HR practices, customer-focused outcomes, and OCBO: The POS-engagement mediation chain

The mechanisms through which HR practices impact employee-level and organizational-level outcomes continue to intrigue HR academicians and practitioners. More recently, within the context of human resource management (HRM), there is interest in understanding the role of engagement as a predictor of employee outcomes. More widely studied, is the mediating effect of perceived organizational support (POS) on the investment organizations make in their HR practices and outcomes such as turnover intentions, in-role and extra-role behaviors, and performance. This study provides additional insight into the relationship between individual HR practices and customer-focused outcomes and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBO) through two interdependent mechanisms: the POS-engagement chain. Data were collected from a municipality in the Southwest region of the U.S.A. The results indicate the POS-engagement mediation chain occurs between training, pay for performance, selection, promotional opportunities and decision making and the outcomes of customer experience, customer commitment, and OCBO. Our study has contributed to debates concerning whether POS or engagement is an underlying mechanism relating HR practices and important outcomes that benefit the organization. By developing and testing a model that integrates both POS and engagement as a mediating chain linking HR practices to customer- focused outcomes and OCBO, we hope that that further investigations of the impact that HR practices have on outcomes such as customer-focused outcomes and OCBO, utilize the POS-engagement mediation chain as a key mechanism through which organizational outcomes occur.