Testing Human Resource Management (HRM)’s effect on organisational performance has been a core part of HRM research over the past 25 years. Whereas pioneering studies in the field neglected the mechanisms explaining this relationship, treating it as a ‘black box’, in the last decade the focus has been on examining the mediators of this relationship. Most recently, a series of reviews has been more critical of the field, particularly highlighting its diversity and underplaying of employee involvement, a concern central to its inception. This paper assesses these mediation studies in the light of these concerns, which provide criteria by which I summarise them and assess the extent to which they have advanced the field. The analysis demonstrates that the main problems of the black-box studies remain: the misalignment of the use of additive indexes and the theory of synergistic relationships, confusion over analysis methods, inadequate justification of the selection of practices in the empirical investigations, and under-representation of employee involvement. The researchers continue to present the field as a unified one. However, since the majority of studies are centred on high-performance work systems, there is a clear schism across them between these studies and those centred on high-involvement management. The paper reinforces the importance of this distinction, on the basis that a high-performance work system is a technology, a set of sophisticated personnel practices, whereas high-involvement management is a managerial philosophy or orientation towards fostering employee involvement. The paper concludes by suggesting ways of overcoming the recurring problems in HRM–performance research, and how these vary between the two perspectives.

在过去的25年中，测试人力资源管理（HRM）对组织绩效的影响一直是HRM研究的核心部分。尽管该领域的开创性研究忽略了解释这种关系的机制，将其视为“黑匣子”，但在过去十年中，重点一直放在研究这种关系的中介者上。最近，对这一领域的一系列评论变得更为重要，特别是突出了该领域的多样性和员工参与度不足，这是该领域成立之初的核心问题。本文根据这些关注点对这些中介研究进行了评估，这些中介研究提供了一些标准，可供我总结它们并评估它们在该领域取得的进展。分析表明，黑匣子研究的主要问题仍然存在：使用附加指标和协同关系理论的失调，对分析方法的混淆，在实证研究中选择实践的理由不足以及员工参与度不足。研究人员继续以统一的方式介绍该领域。但是，由于大多数研究都集中在高性能工作系统上，因此在这些研究与集中于高参与度管理的研究之间存在明显的分歧。本文基于高绩效的工作系统是一项技术，一套复杂的人员实践，而高参与度管理是一种管理理念或旨在促进员工参与的定位，因此强调了这一区别的重要性。