Development of a Theoretical Model for High Performance Culture

This research was motivated by less clarity and scarcity of literature on high-performance culture (HPC). The study was mainly conducted using grounded theory. A framework of HPC was developed by a content analysis in the first round of focus group discussions and in-depth interviews on the research question ‘what defines HPC’ which revealed HPC as a set of behaviors, expectations, and results of interactions among organizational constructs. This was followed by a thematic analysis of data gathered on the research question ‘what indicates HPC’ in the second phase leading to the identification of themes as indicators of HPC. As a way of method triangulation, all respondents were asked to rank 15 items identified as themes and sub-themes of HPC. This confirmed the qualitative research findings which were modeled into 5 relationships among organizational constructs namely the ones individual employees maintain with their jobs, working colleagues, management, expectations towards their ideal selves, and the organization along with 5 distinctive constructs including 3 behaviors and 2 psychological constructs namely focus, collaboration, accountability, subjective well-being and perceived organization support that explains the aforesaid relationships respectively.  The findings of descriptive statistics, literature review and in-depth interviews with experts were used to validate and refine the model. Authors defined HPC as a socially constructed, desired pattern of behaviors and expectations of a group based on their interactions with a set of organizational constructs which aims to yield desired individual and organizational performance. The authors wish to extend this research by rigorously testing the model for reliability and validity and developing a scale of HPC based on this model.