Double-Edged Sword Effect of High-Performance Work System on Employee Well-Being-Moderating Effect of Union Practice.

Wei Qi,Shan Hongmei,Hu Enhua,Sun Jiandong

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.619345

Abstract

Improving the well-being of the employees is the inevitable choice to improve corporate performance and competitive advantage and the social responsibility that enterprises must undertake. Based on the job demands-resources model, this study introduces perceived organizational support and work stress as the mediator and trade union practice as the moderator to explore the double-edged sword effect of a high-performance work system (HPWS) on the well-being of the employee. Taking 243 employees from Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui as samples, we found that HPWS positively affects the well-being of the employee through perceived organizational support and negatively affects the well-being of the employee through work stress. Union practices can significantly reduce the positive effect of HPWS on work stress and further weaken the negative effect of HPWS on the well-being of the employee through work stress. The results of this study provide a new way to explain the impact of the HPWS on the well-being of the employees and find that union practice can weaken the negative effects of HPWS. This study provides a new thinking direction for improving the well-being of employees in enterprises.

Highlights

The well-being of the employee refers to the quality of the whole experience of employees in the workplace (Grant et al, 2007)
high-performance work system (HPWS) is significantly positively correlated with work stress (r = 0.17, p < 0.01), and work stress is significantly negatively correlated with the well-being of the employee (r = −0.23, p < 0.01), which initially reflects the logic of H2
HPWS positively impacts the well-being of the employees by nourishing perceived organizational support; on the other hand, HPWS has a negative impact on the well-being of the employee by increasing work stress

Summary

Introduction

The well-being of the employee refers to the quality of the whole experience of employees in the workplace (Grant et al, 2007). High-level well-being of employees reduces turnover tendency (Page and Vella-Brodrick, 2009), increases work performance (Robertson et al, 2012), and creativity of the employees (Miao and Cao, 2019). There is a close relationship between human resource management (HRM) practices and the well-being of the employee in organizations, especially the high-performance work system (HPWS), which is regarded as “the best HRM practice” (Ho, 2018). Initial research believed that HPWS provides employees with the necessary resources to help them complete the work and accomplish career development, increasing the well-being of the employees (Zhang et al, 2013); the frequent emergence of management accidents like “the sudden death of programmer in China” provoke a rethinking of people of the current management systems in Employee Well-Being enterprises (Jiandong et al, 2020). Some studies criticize the adverse side of HPWS caused by the high job requirement embedded in it (Van De Voorde and Beijer, 2015; Liu et al, 2020)

Methods

Results

Conclusion