The impact of high performance work systems on organizational performance and a research about the mediator role of organizational culture

In this thesis, the relationships between high performance work systems, organizational culture and organizational performance were investigated on 654 white-collar employees in the Turkish Banking Sector, based on structural equation and structural regression modeling and cross-sectional data using objective and subjective performance measures. In addition, the mediation effects of organizational culture on high performance work systems-performance link were examined. the basic hypothesis of the study argues that human resources systems lead to higher performance levels through mediator variable organizational culture or contribute to performance change. As the main findings of the study, it was found that the perceived high performance working systems by employees positively affected the perceived organizational performance (POP) and return on equity (ROE), negatively affected the the net interest margin (NFM) and TOBIN's Q. At the sub-applications level, the most intense impact on financial indicators is the performance-based compensation; not all applications within the scope of high-performance work systems affect organizational performance due to the intricate relations between them. It is not seen that every application has a positive effect in the same direction and intensity; in fact, some applications had negative effects or no effect. When the mediation effects of organizational culture on high performance work systems-performance linkage were examined, it was found that the four organizational culture dimensions had no mediation effect on perceived organizational performance, but on the other hand, it had mediation effect on some financial performance indicators. In the field of Strategic Human Resources Management, Contingency Approach rather than the Universalistic Perspective for the Human Resources Management-Performance link; when organizational culture contributes to the causality of this relationship, Configurational Perspective provides a more valid explanation and enables the results to be reached by considering the diversity of organizational performance and organizational culture. Keywors: High performance work systems, organizational performance, financial performance, organizational culture, structural equation model