ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE, TURNOVER, AND HUMAN RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT: FOCUSING ON MUNICIPAL POLICE SERVICES
ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the
Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the
Martin School of Public Policy and Administration
At the University of Kentucky
By
Yongbeom Hur
Regardless of whether organizations are in the private sector or in the public sector,
there is a general agreement that human resources are critical to keeping organizations
effective as well as maintaining a high level of organizational performance. While
more serious effort has been made to empirically examine how human resources
influence organizational performance (e.g., studies about turnover consequences,
studies about the relationship between human resource management practices and
organizational performance) in the private sector, it is rare to find similar empirical
studies in the public sector partly because it is hard to define public organizational
performance. In my dissertation, I basically investigate how human resources are
critical to organizational performance in the public sector with a question, “Do human
resources really matter in the public sector, too?” Focusing on the crime control
performance of municipal police departments, I examine the relationships among
turnover, police performance, and human resource management (HRM)
characteristics by surveying police departments of the U.S. cities whose population
range is between 100,000 to 500,000 (Out of 205 surveyed cities, 65 cities
participated). Firstly, I explore how human resource management practices
(individually and systematically) influence crime control performance of the police.
Based on universalistic HRM perspective (i.e., best HRM practices) and control
theory perspective, I hypothesize that commitment HRM system (and individual
practices) will have positive effect on crime control performance of the police.
Secondly, I investigate more specific questions such as if turnover has significant
effect on crime control performance and if HRM system has moderating effect on
turnover consequence. Results about turnover effect confirm human capital theory
that predicts the negative effect of turnover when employees with specific knowledge
quit. However, no significant relationships are found between commitment HRM
system (and individual practices) and organizational performance. The results might
help municipal police departments deal with sworn officers’ turnover as well as set up
proper HRM practices.
KEY WORDS: turnover, human resource management (HRM), crime control
performance, best HRM practices, human capital theory