Resumo

Organizations, by identifying the relevance of people’s roles, are looking for new ways to incorporate and improve Human Resource Management (HRM) practices across the organization in line with organizational strategy (Guest, 1987). In a context in which technology does not guarantee the company’s competitiveness, people’s competences become the differential, which is in accordance with the Resource-Based View Theory proposed by Barney (1991) and which will compose the conceptual framework of our study.

Knowing the importance of analyzing both an organization’s HRM practices and their outcomes and given the gap in the literature on customized public service management measures, the objective of this research is to identify evidence of validity and reliability of the Human Resource Management Practice Scale (HRMPS) for Public Management.

Considering the context of aligning human resource management with organizational strategy we found the term “Human Resources practices”. Martín-Alcázar, Romero-Fernández and Sánchez-Gardey (2005), seeking to differentiate HRM policies and practices, conclude that: (i) Strategic Human Resource Management coordinates the workforce management; (ii) policies direct practices to be consistent and follow the same path; and (iii) practices represent actions in fact.

For the development of the Public HRMPS, analysis of judges and semantics were carried out. Then, we performed the analysis of missing values, outliers. multicollinearity and singularity. The psychometric validation of the proposed scale was carried out, through the principal component analysis, followed by the Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), and then, by the Confirmatory Factor Analysis, through the Structural Equation Modeling, using the maximum likelihood criteria.

We have identified two factors (subscales), Work Conditions; with 11 items and Involvement; with 9 items. Cronbach's alpha (α) of the first factor was 0.89 and Jöreskog's rho (ρ) was also 0.89. The α of the second factor, Involvement, was 0.87 and the ρ of 0.88. The Public HRMPS has internal validity, reliability, content/theoretical validity and construct validity and can be used as a scientific diagnosis of the perception of public servants regarding the HR management practices implemented by their work organizations.

As it is a first attempt to validate a scale, new studies are suggested to confirm the structure obtained so far and provide generalization, in addition to the application of Public HRMPS in different public contexts. After all, operationally valid and reliable measures are fundamental for the construction of a scientific knowledge that can be effectively applied to the organizational reality so that the managers promote a fruitful management “of” and “with” people.

Barney, J. (1991). Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage. Journal of Management, 17(1), 99-120. Guest, D. (1987). Human resource management and industrial relations. The Journal of Management Studies, 24(5), 503-521. Martín-Alcázar, F., Romero-Fernández, P. M., & Sánchez-Gardey, G. (2005). Strategic human resource management: integrating the universalistic, contingent, configurational and contextual perspectives. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 16(5), 633-659.