Enhancing organizational commitment through adopting the human resources change leadership role and managing human resources attribution in sustainable enterprises in Vietnam

Despite many investigations concerning antecedents of organizational commitment in the workplace, very few studies so far have analyzed the direct or indirect impact of HR change leadership role on organizational commitment via HR attribution. Therefore, given the reciprocal principle of social exchange theory, attribution theory and signal theory, this study formulated hypotheses and a model to test the relationships between included variables by employing the mixed-method approach. In-depth interviews were initially conducted to develop questionnaires to collect quantitative data. Employing PLS-SEM to analyze the data collected from 1058 employees working in 24 sustainable enterprises in Vietnam, the findings show that the degree of adopting HR change leadership role was positive, directly affecting organizational commitment. Also, both well-being and performance HR attribution play partially mediated roles in the relationship. The findings suggest that the organizational commitment depends on not only how the degree of adopting HR change leadership role is executed, but also how employees perceive and interpret the underlying management intent of these practices. In a sustainable context, adopting HR change leadership role plays a critical role in shaping employees’ interpretations of sustainable HR practices and their subsequent attributions. Besides, employees’ belief on why are sustainable HRM practices implemented has an influence on the organizational commitment that in turn contributes to the overall sustainable performance.