HIGH COMMITMENT HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AND EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT OF READY-MADE GARMENT (RMG) INDUSTRY IN BANGLADESH

This study considers to what extent high commitment human resource management (HCHRM) practices influence employee engagement of line managers of RMG organizations in Bangladesh. The current study employed five-dimensional High Commitment HRM practices – recruitment and selection, performance appraisal, training and development, employee involvement and compensation with employee engagement of the employees. This study proposed 5 hypotheses and the results regarding structural equation modeling (SEM) found 5 hypotheses supported. The study can assist management in having better understanding about the importance of HCHRM in strengthening employee engagement in organization. We recommend future researchers to look into the mediating influence of other responses of employee in the relationship linking HCHRM and employee outcomes.

This study considers to what extent high commitment human resource management (HCHRM) practices influence employee engagement of line managers of RMG organizations in Bangladesh. The current study employed five-dimensional High Commitment HRM practicesrecruitment and selection, performance appraisal, training and development, employee involvement and compensation with employee engagement of the employees. This study proposed 5 hypotheses and the results regarding structural equation modeling (SEM) found 5 hypotheses supported. The study can assist management in having better understanding about the importance of HCHRM in strengthening employee engagement in organization. We recommend future researchers to look into the mediating influence of other responses of employee in the relationship linking HCHRM and employee outcomes.
Employee engagement is thought of as a good tool for supporting each organization to strive to obtain competitive gain over other companies and for this cause, its significance is high. Employee engagement is therefore, in hot pursuit in recent literature (Lee, 2016). In the opinion of Taneja et al. (2015), organizations can obtain competitive advantage through effectively and efficiently increasing their strategy of employee engagement. When an employee is engaged and involved, he is aware of his commitment into corporate destinations and inspires his co-workers for accomplishment of the goals of organization. Engaged personnel go beyond the concern of commitment for achieving their job in eminence which thus, assists the connection in completing its goals in the industry. Engaged people can get hold of the responsibility of organization which in turn heads to the achievement of long-term goal (Christina, 2017;Rubel et al., 2018). Researchers found HRM to be an origin of competitive advantage considering HRM as a bundle or composite or set of practices, such as high commitment HRM (Rubel et al., 2018). As a result, these researchers suggested also to focus upon acceptable HRM practices for organization.

Training and development and Employee Engagement:
Training and development is referred as an organized process by which employees obtain new skills and knowledge that update their work performance. This helps employees to develop and enhance their adaptability with updated work methods. In another words, the training focuses on achieving change in the behavior of these trainees. In opinion of Ross (2018), training has been regarded as a basic factor using which quality of performance of job is guaranteed. Sahar and Siddiqui (2019) assessed the influence of development, training and communication upon engagement of employees found in banking section of Karachi. The outcomes showed a positive influence of development, training and internal communication upon engagement. It was that there is prospective practical suggestion for employees and managers where they can expand engagement level in sector of banking using tactical and strategic communication procedure and also fulfilling the needs of training of employees for meeting the present job requirement settings. Hence, it can be mentioned high commitment HRM approach may function to improve engagement of employees within their organization. As a result, the following hypothesis can be taken into account for the present research:

Hypothesis 3:
Training and Development is positively related with employee engagement.

Compensation and Employee Engagement:
Compensation is all types of financial gains and tangible benefits and services employees get as part of their employment relationship (Akter and Moazzam 2016). Inayat (2018) showed that bonus and compensation structure must be taken into consideration so that employees perceive attached to the organization. According to Indriyani (2017), there is an impact linking employee engagement and compensation in startup companies of Indonesia. Verma (2015) mentioned in his research upon IT companies the connection of financial compensation against the overall degree of employee engagement. The degree of compensation provided to company employees in hotel sector has a notable impact on attachment of employees to the hotel (Antony, 2019). These arguments help to form below hypothesis:

Hypothesis 4:
Compensation is positively related with employee engagement.

