Abstract
The long-term success of organizations is mainly attributable to employees’ psychological health. Organizations focusing on promoting and managing the flow (an optimal experience and optimal functioning state) may enhance employees’ well-being and performance to an optimum level. Surprisingly, the literature representing the role of HRM practices for their effect on work-related flow (i.e., intrinsic motivation, absorption, and work enjoyment) is very sparse. Accordingly, by drawing primarily on the job demands-resources model and HRM specific attribution theory, this paper develops a theoretical framework that unravels the effectiveness of specific organizational level High Involvement HRM (HIHRM) practices (i.e., recognition, empowerment, information sharing, fair rewards, and competence development) in activating the individual level work-related flow with beneficial effect and mediating role of affective commitment. In addition to highlighting the underlying mechanisms that may cause HIHRM practices to be regarded as resources and sometimes as demands, this paper especially proposes that these practices implemented with a focus to promote employee well-being are perceived as job resources and may positively influence affective commitment and flow, whereas these practices used as a demand to increase performance are perceived as job demands and may hinder affective commitment and flow. It is further significant to understand the possible moderating effects of emotional intelligence on the relationships among HIHRM practices, affective commitment, and flow. The paper augments the knowledge and understanding of the impact process of HIHRM practices, in particular how the HIHRM effect is sensed by the workers and thus, influences their succeeding job attitude and work experience. Finally, this work, as the first paper to link HIHRM practices with work-related flow, promotes the concept of positive psychology in the workplace.
Highlights
Flow experience in an organizational context is referred to as work-related flow (Bakker, 2005)
As there is an involvement of emotions, we believe that emotional intelligence (EI) being an ability to recognize, comprehend, utilize, and manage emotions (Salovey and Mayer, 1997), may influence the underlying process of transmuting signals from High Involvement HRM (HIHRM) practices to work-related flow through affective commitment (AC)
In the presence of consensus, more precise HR well-being attributions are anticipated that may increase employee commitment (Van De Voorde and Beijer, 2015). In line with this finding based on HRM-specific attribution theory, we argue that employees will perceive fair rewards practices in a more visible and consistent way in a highly distinctive situation and will develop positive attributions about fair rewards, resultantly they may perform as expected
Summary
“Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person’s capacity to act.” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p. 52). AC represents the likelihood of the formation of an emotional bond and elucidates that affectively committed employees are psychologically attached to the organization with feelings of affection, faithfulness, belongingness, passion, and pleasure (Jaros et al, 1993) It is the most effective type of job attitude as compared with a number of other related constructs as it significantly and positively influences employees’ behavior and performance (Camelo-Ordaz et al, 2011). As there is an involvement of emotions, we believe that emotional intelligence (EI) being an ability to recognize, comprehend, utilize, and manage emotions (Salovey and Mayer, 1997), may influence the underlying process of transmuting signals from HIHRM practices to work-related flow through AC It is one of the important aspects of our paper because researchers emphasize that “emotions and emotional regulation in HRM” is a highly understudied area and requires comprehensive theory building (Ashkanasy et al, 2017). The paper aims to extend the importance of flow experience in an organizational context, and this is why, below, we start with a discussion of flow experience and further explicate how proposed variables connect with each other
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