| Currently, hundreds of millions of the new generation of employees enter the workplace and become the main force in the labor market. How to enhance the engagement of the new generation of employees, not only have an important impact for the individuals and organizations, but also is a important challenge in practice and theorists. With the development of positive psychology, personal-job fit has become a very important research topics in the field of human resources management (Cable&DeRue2002; Cable&Edwards,2004; Shaw&Gupta,2004), and can effectively predict job performance, job satisfaction, physical and mental health, organizational commitment, and employee turnover (Kristof-Brown, Zimmerman,&Johnson,2005), is an important factor which can affect intrinsic motivation and play an important role to enhance employee engagement. Therefore, studying the impact and the mechanism of personal-job fit of the new generation of employees on engagement, not only has important practical significance, but also has important theoretical significance.This study takes472of the new generation of employees and320of the old generation of employees to sample, and uses empirical research methods and comparative research methods, explores the mechanism of personal-job fit on engagement, investigates the mediating effect of career commitment and the the moderator effect of the leader-member exchange. Then, this study will reveal the impact of demographic characteristic variables of new generation of employees on personal-job fit, career commitment, leader-member exchange and engagement, clarifies the mechanism of personal-job fit employee on engagement, and proposes corresponding management recommendations. Specifically, the study has the following findings:Firstly, using independent samples T-test and one-way ANOVA analysis to explore the impact of demographic characteristics of the new generation of employees on personal-job fit, career commitment, leader-member exchange and engagement. In terms of gender, whether it is the new generation of employees or the older generation of employees, there is no significant impact of the gender on personal-job fit, career commitment, leader-member exchange and engagement. In the terms of marital status, whether it is the older generation of employees or the new generation of employees, there is more obvious impact of marital status on career commitment, married employees have high level of career commitment for the new generation of employees. For the older employees, unmarried career employees have high level of career commitmen. In terms of education, whether it is the new generation of employees or the older generation of employees, there is a "U"-shaped relationship between academic and personal-work fit, career commitment, leader-member exchange and engagement; there is no significant differences between work experience and the four variables; there is significant differences between positions and personal-work fit. there is significant differences between the average monthly income and personal-work fi. There are significant differences between the nature of the enterprise and career commitment and engagement for the new generation of employees and the older generation of employees. Employees working in foreign-funded enterprises shows the highest professional level of commitment and engagement, but employees working in Sino-foreign joint ventures have the lowest level of career commitment and engagement in the two samples.Secondly, there is positive impact of personal-job fit of the new generation of the employees on the career commitment and engagement, of career commitment also on engagement. This study further confirms the personal-job fit can effectively predict the level of employee engagement, and the personal-job fit is an important way to enhance the level of employee engagement; career commitment is not just "do", but more is the process of personal-job fit. That is, loving one career is not the result of the "do" the one, but the personal-job fit; there is intrinsically linked betwwen the loving one career and engagement, but loving one career can improve the level of engagement. Organizations need to upgrade the level of employee engagement, first need to examine whether the employees love their jobs, enhancing the level of employees career commitment will undoubtedly help to improve employee engagement status.Thirdly, career commitment has a mediating role between the personal-job fit and staff engagement. On the one hand, personal-job fit has a direct positive impact on employee engagement that the higher of personal-job fit, their level of engagement will be higher; On the other hand, personal-job fit through career commitment indirect positive effect on employee engagement. This means that only personal-job fit will further love career, specifically be absorbed in it, rather than simply doing one career, then loving the one and being absorbed in it.Fourthly, the leader-member exchange has a moderator effect role in the personal-job fit and staff engagement. In the the high leader-member exchange scenario, employee engagement is effected by personal-job fit, and the the low leader-member exchange scenario, employee engagement is effected smaller by influence-job fit. Therefore, the "insiders" and "outsiders" will have different performance in the process of the impact of personal-job fit on engagement, the relationship with leader will be an important moderator factors which can affect the strength of above relationship.This study has three innovations:(1) Extending the study of employee engagement to the new generation employees, this study has built an impact mechanism model of employee engagement, enriching the employee engagement theory. The new generation employees group has gradually become the main body of the labor market, but there are few systemic and specific researches that the new generation employees and traditional organizational behavior are combined, and the traditional research mode has been applied to study the behaviors and attitudes of the new generation employees, which has obvious limitations. This study has related the personality characteristics, career attitude, behavior of the new generation employees and job characteristics, organizational climate from the person-job fit, revealed the influence mechanism and process of employee engagement of the new generation employees, so as to establish a mechanism model of employee engagement of the new generation employees, realizing the development and deepening of employee engagement theory.(2) The study has found that the career commitment has a partial mediator role in the impact of personal-job fit on employee engagement, uncovers "black box" of personal-job fit effecting employee engagement and with the middle of the process, integrating the personal-job fit, career commitment, employee engagement theory.Many studies have pointed out that the person-job fit has a positive effect on employee engagement, but lack of intermediate process (Cable&DeRue,2002; Shaw&Gupta,2004). Introducing the career commitment construct, this study has built a mechanism path of person-job fit-career commitment-employee engagement, and found that the career commitment is not only " doing a career" results, but also is influenced by person-job fit positively,"loving a career" is the common contribution of "doing a career" and person-job fit. This study has built a bridge of person-job fit, career commitment and employee engagement, retaliating theory integration.(3)The study has proves that the leader-member exchange is an important situational factors affecting the above relationship, achieveing situational expansion. There are few studies which has taken leader-member exchange as factors to study its impact on employee behavior and attitude. However, leader-member exchange is an important part of the workplace relationships, and is important and prominent in the Chinese enterprises which emphasis the human relationship, relation and face (Guoshu Yang,2004). Therefore, this study has considered the leader-member exchange as situational factors, revealed the leader-member exchange has a the moderator effect role in the personal-job fit and employee engagement, enriching the leader-member exchange theory and realizing the situation development.Finnally, this study presents several management proposals, including the recruitment of staff for the younger generation should take into account the demographic characteristics; required to provide the new generation of employees working resources, the realization of the demand-supply fit; task design, and capacity training, implementation requires-ability fit; improve the level of career commitment of the new generation of employees; strengthen interpersonal skills training and improve the leader-member exchange. |
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