Employee Involvement and Employee Engagement:
Employee involvement has become a higher need in business world of today (Kasaya and Munjuri 2018). Globalization and technology both have influenced organizations in involving every thoughts of their employees in every major and minor decision-making process. This activity assists employees for increasing their commitment towards the organization, increasing their moral level, starting to own things and connect themselves with the company and increasing the degree of their satisfaction regarding work they are doing (Kasaya and Munjuri 2018).Pacheco and Webber (2016) mentioned that employee involvement is a dominant factor to enhance job satisfaction, though there are other factors and managers should pay attention also to individual and job characteristics for increasing job satisfaction of employees. Employees having job satisfaction, tend to have commitment in the organization and employees with satisfaction and commitments are very likely in approaching to the workplace. This portrays that the greater job satisfaction owned by employees, the more will motivating employees be also in the procedure of growing organizational commitment and the lesser the job satisfaction possessed by employees, the less will employees have motivation for providing increased organizational commitment (Abuhashesh et al., 2019). When employees think themselves as member of whole firm, they feel delightful with firm's success and feel bad with firm's failures. Commitment rises here as psychological closeness towards the firm (Kumar and Pansari 2016; Punjaisri et al., 2009). The more the commitment exists, the more will be the employee engagement. Hence, we can say, employee involvement can empower employee engagement. We, therefore, offer below hypothesis:

Hypothesis 5:
Employee Involvement is positively related with employee engagement.

Methodology:
The current study is about of cross-sectional type research that focuses on RMG organizations in the context of Bangladesh. In totally 365 supervisor employees were found as the final respondents of the current study from 34 RMG organizations. The reason for choosing supervisors was that they can help the organization to enhance the 1582 productivity by their own engagement as well as the engagement of their subordinates. Initially, we communicated to top 100 RMG organizations. In total, 34 RMG accepted for participating in this survey. We personally sent out the questionnaire with the assistance of HR managers of the respective RMG organizations. Therefore, the unit of analysis of the current research is individual supervisor. We used judgmental sampling technique. In total, 850 questionnaires were distributed in different RMG organizations and within two months' time, 392 surveys had been returned only. For having incomplete information, 27 cases of these were removed. 365 participants, having response rate of 42.9 percent, formed the sample for the analysis. The respondents' demographic profile for this study is being portrayed in Table 1.

Measurement:
There were 17 items in total that were employed from earlier established scales and the scales included training and development, performance appraisal, employee involvement, compensation and recruitment and selection. In earlier studies, both locally and globally all that four criteria of HRM processes are accessible (Rubel et al., 2018;Seeck and Diehl 2017). Both training and development and recruitment and selection were adopted from scale developed by Yang et al. (2015). For measuring the constructs of employee participation and compensation, Allen et al. (2003) items were adapted and found acceptable. It was found that the constructs both had an alpha value which was higher comparing to 0.70. Finally, the dependent variable of this study, employee engagement, was measured using nine items adapted from earlier research study of Rubel and Kee (2013). Indicators which were applied to estimate exogenous variables and also mediators, had been measured by utilizing Likert scale of 5 points in which 1 points out highly disagree whereas 5 points out highly agree. Indicators for measuring endogenous variable, that is knowledge sharing behavior, were assessed using Likert scale of 7 points in which 1 points out highly disagree whereas 7 points out highly agree.  2015). Moreover, Harman single factor test indicates CMV will be problematic in case single latent factor describes maximum of explained variance. Since single-source data has been used, it was expected to have CMV related problem in the present study. For this, proximal separation method and also Harman Single-factor analysis had been used in the present study. The current questionnaire 1583 contained various sections that represented separate set of measurements having related directions for every variable. The respondents had to read and answer every section thoroughly. It was found while applying Harman single-factor test that the analysis of the un-rotated factor of study indicated that only 24.2 percent out of total 60.7 percent variance was covered by the first factor. Hence, there was no risk of CMV in present study.

