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Blom, R. , Kruyen, P. M. , Van der Heijden, B. I. J. M. , and Van Thiel, S . (2018). One HRM
Fits All? A Meta- Analysis of the Effects of HRM Practices in the Public, Semipublic, and
Private Sector. Review of Public Personnel Administration. 00 (0). pp1–33.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X18773492

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R. Blom is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Management Research at the Radboud
University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. His research interests include the influence of context on
Human Resource Management (HRM) and the impact of HRM on employee outcomes in
semiautonomous
agencies.
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P. M. Kruyen’s current research program focuses on civil servants’ behavior and their
psychological characteristics, and on how their behavior is affected by managerial techniques
and organizational structures. In particular, he is interested in civil servants’ work-related
creativity.
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B. I. J. M. Van der Heijden is professor of strategic HRM at the Radboud University,
Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and head of the Department Strategic HRM. Moreover, she occupies
a chair in strategic HRM at the Open University of the Netherlands and at Kingston University,
London, UK. Her main research areas are career development, employability, and aging at work.
She is associate editor for the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology and co-
editor for the German Journal of Human Resource Management, and has published, among
others, in the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, Journal of Vocational
Behavior, Human Resource Management Journal, Journal of Occupational and Organizational
Psychology, and Career Development International. She is co-editor of the Handbook of
Research on Sustainable Careers (EE Publishing).
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S. Van Thiel is professor of public management at the Department of Public Administration
and
director of the Institute for Management Research at the Radboud University, Nijmegen, the
Netherlands. Her research focus is on semiautonomous agencies, public management, and
research methods. She has published in several journals, including Journal of Public
Administration Research and Theory, Governance, PM&R, and International Public

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Management Journal, and her books have appeared with publishers like Palgrave MacMillan and
Routledge. She is editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Public Sector Management.

Many experts think that HRM methods in the public and semi-public sectors provide similar
benefits to those in the private sector. Empirical studies have specifically highlighted
characteristics specific to the public and semipublic sectors that are likely to result in lower
effects of HRM practices on individual performance, such as relatively higher levels of goal
ambiguity, the presence of stricter regulations compared to private sector organizations, and
public sector workers' specific work motivation. Although a few studies have looked at the
impact of different HRM techniques in private and public companies, no comprehensive cross-
sectoral comparison of HRM practices has been done.

The article's purpose is to see if "One HRM Fits All?" The purpose of "A Meta- Analysis of the
Effects of HRM Practices in the Public, Semipublic, and Private Sector" by Blom, et al. (2018) is
to use a meta-analytical approach to systematically analyze whether the effects of HRM practices
on individual performance differ across the public, semipublic, and private sectors. The authors
classify for-profit manufacturing and service organizations as private, core government
organizations as public, and hybrid organizations containing both private and public elements
(such as semiautonomous agencies, hospitals, and universities) as semipublic organizations, in
line with previous research.

To address the research goals, this meta-analysis study employed the identification and selection
of papers, the coding technique, and the meta-analysis procedure. Because all studies were
judged potentially relevant, the authors looked for strong empirical research without respect to
publication year to estimate relevant effect sizes. With the use of keywords, 42,965 potentially
interesting studies were found.

Six inclusion criteria were then used by the authors. First, research is needed to provide
connections between individual HRM practices or AMO-based HRM practices on the one hand,
and individual performance on the other. Following that, only research that looked at the
availability or usage of HRM techniques were included. Then, only studies that offered
organization-specific information needed to evaluate the research hypotheses were taken into

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account. As a result, several studies were omitted since their assessments covered a wide range
of industries. Fourth, only studies that supplied the meta-analysis with the necessary statistical
information (i.e., correlation coefficients and sample sizes) were included. Fifth, if the same
sample was utilized in many studies, only the research with the most information was included.
Finally, due to language constraints and the possibility for misunderstanding of research
findings, only papers published in English were considered.

Thus, 65 articles were chosen and coded. HRM practices were categorized as ability-,
motivation-, or opportunity-enhancing behaviors using a two-step process. The practices were
classified as one of the 26 distinct categories of individual HRM practices in the first stage. The
AMO model was used to code these specific practices in the second stage. There were 262 effect
sizes in the final dataset, which came from 66 samples in 64 papers. The study included 148
effect sizes from private sector manufacturing and service firms, 59 effect sizes from core
government organizations, 59 effect sizes from public sector organizations, and 55 effect sizes
from educational and hospital organizations, all of which were coded as semipublic
organizations.

The study discovered that, contrary to expectations, there appear to be only little variations
between public and private sector organizations. There are no significant differences between the
public and private sectors, save for a stronger influence of opportunity-enhancing activities on
overall performance in the private sector. These data suggest that ability-, motivation-, and
opportunity-enhancing strategies have an equivalent impact on public and private sector
employees. Perhaps the distinctions between sectors are not as large as predicted, which relates
to concerns regarding sector blurring. Other contextual elements, such as industry, organizational
size, or culture, may be more relevant than sector.

A further notable result in semipublic companies is the comparatively significant effects of

opportunity-enhancing activities and the relatively minor effects of motivation-enhancing
practices. Employees at semipublic organizations in the sample are perceived as public-service
professionals with a high level of specialized knowledge and skills and high intrinsic motivation,
more so than employees in public and private firms. The high benefits of opportunity-enhancing
behaviors are not surprising given the features of the semipublic sector in the sample. These
practices are significant in both the public and private sectors, but they appear to be more

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relevant for HRM in the semipublic sector. The smaller impact sizes in the public sector
compared to the semipublic sector might also be explained by the higher incidence of personnel
limitations, since public managers struggle to offer autonomy to their staff due to administrative
responsibilities and political responsibility requirements.

The following considerations help explain why motivation-enhancing activities have a smaller
impact on extra-role performance and ability-enhancing practices have a lower impact on in-role
performance in the semipublic sector. Extrinsic motivation is often the focus of motivation-
enhancing activities, which does not align well with the high intrinsic motivation of persons
working in health care and education. As a result, their performance is unaffected by these
techniques. Furthermore, because of their high level of baseline competence, ability-enhancing
techniques are less necessary for in-role performance. After all, many individuals are already
competent of doing their assigned jobs before they enter the workforce.

As a result, the authors came to the conclusion that the semipublic sector differs from the public
and private sectors in terms of personnel restrictions, organizational objective ambiguity, and
employee motivation, all of which have an impact on HRM practices. As a consequence, the
authors drew practical implications from the findings, advising practitioners to evaluate sector-
specific conditions before introducing HRM methods and to tailor their policies to the sort of
performance they wish to encourage. Because opportunity-enhancing practices tend to be
particularly essential in stimulating extra-role performance, managers should build the HRM
system to take into account both universal and sector-specific practices.

In addition, the article suggested that future research look into the HRM–performance link in a
variety of other semipublic organizations, focus on experimental and longitudinal designs, and
include psychometrically sound measures to investigate possible moderation effects of these
specific characteristics.

Finally, the essay is intriguing and deserving of attention. Furthermore, the methods it used and
the theories it offered should be taken into account in future research. One important message for
readers is that one HRM technique may not suit all. The distinctions between the public,
semipublic, and private sectors, on the other hand, are not transparent. Future researchers should
be encouraged to investigate these disparities further in this favor.

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