“The impact of perceived effectiveness of performance management system on affective commitment: Employee participation as a moderator”

Palestinian companies nowadays realize the importance of performance management systems. This study examines the moderating effect of employee participation in the relationship between perceived effectiveness of performance management system and affective commitment of employees in Palestinian service companies. A questionnaire was designed using Google Docs and distributed randomly via e-mail among 174 employees working in Palestinian service companies. A structural equation modeling, us-ing AMOS V26, was used to test the hypotheses. The findings showed that perceived effectiveness of performance management system has a significant positive impact on affective commitment (β = 0.77; p-value = 0.000). While the justice dimension of perceived effectiveness of performance management system has a significant positive impact on affective commitment (β = 0.52; p-value = 0.007), the accuracy dimension was found insignificant (β = 0.26; p-value = 0.178). Regarding the moderating effect, neither the interaction between the perceived effectiveness of performance management system and employee participation (β = –0.031; p-value = 0.465) nor the justice dimension was significant (β = 0.103; p-value = 0.203). Nevertheless, the interaction between the accuracy dimension and employee participation was negative (β = –0.14; p-value = 0.034). This study yielded support for the importance of perceived effectiveness of performance management system. Employees who perceived the performance of management system to be effective have higher affective commitment. Therefore, managers, especially HR managers, in service companies should pay more attention to the perceived effectiveness of performance management system, especially its justice dimension, to gain the benefits of committed employees.

Regarding the moderating effect, neither the interaction between the perceived effectiveness of performance management system and employee participation (β = -0.031; p-value = 0.465) nor the justice dimension was significant (β = 0.103; p-value = 0.203). Nevertheless, the interaction between the accuracy dimension and employee participation was negative (β = -0.14; p-value = 0.034). This study yielded support for the importance of perceived effectiveness of performance management system. Employees who perceived the performance of management system to be effective have higher affective commitment. Therefore, managers, especially HR managers, in service companies should pay more attention to the perceived effectiveness of performance management system, especially its justice dimension, to gain the benefits of committed employees.

Emad Waladali (Palestine)
The impact of perceived effectiveness of performance management system on affective commitment: Employee participation as a moderator INTRODUCTION Nowadays many organizations face challenges due to high competition, dynamic and complex environments, and increased customer demands. Therefore, organizations need to consider all factors that help to survive in such an environment. It was proved that affective commitment positively influences many employee attitudes such as job performance, absenteeism, and turnover (Breitsohl & Ruhle, 2013), performance (Meyer et al., 1989;Meyer et al., 2002;Chen & Francesco, 2003;Bizri et al., 2021), organizational citizenship behavior (Meyer et al., 2002), work engagement (Gelderen & Bik, 2016), and job involvement (Singh & Gupta, 2015). Since employees may have different levels of commitment types (Meyer et al., 1993), and different types of

LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENT
Many scholars defined employee performance management. In general, it is an ongoing process to ensure that employee activities contribute to achieving organizational goals (Glendinning, 2002;Biron et al., 2011;Dessler, 2013, p. 286 Effectiveness denotes performing activities that lead to goals achievement (Robbins & Coulter, 2018, p. 8). Therefore, effective PMS can refer to a performance management system that produces desired outcomes associated with the performance management process. According to Sharma et al. (2016), it is the degree to which PMS meets its objectives (i.e., rewarding good performers; managing bad performers (Lawler, 2003 Organizational commitment (OC) is the degree to which an employee wishes to stay a member of the organization (Colqitt et al., 2015, p. 64). OC was significantly researched during the 1990s (Meyer et al., 2002). In addition, practitioners tried to use OC to attract, retain, and develop employees and improve their performance (Mercurio, 2015).
The most popular form to study OC is Mayer and Allen's model, composed of three components (Jaros, 2007). This model suggests that the employees feel connection with their organization because they want to (affective), they ought to (normative), and they need to (continuance) (Jayasingam et al., 2016), or as described by Jaros (2017), they feel emotional connection, obligation-based connection, and cost-based connection respectively. Normative commitment (NC) can be divided into two dimensions: "moral duty"a high level of AC, and "indebted obligation" -a high level of CC (Meyer & Parfyonova, 2010).
Meyer and Allen (1984) first introduced the concept of affective commitment (AFC). AFC "is about emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in the organization" (Meyer et al., 2002;Meyer et al., 1989). It is the core of OC (Mercurio, 2015 Few studies examine the moderating role of employee participation in the relationship between perceived effectiveness of PMS and affective commitment. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to examine the effect of PEPMS on affective commitment and the moderating role of employee participation in the relationship between perceived effectiveness of performance management system and its sub-dimensions on affective commitment in Palestinian service companies. Namely, this study set out to answer the following questions: 1. Does the two-factor construct of EPMS valid in the Palestinian context?
2. Does the perceived effectiveness of performance management system influence affective commitment?
3. Does employee participation affect affective commitment?
4. Does employee participation affect the relationship between perceived effectiveness of performance management system and affective commitment?
5. Which dimension of the perceived effectiveness of performance management system has more effect on affective commitment?
Following the review of the literature, this paper investigates the moderating role of employee participation on the relationship between perceived effectiveness of performance management system and affective commitment in the context of Palestinian service companies. Thus, the following hypotheses were formulated: H1: PEPMS is positively related to affective commitment.
H1.1: The accuracy dimension of PEPMS is positively related to affective commitment.
H1.2: Justice dimension of PEPMS is positively related to affective commitment.
H2: Employee participation (EPA) moderates the relationship between PEPMS and affective commitment (higher EPA strengthens the positive relationship between PEPMS and affective commitment).
H2.1: Employee participation (EPA) moderates the relationship between the accuracy dimension of PEPMS and affective commitment (higher EPA strengthens the positive relationship between the accuracy dimension and affective commitment).
H2.2: Employee participation (EPA) moderates the relationship between the justice dimension of PEPMS and affective commitment (higher EPA would strengthen the positive relationship between the justice dimension and affective commitment).

METHODOLOGY
The data were collected using an online questionnaire through Google Docs distributed via e-mail. Therefore, all responses were valid, and there were no missing data. The target population includes employees from different service companies operating in Palestine during November and December 2021. Aa a result, 175 questionnaires were retrieved. The demographics of the respondents are illustrated in Table 1. The questionnaire was designed in English. Qualified experts translated it into Arabic to guarantee its consistency. Next, university professors in human resource management, accounting, finance, and business administration were asked to review the questionnaire's items to ensure their quality. The questionnaire covered all measures in the study (personal data, independent variables, and dependent variable) using a 5-point Likert scale.
The survey consists of four parts. The first part includes items regarding AFC. The second part contains items regarding PEPMS. The third part contains items regarding employee participation, and the fourth part includes questions regarding the users' demographic data.