Measurement model:
At the start of data analysis, a CFA was done for ensuring reliability and validity regarding measurement scales utilized for the study. At the time of assessing convergent validity, authors inspected item loadings, composite reliability and average variance. As from Table 2, it is evident that every individual indicator loading got a score which was past 0.60 as suggested by Chin (2010). Also, the AVE scores and CR values of all constructs were reasonable as they were higher than threshold levels equivalent to 0.5 and 0.7, correspondingly (Chin 2010). Hence, it can be mentioned very well that the suggested measurement model of current study successfully obtained convergent validity.
Moreover, the discriminant validity had been examined using ratio of Heterotrait-Monotrait (HTMT). This ratio gives more notable and current outcome than the widely applied Fornell and Larcker (1981) measures and proposed two distinguished minimum values that are 0.85 and 0.90 to measure HTMT ratio (Henseler et al., 2016). The study used 0.85 as minimum value for measuring discriminant validity. It has been found that all values of HTMT scored less in comparted to 0.85 (see Table 3). As a result, the measurement model showed both discriminant and convergent validity acceptable. PLS does not need any typical goodness-of-fit statistic and earlier attempts to explore supporting fit statistics have been found very much formidable (Henseler and Sarstedt 2013). As proxy, the quality of model is examined if it can foretell the endogenous constructs. This evaluation is prepared based upon the criteria which is effect size (f 2 ) and coefficient of determination (R 2 ) path coefficients (see Table 4). This research has provided R 2 and f 2 values to 1584 assess structural model quality. After examining validity and reliability of scales, the researchers prepared structural model in which 5 constructs of the HCHRM practices had been viewed as exogenous variable and employee engagement had been considered as endogenous variable. In present research, 5 dimensional HCHRM describes 58.5 percent variance regarding employee engagement. Direct path from HCHRM to employee engagement displayed positive and significant like the score of recruitment and selection to employee engagement is β = 0.121, p < 0.05, score of training and development to employee engagement is β = 0.121, p < 0.05, score of performance appraisal to employee engagement is β = 0.121, p < 0.05, score of compensation to employee engagement is β = 0.121, p < 0.05 and score of employee involvement to employee engagement is β = 0.121, p < 0.05. Moreover, to assess f 2 the suggestions given by Kock and Lynn (2012) and also Kock (2015) had been utilized. In this process, all of variables shall be regressed in opposition to common variable and if value of VIF is ≤ 3.3, then there is no bias from single source data. The analysis produced VIF of lower than 3.3. Hence, single-source bias had not been serious matter with these data.

