1. ^aInstitute for Policy Research, University of Tilburg, Tilburg, The Netherlands
2. ^bRadboud University Nijmegen, Institute for Management Research, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
3. ^cRadboud University Nijmegen, Institute for Social Cultural Research, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Abstract

Societal developments have forced universities all over Europe to replace their 'professional' strategies, structures, and values by organizational characteristics that could be stereotyped as 'private sector' features. This trend is known as 'managerialism'. Since university employees generally stick to professional values, a conflict may emerge between professional employee values and managerial organization values. This conflict can result in lower organizational commitment and, consequently, lower quality of job performances. Since managerialism is, however, aimed at efficient and effective quality improvement, this situation is what we regard as a managerialism contradiction. Affecting university employees' performances may solve or reduce such a contradiction. Since levels of managerialism differ among countries, this paper examines which factors affect the quality of job performances of 1,700 university employees in low-, middle- and high-managerialism countries. The analyses reveal that there are large differences and some similarities between the countries regarding which human resource management (HRM) practices affect the quality of employees' job performances. Furthermore, it appears that there are clear differences among the countries regarding how the HRM practices affect the quality of their job performances. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.