Human Resources Practices and Organizational Learning in High and Low In-Group Collectivist Cultures

This study investigated the effect of national culture on the relationships between human resource management practices and continuous improvement and learning within manufacturing organizations. Drawing on the insights from the social processes perspective of organizational learning and the in-group collectivism dimension of national culture (House, Hange, Javidan, Dorfman, & Gupta, 2004), we developed a theoretical model of relationships among human resource management practices, small group problem solving, and continuous improvement and learning. We tested our model using secondary survey data collected from a sample of 238 manufacturing plants operating across three industries and nine countries. Our results reveal that in low in-group collectivism cultures, human resource management practices affect continuous improvement and learning both directly and indirectly, mediated by the use of small group problem solving, while in high collectivism cultures, the effects of human resource management practices are completely mediated by small group problem solving.