Limitations and Future Research
The focus of the present study was to examine the effect of HCHRM on employee service behavior through the mediating effect of trust in management. The study achieved its objectives admitting some limitations. One limitation of the study is the inclusion of one attitudinal response (i.e. trust in management) as a mediator between HCHRM and employee service behavior. Hence, future researchers are suggested to analyze the effect of HCHRM considering the mediating effect of several other attitudinal responses, such as commitment, satisfaction, well-being, and more importantly the perceived support from the organization. Another important limitation of this study is the small number of samples taken from one specific geographical area. As such, study results cannot be generalized to the entire banking service industry. Future research may include more samples from wider and diverse geographical areas where banks are operating to achieve more generalizable results. Moreover, the cross-sectional design of the present study is unable to portray the true causal relationship between HCHRM and service behavior over time. Hence, a longitudinal study is proposed to future researchers for identifying the process of causal relationship among the study variables. Additionally, the present study assesses only line managers‟ perceptions of HCHRM practices to develop their trust in management that affect their service performance. Future studies may compare line managers‟ perceptions with HR managers‟ perceptions to get a full picture of how HCHRM influences employee outcomes through creating trust in management. Finally, this study considers self-rated performance measurement for assessing the employee service behavior that may be treated as an important limitation. To overcome this limitation, future researchers are suggested to measure employee service behavior from multiple respondents‟ perspectives, such as employee, peer group, and supervisor.
