The Combined Effect of Professional and Community Strategic Orientations on the Adoption of High-Commitment HRM in Nonprofit Organizations

High-commitment human resource management (HRM) includes practices, such as autonomy, information, suggestion-making, recognition, equity of rewards, training, and career management. Drawing on notions of horizontal and vertical fit, previous research highlights the relationship between strategic orientation and the adoption of high-commitment HRM. We further examine this relationship in nonprofit organizations (NPOs), given their dual professional and community strategic orientation. Based on a sample of 200 NPOs, our study shows that (a) high-commitment HRM practices form a coherent higher-order construct; (b) professional and community strategic orientations have additional effects on the adoption of high-commitment HRM; (c) the effect of professional strategic orientation on the adoption of high-commitment HRM is partially indirect through community strategic orientation. NPOs often feel the need to reconnect with their core values. High-commitment HRM constitutes an innovative way to unite employees by and for shared values and offers the possibility of reconciling professional and community orientations.