Abstract

The today’s office which is dynamic and competitive in nature, expect managers and employees of all levels to constantly improve and achieve the organizational objectives. Likewise the organization needs to continuously improve its human resource management practices such as reward management, human resource development, recruitment and selection and quality working life among others which have great effect on the organization’s performance.  However, going by the current empirical literature available, this has not been achieved.  Many researchers have only looked at the independent variables that influence organizational performance without taking into consideration the mediating and intervening variables. Using a description approach, this paper compares and contrasts structures theorised and related to the relationship between Human Resource Management (HRM) practises and organizational performance in existing theoretical frameworks and findings of empirical studies in order to open the black box so as to get a better understanding of the relationship which would help in guiding organizations to attain their objectives and achieve high performance.   This study was based on four supporting theories to develop a conceptual framework where the factors that are influencing, mediating and intervening the relationship between the HRM and organizational performance are proposed. The independent variable was HRM practices (reward management, training and development, recruitment/selection and quality working life) while the dependent variable was organizational performance.  These were mediated by employee behavioural outcome which is an element of HRM practices.  Leadership is the intervening variable.  The study confirmed that there is a significant direct/positive relationship between the HRM practices and organizational performance.   It further identified motivation as one of the factor which link between the two variables.  The study could not identify the number of boxes required to open the black box thus suggesting for further research to explore the number of boxes.