Creating Sustainable High-Performance Human Resource Practice through Employees Learning Agility. The Transition Adaptive Approach

Abstract

Recently, the Covid 19 posed enormous challenges compelling organizations to adapt to unforeseen events as a result of direct immediate threats thereby pushing human resource practitioners to reshape their existing human resources practice. To the researchers’ knowledge, no study has so far investigated the relationship between employee learning agility (ELA) and high-performance human resources practice (HPHRP) particularly, the mediating effect of person-organization fit (P-O fit) to reshape the human resource practice through transition adaptive theory.  A self-completed survey from public sector employees in the Fiji Islands yielded a sample of data with 351 participants. The proposed model was analyzed through structural equation modeling (SEM), showing a model fit for the research. The findings show that ELA significantly enhances HPHRP. This suggests that learning opportunity provides an opportunity to adopt, modify and recombine the current knowledge with new knowledge in creating new knowledge stock. The diffusion of such knowledge can assist significantly in improving human resource practice. Moreover, the mediating effect of P-O fit shows the congruence between ELA and organization, further suggesting that employees perform best in an environment that supports their salient needs and recognizes their knowledge, abilities, and skills in reshaping human resources practice. As such, this becomes our significant contribution to the extant literature on human resource management. Finally, the current research offers theoretical and practical implications, limitations, and further research directions.