RESULTS
The reliability was measured through Cronbach's α indicator. According to Sekaran and Bougie (2010, p. 290), values of 0.7 and above are considered acceptable. All the variables in the study obtained excellent bargains, as illustrated in Table 2. Next, the paper employed confirmatory factor analysis to examine convergent and divergent validity. This analysis tested convergent validity through standardized factor loading. Items with factor loading less than 0.5 were removed. Therefore, items AFC4R, AFC5R, AFC5R, and EPA3 were deleted from the dataset, as their loadings were 0.037, 0.409, 0.492, and 0.403, respectively. The coefficients of the remaining items were significantly different from zero, and the loadings between latent and observed variables were above the cut-off point in all cases. Therefore, according to Bollen (1989), the latent variable explains the observed variables adequately.
To examine discriminant validity, analysis results show that the variances differed from zero and significant. In addition, the correlation between each pair of scales was not above 0.8. Since there is a weak relationship among the constructs, it is confirmed that there are three constructs in the model. Moreover, the reliability and validity of the scale were tested using different methods drawn from the confirmatory factor analysis. The average variance extracted (AVE), with 0.5 as a reference point, and composite reliability (CR), with 0.7 as a reference point, were used. The values obtained exceeds the threshold (Bollen, 1989;Hair et al., 1995) except for performance review accuracy (PRA) (AVE = 0.474 and CR = 0.728), as illustrated in Table 2.
After collecting the data, common method bias (CMB) was detected. Harman's single factor was tested to evaluate the impact of CMB through component factor analysis (Podsakoff et al., 2003). The findings showed ten significant factors with eigenvalues of more than 1; the first factor explains 37.66% of the variance, which is below the cutoff point (0.5) according to Hulland et al. (2018). Therefore, it is concluded that data is free of CMB.
This study also tests for multivariate outliers in structural model data using AMOS v.26 through  Table 3 shows that the measurement model has a good fit. The value of CMIN/DF is (1.627), and the standardized root mean square residuals (SRMR) are 6.5%, which is in the accepted range. Moreover, the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 6.1%, which is below the cutoff point (8%), according to Hu and Bentler (1999 The hypotheses are tested using structural equation modeling (SEM). The study opted for the maximum likelihood estimation method since the multivariate normality was violated (CR for kurtosis was 25.182). Moreover, the maximum likelihood is preferable when there is a small sample size (West et al., 1995). The values of the proposed model (Table 4) indicate a good model fit (Hu & Bentler, 1999): RMSEA = 6.7%, CFI = 90.5%. Note: CMIN/DF -normal chi-square/degrees of freedom; CFI -comparative goodness of fit; TLI -Tucker-Lewis Index; IFIincremental fit index; SRMR -standardized root mean square residual; RMSEA -root mean square error of approximation. Table 5 and Figures 1-5 shows the results of the SEM analysis for the main hypotheses and the sub hypotheses results. It is revealed that the main hypothesis ( Figure 1) result is significant. H1, which proposed a positive relationship between PEPMS and affective commitment, was confirmed (β = 0.77; p-value = 0.000), which indicates that PEPMS stimulates strong employee commitment in Palestinian service companies. H2, which proposed that employee participation strengthens the relationship between PEPMS and affective commitment, was insignificant. Employee participation does not affect the relationship between PEPMS and affective commitment. In the interaction model, the impact of PEPMS (β = 0.37; p-value = 0.000) and the impact of EPA (β = 0.42; p-value = 0.000). Nevertheless, results show that the interaction between the two constructs is insignificant (β = -0.031; p-value = 0.465), as illustrated in Figure 3.
H2.1, which stated that employee participation moderates the relationship between the accuracy dimension of PEPMS and affective commitment, was significant (Figure 4). In the interaction model, the impact of accuracy dimension on Note: CMIN/DF -normal chi-square/degrees of freedom; CFI -comparative goodness of fit; TLI -Tucker-Lewis Index; IFIincremental fit index; SRMR -standardized root mean square residual; RMSEA -root mean square error of approximation.  affective commitment was found insignificant (β = 0.037; p-value = 0.639), the influence of employee participation on affective commitment was found significant (β = 0.457; p-value = 0.000), and the impact of interaction on affective commitment was significant (β = -0.14; p-value = 0.034). However, Figure 5 showed that a higher level of employee participation diminishes the effect of the PEPMS accuracy on affective commitment.
H2.2, which proposed that employee participation strengthens the relationship between the justice dimension of PEPMS and affective commitment, was insignificant. In the interaction model, the impact of justice on affective commitment was found significant (β = 0.305; p-value = 0.000), the effect of employee participation on affective commitment was found significant (β = 0.457; p-value = 0.000), and the impact of interaction on affective commitment was seen insignificant (β = 0.103; p-value = 0.203). Therefore, employee participation does not moderate the relationship between justice dimension and affective commitment.

