Research On The Formation Mechanism Of Downsizing Justice Perception’s Effect On Survivors’ Organizational Commitment

With the rapid development of the world economy, enterprises in competition experience more and more ups and downs. Under the background of comprehensive Industrial transformation and upgrading, organizational transformation has become the theme of company development in the current time, and downsizing is a common means in organizational transformation. Especially in the background of worldwide economic depression and global fierce competition, in order to avoid to be eliminated, companies must conduct organizational reconstruction, and downsizing is one important way of strategic adjustment. Although downsizing has benefits of simplification of organizational structure and saving cost, downsizing finally sacrifices those general staff. As one direct transforming means, downsizing can reduce operation costs rapidly, but it also brings serious contingency questions and has impacts to each stakeholders. Survivors are the important group affected by downsizing. Researches show that downsizing make survivors undergoing survivor syndrome, which leads to complicated psychological state and behavioral disposition. Thus, enough attention should be paid for downsizing survivors, and which has become an essential issue in the current human resource management. The research on downsizing survivors makes for effective downsizing management, so as to keep a long-term and steady development.At present, researches about downsizing mainly focus on the economic analysis, downsizing’s effect on enterprise social responsibility, legal regulation of downsizing and downsizing’s impact to downsized workers, and so on. Specific to downsizing survivors, the current researches involve downsizing’s impact to survivors’ psychological contract, employee assistance program to mend psychological contract, prevention and therapeutic measures of survivor syndrome. Researchers analyzed downsizing’s effect to survivors from different aspects, but there still lack of attention on survivors’ perception and attitude to organization, the relationship between survivors and organization. Thereinto, the change of survivors’ organizational commitment plays critical role in the follow-up operation and development. Till now, there are very few researches aimed at suvivors’ organizational commitment.On account of the above analysis, this research will focus on survivors’ organizational commitment, analyze downsizing’s effect on survivors’ organizational commitment. The research chooses downsizing situation as the research background, chooses downsizing justice as the beginning, explores the reason of organizational change and the inner mechanism. Based on the theoretical review, this research propose the research framework, which takes survivors’ organizational commitment as the dependent variable, downsizing justice as the independent variable, psychological contract violation as the mediator, and organizational support and locus of control as the moderators.The results of the empirical analysis are as follows: First of all, downsizing justice has a significant positive impact on organizational commitment of the survivors. This dissertation supposes that there is a relationship between downsizing justice and organizational commitment of the survivors, and the empirical analysis proves this point. Specifically, the impact degree to emotional commitment from high to low in order is interactive justice, procedure justice and result justice; impact to normative commitment from high to low in order is procedure justice, interactive justice and result justice; impact to continuance commitment from high to low in order is procedure justice, result justice and interactive justice, and the impact from interactive justice is not significant.Secondly, psychological contract violation plays an intermediate role between downsizing justice and organizational commitment. The results show that downsizing justice has a significant negative impact on psychological contract violation of the survivors, and psychological contract violation has a significant negative impact on organizational commitment. Psychological contract violation plays a partial intermediate role between them. When organizations are slashing jobs, the higher of the justice, the lower of the survivors’ psychological contract violation, and it lead to the lower the impact on the organizational commitment, and vice versa. Thirdly, organizational support is a moderator between the survivors’ psychological contract violation and organizational commitment. The survivors’ downsizing justice has a significant impact on their organizational commitment. If they feel a strong sense of injustice that lead to psychological contract violation, the organizational commitment could be severely affected. But if companies can provide enough support for the employees, the negative impact of psychological contract violation on organizational commitment can be diluted. Fourthly, locus of control is a moderator between the survivors’ psychological contract violation and organizational commitment. The higher internal locus of control, the stronger impact of psychological contract violation on the organizational commitment will be had. Individuals with internal locus of control would probably think that they have situational control ability, and they believe that they can survive in the downsizing through their efforts, if discharged and felt psychological contract violated, they will be disappointed about the organization badly and further reduce their commitment. On the contrary, individuals with external locus of control probably think that they can hardly control their surroundings. Whether they can survive is depend on the opportunity, luck or other non- resistant factors. So their psychological contract violation has a lighter impact on organizational commitment.In summary, this dissertation sets up the mechanism framework of downsizing justice influence organizational commitment of survivors, and provides a new idea on employee’s organizational commitment in downsizing situation. According to the empirical analysis, the relationship between downsizing justice and organizational commitment has been confirmed; the intermediate role of psychological contract violation has been found; and it also found the moderate role of organizational support and locus of control. The conclusions above can bridge the research gap, and it will be beneficial to further studies. This dissertation is of great value to staff reduction management. Companies should strengthen staff reduction management, and set up systemic decision-making and implementation procedures; pay attention to the fair, righteous and open in downsizing procedures; pay attention to internal and external communication in order to reshape the psychological contract of employees; the organization should provide enough organizational support, pay attention to staff training, and build a sound system of staff assistance program.