March 2003 Revised April 2004 Accepted May 2005 Personnel Review Vol. 34 No. 5, 2005 pp. 534-549 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0048-3486 DOI 10.1108/00483480510612503