RESOURCE ORCHESTRATION IN PRACTICE: CEO EMPHASIS ON SHRM, COMMITMENT-BASED HR SYSTEMS, AND FIRM PERFORMANCE

In order to be effective, managers at all levels of the firm must engage in resource management activities, and these efforts are synchronized and orchestrated by top management. Using a specific type of strategic resource, commitment-based human resource systems, we examine the effect of CEO resource orchestration in a multi-industry sample of 190 Korean firms. Our results demonstrate that CEO emphasis on strategic HRM is a significant antecedent to commitment-based HR systems. Furthermore, our results also suggest that CEO emphasis on strategic HRM has its primary effects on firm performance through commitment-based HR systems. This finding underscores the importance of middle managers in operationalizing top management's strategic emphasis, lending empirical support to a fundamental tenet of resource orchestration arguments. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.