Measurement Error in Research on Human Resources and Firm Performance: Additional Data and Suggestions for Future Research

By Patrick M. Wright, Timothy M. Gardner, L. Moynihan, H. Park, B. Gerhart, John E. Delery. 2001

291 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Gerhart and colleagues (2000) and Huselid and Becker (2000) recently debated the presence and implications of measurement error in measures of human resource practices. This paper presents data from 3 more studies, 1 of large organizations from different industries at the corporate level, 1 from commercial banks, and the other of autonomous business units at the level of the job. Results of all 3 studies provide additional evidence that single respondent measures of HR practices contain large amounts of measurement error. Implications for future research into the HR firm performance relationship are discussed.

Subfields: Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7d947c02e01b72d67fbd5e7063415a1a0727b7de

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In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

In Strategy and Management

Citations in the corpus

High-performance work systems and occupational safety. (2005, background): “Second, the single-source nature of the data introduces the possibility of measurement error (Wright et al. 2001).”
Strategic human resource management: The evolution of the field (2009, background): “Wright et al. (2001) presented data from three additional studies that examined the impact of measurement error on the measurement of HR practices.”
Alternative Conceptualizations of the Relationship Between Voluntary Turnover and Organizational Performance (2005, methodology): “We took several steps to minimize error and to increase the reliability of key informant reports (Wright et al., 2001).”
The Impact of Team Atmosphere on Knowledge Outcomes in Self-managed Teams (2005, background): “This is consistent with the call of Wright et al. (2001) about attending to the information-processsing requirements of survey completion to aim the measures at a level that will permit respondents feasibly to provide reliable and valid information.”
The Sources of Four Commonly Reported Cutoff Criteria (2006, unknown): “Others have noted similar misinterpretations (e.g., A. Cohen et al., 2001; LeBreton et al., 2003; Wright et al., 2001).”
An Investigation into the Relationship between Training Evaluation and the Transfer of Training (2012, background): “Although single respondent measures of human resource practices have been found to contain measurement error, this is less likely to be the case when knowledgeable respondents are used (Wright et al., 2001).”
High-performance HR practices and OCB: a cross-level investigation of a causal path (2010, unknown): “In particular, this researchmethod echoes the calls in previous literature for empirical data sourced from relevant informants at different levels in the organization for better data corroboration (Rogers and Wright 1998; Wright et al. 2001).”
Age Diversity, Age Discrimination Climate and Performance Consequences - a Cross Organizational Study (2011, background): “In the literature, the reliability of key informant ratings is much discussed (e.g., Wright et al., 2001) and should be treated with caution.”
An analysis of the relationship between total quality management-based human resource management practices and innovation (2009, background): “quality, flexibility) seem to be robust and consistent (Colbert 2004; Wright et al. 2001).”
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HR PRACTICES AND FIRM PERFORMANCE: EXAMINING CAUSAL ORDER (2005, background): “Given the potential problems noted by others (Gerhart et al., 2000; Wright et al. 2001) with regard to unreliability of single rater reports of HR practices compounded with the memory requirements to report practices that existed from one to five years in the past, such retrospective designs…”