Empirical analysis of HPO framework in public sector organizations of Pakistan

Purpose Building on high-performance organizations (HPO) framework, the purpose of this paper is to hypothesize the direct impact of five factors of HPO framework on public organizations’ performance in Pakistan. This is first research to employ the partial least squares (PLS) method to provide empirical evidence of the predictive power of the framework in public organizations. Design/methodology/approach This is a cross-sectional study conducted in non-contrived settings thereby keeping researcher interference to a minimum. Data collection was carried out by distributing online questionnaires to 513 employees from three different service-based public organizations in Pakistan. PLS is used to examine the statistical and substantive significance of five factors by employing SmartPLS 3.2.6. Findings This study concludes that the HPO framework has predictive relevance for public organizations’ performance surveyed in this study. Furthermore, three out of the five factors of HPO framework, namely, management quality, workforce quality and long-term orientation have positive relationships, while openness and action orientation (OAO), and continuous improvement process and renewal have a negative relationship with the performance of public sector organizations (PSOs) surveyed in Pakistan. Research limitations/implications The study’s small sample size limits this research, and only quantitative methodology is applied. A significant limitation of this research is that this study relied on a subset of respondents of surveyed organizations and may not representative of the population. Therefore, result should be carefully interpreted as some degree of biasness may be present. Furthermore, findings of the study cannot be generalized to all PSOs of Pakistan. Practical implications The implication for public managers is that the HPO framework has predictive relevance and substantive significance. However, the ideal value of HPO framework will occur when leadership considers HPO factors and struggles persistently to improve performance. The useful implication is that public managers should focus on continuous improvement process and renewal and OAO to meet stakeholders’ satisfaction. Originality/value This study answer two questions, first “is there any significant relationship of five factors of HPO framework with public organizations’ Performance in Pakistan?” and second “what is the predictive relevance level of HPO framework in the Public organizations in Pakistan?” The answers to these research questions will fill the gaps in the literature by providing empirical evidence to the existing knowledge on improvement methods, especially the public sector (PS), and contributing insights on the real world working of the five factors of HPO framework in a PS.