This study contributes to strategic human resource management (HRM) research by offering a contextualized model of HRM effectiveness. Building on HR attribution theory, we propose that the high commitment work system will be more effective in a context when: (i) employees are conditioned to trust employers and (ii) regulatory institutions are less restrictive, giving management more autonomy in human resource decisions. In such contexts, we argue that employees are more inclined to view the high commitment work system as an expression of the employer's genuine concern for employees. Hence, employees are more likely to reciprocate with high commitment. We find our contextualized HRM effectiveness model particularly useful in understanding HRM – firm performance relations in China where business environments are currently under transformation on both trust and regulations.

The concept of a high commitment work system (HCWS) has mostly been used in the West to study the relationship between a firm's work systems and organizational performance. In this paper, we introduce a preliminary measure of HCWS in China based on the definition of Baron and Kreps (1999). In study 1, we tested the measure by surveying 442 employees in China's information technology (IT) industry. In study 2, we re-tested the same measure from the perspective of human resource (HR) executives in 126 foreign-invested companies. The analyses not only provided some evidence for the construct validity of this preliminary measure of a high commitment work system, but also produced some interesting results that can only be understood with regards to the history and institutional backgrounds of Chinese organizations.