Many studies have focused on direct link between HRM practices and organizational performance. There is a strong relationship between these two variables that driven further research to identify the mechanism through which such relationship exists. Following resource-based view (RBV), the aim of this research was to investigate the indirect effect of organizational innovation on HRM practices-performance linkage. Data was collected from owners/managers of manufacturing SMEs in West Malaysia. 331 (60.5%) distributed questionnaires were received and analyzed through PLS-SEM. Out of six hypotheses on mediation, only one hypothesis was rejected. The findings strongly supported the RBV theory when organizational innovation significantly mediated the relationship. These results clearly indicate that organizational innovation plays an intermediate role between HRM practices (i.e. communication and information sharing, compensation, selection, performance appraisal, and training and development) and organizational performance of SMEs.

The purpose of this research was to identify the role of high performance work practices of banks, work-family conflict, job stress, and personality of bank employees in affecting their work-life balance. To accomplish this goal, self-administered structured questionnaires were distributed to those bank employees who were either married, divorced, or separated, had children, and at least one year working experience in that bank. Final sample was comprised of 726 employees from 277 banks of South Punjab. The results revealed that high performance work practices of banks, family to work conflict, and personality type B behavioral patterns of bank employees increase their work-life balance, and work to family conflict of bank employees decreased their work-life balance. However, job stress and personality type A behavioral patterns of bank employees did not affect their work-life balance. Contrary to previous studies, these results suggest that moderate family to work conflict is actually good for work-life balance, and job stress and personality type A behavioral patterns are inherently not bad for work-life balance. Hence, State Bank of Pakistan should consider developing policies to enhance employee friendly high performance work practices in banks. Banks should also consider taking personality tests prior to recruiting and selecting employees for hectic posts.

Understanding that the measurement of HRM construct in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) context is relatively critical, this study aims to assess the validity and reliability of HRM measure-ment based on the SME owner-managers’ perspective in the Malaysian context. Following a data collection from 95 SME owner-managers, a confirmatory factor analysis was performed to investigate the factorial validity and reliability of the HRM measurement. The finding indicates that the measurement model was acceptable in consideration of the evidences of adequate reliability, convergent validity and discriminant validity. This study will be beneficial for future researchers, entrepreneurs and policy makers in better understanding to the value of HRM practices towards boosting the SMEs performance.