Attribution Theory In Hrm

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Introduction
The aim of this paper is to discuss the essence of the attribution and resource-based theories in the context of organizations. The choice for these theories is due to their focus on: the importance of the development of employees as key for competitive advantage; and the importance of alignment between employers and employees in the messages conveyed by HR practices for firm performance. We support the concepts and its implications in the HRM field by providing empirical evidence from the articles discussed throughout this course. We then finalize comparing and discussing the main criticisms of the explanatory power of both theories.

Attribution theory
Kelley’s attribution theory posits that individuals tend to make causal inferences …show more content…

(2007) on how attribution theory helps to explain the way employees interpret HR practices and how those interpretations can shape their response. The authors conducted a survey among departmental managers in a wellknown supermarket chain. One of the main findings was that HR practices may not have the same response within the same organization. Hence, it could be argued that HR attributions need to be assessed by the firm at different levels in order to find out whether their HR practices reached the intended goals or not. Due to the contingent nature of this theory, we could conclude that generalizations are not possible to make, given that each firm has its own bundle of HR practices and thus is …show more content…

RBV could be considered as a tool to assess a firm’s strategic purposes to differentiate from its competitors and how this relates to its internal resources. As mentioned above, the RBV focuses on specific and unique human resources to exercise competitive advantage. However, there are two main criticisms about its explanatory power: (1) it is static as it does not explain how to develop these resources, and (2) does not respond to the environment. This approach might be to some extent insightful for researchers, however, this might be too abstract for firms as they would like more concrete evidence as how internal human resources could be developed for competitive

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