Multidimensional Frontline Management Styles: Testing HRM Strength, Workgroup Loyalty, and Helping Behaviours

Purpose: To investigate the relationships between various frontline management (FLM) styles, HRM system strength and employee helping behaviours as a form of organisational citizenship behaviours. The research also examines the moderating role of workgroup loyalty on the association between HRM system strength and employee helping behaviours.

Design/methodology/approach: The research uses survey data collected from 315 government workers in Malaysia. Structural equation modelling was employed to test the hypothesised relationships.

Findings: Two FLM styles, ‘policy enactor’ and ‘employee coach’, positively predict employee helping behaviour. However, the ‘organisational leader’ FLM style did not significantly lead to employee helping behaviour. HRM system strength significantly mediates the relationship between three FLM styles and employee helping behaviours. Finally, workgroup loyalty significantly moderates the relationship between HRM system strength and employees’ helping behaviours as organisational citizenship behaviour.

Originality: The originality of this paper is that it acknowledges and empirically examines the heterogenous nature of FLM styles, through signalling theory, in enacting HRM policies and links the growing FLM literature to the HRM system strength research. These concepts have also been tested for the first time in the Malaysian context.

Paper type: Research paper