African Journal of Business Management Vol.6 (41), pp. 10591-10595, 17 October, 2012 Available online at http://www.academicjournals.org/AJBM DOI: 10.5897/AJBM12.1169 ISSN 1993-8233 ©2012 Academic Journals Full Length Research Paper The impact of human resource management practices on corporate performance: Empirical study in Jordanian commercial banks Adnan M. Rawashdeh 1 * and Izzat karim Al-Adwan 2 1 Department of Economic and Business, Girne American University, Cyprus. 2 Department Business Administration, Jinan University, Lebanon. Accepted 24 September, 2012 This study evaluates the impact of human resource management practices on corporate performance in Jordanian commercial banks. A total of 78 employees from the human resource departments of Jordanian commercial banks had responded to adapted questionnaire that measured three human resource practices and corporate performance. The results reflected a positive and statistically significant association of recruitment and selection, compensation and rewards with corporate performance, where training and development had showed a negative association with corporate performance. Key words: Human resource management, corporate performance, commercial banks. INTRODUCTION Achieving competitive advantage and improving organi- zational performance relative to competitors are the main goals that business firms should strive to attain. Human resource management derived from the personnel management, considered as the effective management of employees, encourages the leadership that motivate people, draws on their talents, drives their participation in decision making, and takes in consideration their expectations and needs (Ehrlich, 1997). Human resource management practices has the ability to create firms that are more intelligent, flexible, and competent than their rivals through the application of polices and practices that concentrate on recruiting, selecting, training skilled employees and directing their best efforts to cooperate within the resource bundle of the organization. This can potentially consolidate firm perfor- mance and create competitive advantage as a result of the historical sensitivity of human resources and the social complex of polices and practices that rivals may *Corresponding author. E-mail: adnanrawa@yahoo.com. Tel: 00692 796860622. not able to imitate or replicate their diversity and depth. Thus, in order to stimulate corporate performance, mana- gement is required to develop skilled and talented employees who are capable of performing their jobs successfully (Klein, 2004). Corporate performance is considered as the final result that firms seek to achieve positively (Ghosh and Mukherjee, 2006). Positive corporate performance can be created and sustained through the best exploit of human resources as an organizational intangible asset (Wright, 1998). Many scholars such as Sang (2005) investigated the influence of human resource management practices on firm per- formance and they found a positive relationship between those practices and firm performance. Jordanian banking sector is considered as the most important service sector affecting Jordanian economy. It is growing very rapidly and continuously contributing to the gross domestic product that consisted of 80% services and 20% goods. The global economic crisis in 2008 had posed several threats on Jordanian banking industry, and to avoid these threats, banks management have declared a new policy which states a proactive approach on the development of human resources to the international standards. Aside from that, banks