These findings need to be interpreted within the context of the firms we studied. This
study was carried out in three service organizations with geographically dispersed
establishments, in which line managers have a significant responsibility for the enactment of
HR practices. In addition, a central HR department is located in the Belgian headquarters of
these organizations. The employees in our sample are often located at a distance of the HR 22
department, both geographically and structurally. As a consequence, it may be no surprise that
line managers exercise a stronger influence on employees’ affective commitment than the HR
department. This is in line with suggestions from other researchers (e.g. Becker et al., 1997;
Chen, Tsui & Farh, 2002) that proximal factors in the organization (e.g. the supervisor) might
influence employees more than distal factors (e.g. top or HR management). However, because
of the significant effect of the HR department’s service quality on employees’ affective
commitment, the HR department seems to have an important people-oriented role, even in the
case of a distant HR department and devolution of HR tasks to line managers