DISCUSSION
Affective commitment has received great attention from scholars. However, employee perception of effective performance management system is a new construct. Therefore, few studies analyzed the impact of PEPMS on other employees' outcomes. Hence, this paper helps understand the impact of PEPMS on affective commitment in Palestinian service companies and the moderating role of employee participation in this relationship.
The paper enlarges the existing body of knowledge by testing the composite construct of PEPMS and its sub-dimensions on affective commitment. Moreover, it highlights the role of the justice di-mension of PEPMS in enhancing the level of affective commitment in the organization. Finally, it highlights the role of employee participation in this relationship. From a theoretical point of view, this study extends the existing explanation of PEPMS and its impact on affective commitment. This study also examines the perceived justice in the context of the performance management system. Thus, it can be considered a critical step forwarding in directing theories regarding PEPMS effects and its sub-dimensions, mainly the accuracy, that have received minimal attention in the Palestinian environment till today. The elaborated framework proposes that PEPMS positively influences affective commitment, and employee participation strengthens such impact. The results confirmed the two-factor construct of PEPMS as found in Sharma et al. (2016). Moreover, the results also confirm that accuracy is explained by four observed variables (performance planning accuracy, feedback and coaching accuracy, outcome accuracy, and performance review accuracy). The findings also indicate that PEPMS has a significant positive impact on affective commitment. This result supports Sharma et al. (2016), who found that PEPMS positively impacts organizational commitment. It is also shown that the fairness dimension has a positive impact on affective commitment. This result aligns with several studies that discussed the effect of organizational justice and its dimensions on affective commitment ( Surprisingly, results reveal that employee participation does not moderate the relationship between PEPMS and affective commitment. In addition, employee participation does not moderate the relationship between the justice dimension and affective commitment. Moreover, a high level of employee participation reduces the impact of perceived accuracy of PMS on affective commitment. In other words, the more positive employee participation is, the more negative the effect of perceived accuracy of PMS on affective commitment becomes. These results contradict other studies, such as Tremblay and Roger (2004), who found that employee participation reduces the negative consequences of career plateauing on job satisfaction. When employee participation is high, employees are encouraged to participate in meetings, speak out their opinions, and challenge the group. In the performance management context and Palestinian culture, employees may have disagreements, confront, and conflicts with their supervisors during the performance management phases. Therefore, this will lead to reducing affective commitment.

CONCLUSION
This study aimed to test the moderating effect of employee participation in the relationship between PEPMS and affective commitment. Results of the study indicate that PEPMS influences affective commitment. While the justice dimension of PEPMS positively influences affective commitment, the impact of accuracy dimension was insignificant. Moreover, employee participation reduces the impact of the accuracy dimension on affective commitment.
Results prove the impact of PEPMS on affective commitment. Thus, conclusions suggest that organizations should consider the performance management system. Thus, these systems must be developed carefully to illustrate effectiveness, as this will promote affective commitment.
Managers should invest much effort to ensure the effectiveness of the performance management system. Although the accuracy dimension was found to be insignificant, when combined with the fairness dimension, the impact will be higher than the impact of the fairness dimension alone. Therefore, managers should guarantee the accuracy and the fairness of the performance management. For example, managers should integrate the phases of the performance management system. This may increase the consistency of the process and, therefore, increase its accuracy. Justice dimension has more influence on affective commitment; therefore, it should receive more attention. Clear and precise procedures may be perceived as fair. Moreover, transparency and information available regarding the performance management process may increase its perceived fairness.
To ensure the perceived effectiveness of the performance management system, employee involvement and acceptance of performance management systems is highly suggested. By doing so, employees' affective commitment will increase. This will enable companies to grasp the outcomes of committed employees, such as enhanced performance (Meyer et  Since employee participation, in the context of the performance management system, has a negative moderating effect on affective commitment, employee participation should be carefully managed.
Finally, this study may encounter several limitations. First, data were gathered from employees in service companies in Palestine. Second, the sample size was 175, which may seem a small sample. Therefore, the model should be tested in other geographic areas using a paper-based questionnaire. Since this study was conducted in a service company, further research is required in more specific areas, i.e., financial companies, or different contexts, i.e., industrial companies. Moreover, the unexpected results of the moderating role of employee participation require more investigation.