Organizational Performance, Turnover, and Human Resource Management

In my study, I investigate how human resources are critical to organizational performance in the public sector with a question, Do human resources really matter in the public sector, too? Focusing on the crime control performance of municipal police departments, I examine the relationships among turnover, police performance, and human resource management (HRM) characteristics by surveying police departments of the U.S. cities whose population range is between 100,000 to 500,000 (Out of 205 surveyed cities, 65 cities participated). First, I explore how human resource management practices (individually and systematically) influence crime control performance of the police. Based on universalistic HRM perspective, I hypothesize that commitment HRM system (and individual practices) will have positive effect on crime control performance of the police. Second, I investigate if turnover has significant effect on crime control performance and if HRM system has moderating effect on turnover consequence. The finding about turnover effect confirms human capital theory that predicts the negative effect of turnover when employees with specific knowledge quit.