Staying and performing: How human resource management practices increase job embeddedness and performance

We investigated the processes by which human resource management (HRM) practices embed employees in organizations, and whether this in turn enhances employee job performance. Following the ability-motivation-opportunity (AMO) model of HRM, we predicted that ability-enhancing, motivation-enhancing, and opportunity-enhancing HRM practices would relate to fit, links and sacrifice components of job embeddedness, with these components mediating the relationship between AMO elements of HRM and employee job performance. As predicted, the results suggest that ability-, motivation- and opportunity-enhancing HRM practices contribute to the creation and development of embeddedness, and the improvement of job performance. The job embeddedness components of fit, links and sacrifice were found to mediate the HRM-job performance relationship. The results suggest that organizations can proactively enhance both embeddedness and employee performance through implementing appropriate HRM practices.