single industry approach was chosen to control for inter-industry differences, as
suggested by Delery and Doty (1996) and Hoque (1999). Besides a specific group of
employees – customer-contact staff (employees with face-to-face contact with
customers) – was surveyed following the proposition of Lepak and Snell (1999), who
argue that due to differences in abilities, skills, knowledge, needs, professional
backgrounds, employees may have varying responses to HRM practices