A Study on Evaluating the Validity and Reliability of High Performance Work Systems (HPWS) Scale in Turkish

High-Performance Work Systems (HPWS) are generally defined by the combination of single practices that collectively affect organizational performance. High performance human resource practices can be listed as provision of job security, extensive skills, training, promotion, results-oriented appraisal and broad career paths. HPWS foster employees’ shared perceptions of an organizational environment that motivates discretionary behaviors that contribute to organizational performance (Sun, Aryee & Law, 2007). HPWS are expected to contribute to employees in a positive way in terms of certain skills and duties due to flexibility and empowerment they provide (Yalabık et. al., 2008). HPWS has the greatest potential to provide sustained competitive advantage to companies they adopt it. The main idea of HPWS is to create an organization based on employee involvement, commitment and empowerment without employee control. HPWS organizations use an approach that is fundamentally different from the traditional hierarchical or bureaucratic approach which is known as control oriented approach (Tomer, 2001). The aim of this study is to investigate the validity and reliability of the HPWS scale in Turkish which was developed by Sun, Aryee and Law (2007) and analyze the relationship between HPWS and demographic variables. In this perspective, the theoretical background and literature review about HPWS is given and then the statistical results are discussed in the context of the validity and reliability of the scale. The scale developed by Sun, Aryee and Law (2007) has 8 dimensions as “Selective Staffing”, “Extensive Training”, “Internal Mobility”, “Employment Security”, “Clear Job Description”, “Results-Oriented Appraisal”, “Incentive Reward” and “Participation”. The method which was proposed by Brislin et. Al. (1973) is used for the translation of the scale. This method consists of a process as translating to the target language, evaluating the translation, translating back to the source language, evaluating the translation again and consulting to the experts. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis is used for the scale. Then the results and findings are discussed according to the current literature of HPWS.