Introduction
The human resources (HR) literature has highlighted the need to design fitted HR strategies, which are understood as organizations’ consistently defined strategic orientation to their external environment and internal resources to manage their human capital (Monks, Kelly, Conway and Flood, 2013). Nevertheless, the strategy is an insufficient condition to ensure the strategic contribution of HR management (HRM) practices. More research is needed to analyse the internal mechanisms through which HR strategy is formulated and implemented (Lengnick-Hall, Lengnick-Hall, Andrade and Drake, 2009). Specifically, HR strategies are usually defined at the strategic apex of the organization to be transmitted to the rest of the firm through different hierarchical levels and managers. However, the central meaning of the HR strategy may change in this intricate dynamic system, which leads to at least three conflicting messages at the formulated, implemented and individual-perceived levels (Nishii and Wright, 2008). The differences between these three levels of interpretation can cause organizations to lose the original meaning of the HR content, which produces a disconnection between what was designed and the results of HR action (Khilji and Wang, 2006). To manage this misalignment, communication is particularly relevant because it operates as a crucial link between the formulation and implementation stages (Den Hartog, Boon, Verburg and Croon, 2013).