Discussion:-
The purpose of the study was to assess how HCHRM effects employee engagement, which was tested empirically with a view to developing country. Specifically, the influence of HCHRM practices upon employee engagement in management was assessed among supervisors in Bangladeshi RMG Factories. This article suggests newer approach for studying HRM practices from HCHRM perspective for shaping employee engagement. The study findings are uniform with past research. The present results supported the first hypothesis on the linkage between recruitment and selection and engagement of employee. This finding supports arguments made by (Kim, 2019) that how Highcommitment HRM involves creating conditions for achieving stable income through selective recruitment and thus effecting employee engagement positively. Consistent with this earlier view (Kim, 2019), the present findings indicate that High commitment recruitment and selection create positive impact on employee engagement and increase better productivity among employees which ultimately lead to better performance of the organization. Similarly, confirming H2, findings of current study propound the worth of performance appraisal to enhance the engagement of the employees which is consistent with the idea that performance appraisal implies a noteworthy positive relationship with employee engagement while employee engagement has negative relation with turnover intention. (Mitchell et al., 2001; Selvarasu and Sastry 2014). Likewise, this paper also finds that with proper performance appraisal to review and evaluate the individual 1585 or group performance to provide continuous feedback for further enhancement of employee performance will ultimately lead to employee engagement. The study has also significant support for H3, emphasizing on training and development for having positive and notable effect upon employee engagement. It assumes that through training, employees get the right information and direction about betterment of job performance, thus they get opportunity to enhance their performance and get more involved and engaged in their job. Similarly, Tariq and Ahmed (2014) defined training as an on-going activity by the organization to employees in order to deliver information and the right guidance of direction for the enhancement of competencies, which increasing the job performance and which ultimately create positive relation with employee engagement (Rubina, 2015). Likewise, by supporting H4, the findings turned out that compensation has significantly positive relation with employee engagement. Compensation system of the organization should be planned in such manner that the employees performing same kind of work should get similar remuneration and promotional opportunities. Thus, compensation system plays important role for making employees fully devoted, engaged and efficient which is very much alike to findings by Hanif and Inayat (2017) who found that compensation is a basis of employee engagement and thus having a significant positive impact on it.
Lastly, H5 stated that employee involvement would be positively connected to employee engagement. Those individuals who show high involvement regarding their jobs consider the work as important fragment of their lives and connected to closely how they function upon their jobs which ultimately create motivation for their responsibilities towards job and organization. Thus, motivated employees were more committed and involved with their job which is similar to findings of Swarnalatha (2017) where it was found employee involvement in decisions infecting job or work being an important factor, which had been strongly associated with soaring levels of engagement of employee. Therefore, the study asserts the need for employee job involvement to have devoted and engaged employees as well. In the current study, HCHRM was found to predict employee engagement positively that will eventually improve the performance of RMG organizations as well. Therefore, RMG organizations should try to identify, develop and implement HCHRM to enhance employees' involvement and make them more engaged in responsibilities and ultimately in organization, which in turn should head to desirable outcomes directed to achieve specific individual and organizational performance. These results were consistent with the main conclusion of Saks and Gruman (2014) between HRM and Employee Engagement.

Conclusion:-
HCHRM is important for the employees and also for the organization because it influences employee's commitment towards the organization. Based on the empirical test and evidence, the influence of HCHRM on Employee Engagement is being outlined in this study. HCHRM practices like recruitment and selection, compensation, training and development, performance appraisal and employee involvement, have direct impact on Employee Engagement through which the degree of influence of HCHRM on employee engagement is being evaluated. The current study has high implications because the study looks into the vigor, absorption and the dedication of the employees, which are the instruments used here to find out the connectivity between HCHRM and their engagement in the organization. HCHRM constitutes of such HRM practices which will help the organization to find out the degree of engagement the employees have towards the organization. When the employees feel they have been recruited and selected properly, are being provided training for their betterment, are being compensated and appraised fairly, they display their vigor, their happiness and concentration in their work for the organization and their dedication towards the success of the organization. This highlights their engagement towards the organization. We believe that our study can make an important contribution to the management of the RMG organizations. The management would work with the HR experts in designing the HRM practices, specifically the HCHRM, in order to develop better engagement of the employees with the organization. The more the employees would be engaged towards the organization, the better would be the organizational success. Therefore, the organization should employ HCHRM practices more for better employee engagement.

Limitation:
Like other studies, there are limitations in this study also. The sampling frame represents a defined stratum of the RMG sector of Bangladesh. Moreover, there could be a moderating influence of the demographics of employees which was not considered here. From previous research, it is claimed that sometimes, the employees are not showing proper response even after getting proper training due to their lack of confidence. It is important to focus on some motivational training in order to increase the confidence of the employees which will result in providing proper response to the training. The data for the study had been collected from same respondent group working in the frontline. It would be tough to generalize findings from the study if the respondents of the sample were not representatives. There could also be a probability of the same respondents experiencing different working environment while working in separate RMG organizations, functioning in the country's capital city. Another limitation could have been the occurrence of CMV at the time of applying single respondents' group for collection of data. For minimizing CMV effect, in the study the proximal separation method as well as Harman single-factor test had been used. There was no use of any control variable that could influence the relationship of the study. Also, cross-sectional genre of the study could not make sure consistent findings between the variables of the study over long-term because of time factor. Another limitation is that impact of intervening variable or moderator has not been measured here and the research has been administered on an individual level. The future researchers could look into these limitations and conduct robust research so that these limitations are removed.