Effects of Strategic and Flexible Human Resource Management on Organization Performance in Pandemic-Driven VUCA Environments: Evidence from Tanzanian Parastatals in the Maritime Sector

Abstract This study examines the impact of strategic and flexible human resource management on the sustained performance of public sector organizations operating under the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous conditions necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In exploring this topic, four goal-aligned flexible human resource management practices, namely recruitment, appraisal, training, and reward, were investigated alongside COVID-19 mitigation strategies. We collected survey data from 1272 employees of the Tanzania Ports Authority, which is a government parastatal in the Tanzanian maritime sector. Stereotype logistic regression was employed in our analysis and the results indicate that only the recruitment and appraisal of the four goal-aligned human resource functions have positive impacts on organizational performance, whereas training and rewards do not show significant effects. Furthermore, these HR functions maintain a significant impact on performance alongside COVID-19 mitigation strategies, suggesting that innovative and flexible HR approaches help organizations absorb pandemic-induced shocks. This study extends strategic human resource management theory by delineating how goal-aligned practices function at the critical intersection of rigid governance in a developing country and acute crisis constraints.