Institutionalization and organizational commitment in strategic human resources management: An investigation in the food sector

The purpose of this research is to identify strategic human resource management practices, perceptions of institutionalization, and levels of organizational commitment of top management in food manufacturing enterprises, and to examine the relationship between institutionalization and organizational commitment from the employees' perspective. The research population consists of 194 food products manufacturing enterprises listed on ISO Top 1000 in 2019. However, due to the COVID -19 Pandemic during this period, 39 companies were reached, of which 17 responded positively. Data were collected from 17 senior executives through semi-structured interviews and from 784 employees of these enterprises through questionnaires. In the quantitative analysis which consists the perspective of employees, structural equation modeling was used. Based on the obtained data, it was found that all sub-dimensions of institutionalization have an effect on the sub-dimensions of organizational commitment, but professionalization and organizational structure do not have a statistically positive effect on emotional commitment. The data obtained in the qualitative analysis, consisting of the managers' perspective, was analyzed using Maxqda 2022. From the data obtained, it was found that the strategic practices of human resources management had the subthemes of strategic practices of human resources (8 codes) and determination of business strategies (5 codes), institutionalization was explained with 9 codes, and organizational commitment was explained with the dimensions of emotional commitment (4 codes), continuance commitment (4 codes), and normative commitment (4 codes), dimensions in accordance with the literature.