A Study On The Effects Of Employee-Organization Relationships On Employee Behavior Andattitude

Within the increasingly hyper-competitive economic environment that is full of uncertainty and complexity,organizations have to rely on various forms of employment relationship to gain competitive advantages in order to survive in today’ s business world.The employment-organization relationships(EORs)paradigm has provided an effective framework,from the employer’s perspective,in examining appropriate trade-offs between a firm’ s human resource management practices involved in its employment relationships applied to the employees and its expected employee contributions to the organization(Tsui,Pearce,Porter,& Tripoli,1997).Several empirical studies have demonstrated that the adoption of certain EORs is associated with higher organizational and indiivudal outputs.Compared to under-investment and quasi-spot contracts,employees under mutual-and over-investment EORs generally perform better and have more favorable attitudes.However,with the profound changes in the market environment,the new management issues faced by enterprises are becoming more and more complex.For example,the importance of social and public interests is becoming more and more important(environmental protection,enterprise poverty alleviation,etc.),which requiring enterprises to be socially responsible ones;enterprises are forced to constantly innovate under the backgroud of “China’s mass entrepreneurship and innovation forcing”;with the quickening of "Going Global" steps,China’s management wisdom also needs to go abroad to serve the globalization process of enterprises.Under these circumstances,it is necessary to re-examine the effect and mechanism of the existing employee organization relationships.In the dissertation,it mainly focuses on the effects of employee organization relationships on individual outputs,and its mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions with three empirical studies on basis of samples of Chinese enterprise staff.This dissertation not only expands and enriches the extant literature of employee organization relationships,advances the current understanding regarding employee outcomes of EORs by demonstrating the spillover effect of EORs,but also provides several irradiative practical implications to the human resource management practices.In the first part of dissertation,a narrative literature review was summarized,inwhich four parts was outlined.Part one presented the definition,conceptual nature,measurement,unit of analysis of employment-organization relationships.Part two,the literature relevant to the antecedents and outcomes of employment-organization relationships were reviewed.Part three reviewed the extant empiral studies regarding the mediating and moderating effects of EORs.On the base of these parts,several noticeable omissions of the extant EORs research were concluded and the objectives of this dissertation were also clarified.Previous researches have almost paid attention to the effect of EORs on organizational outputs and individual outputs,lacking the examination about the spillover effects of EORs on stakeholders.This limitation not only restricts the comprehensive understanding of EORs,but also may result in harming the interests of external stakeholders.In Study 1,we used a sample of 312 employees from 34 different companies to test the main and mediation relationships between EORs,perceived social exchange,and employee UPB and the moderating role of moral identity.This study demonstrated that mutual investment EORs could encourage UPB via social exchange,yet the mechanisms through which over investment EORs influence UPB are still unclear.We also found that these effects would be weaker among people whose moral identity is high rather low.In particular,apart from caring exclusively for the benefits of the company,people who have positive exchange relationship with their organization will fell a stronger moral concerning for the out-groups’ interests when their moral identity is high,thus are less likely to engage in the unethical yet pro-organization actions.The previous studies pointed out that the external environment(e.g.,economy,government regulations,industry,labor market condition)and factors inside the firm(e.g.,business strategy,financial strength,technology,structure,culture)may influencing the choice of employment types.For example,many firms have to adopt the under-investment EOR in responding to the major corporate restructuring that requires firms to be lean and mean on the one hand but desiring greater commitment from employees on the other(Tsui& Wang,2002).While it is a pity that scarce research examines the relationship between such EOR type and positive employee outcomes.Based on the above-mentioned rationale,the second study examines the potential positive effect and mechanisms between under-investment EOR and individual favorable outcomes.Analyses of multisource datafrom 25 firms and 227 employees reavealed that: the relationship between the use of the under-investment employment relationship approach and taking charge will be positive for employees have a high rather than a low level of position level;and the interactive effect of under-investment EOR and position level on employee taking charge can be mediated by employees’ feeling responsible for constructive change.To date,the general applicability of EORs has been verified in both western and eastern organizations,such as the United States,Spain,Singapore and China.In most of the prior studies,the western instrumental social exchange,which is characterized by a utility calculus,was viewed as the primary theoretical base for understanding the influences of employee-organization relationships.However,different from social exchange,there is a family-like exchange relationship between Chinese employees and their organizations,which is characterized as high affective attachment and harmony-oriented.In study 3,we extend our model of employee-organization relationships and affective commitment by identifying the family-like exchange as a specific cultural mechanism of our presumed causal sequence.The final data included 73middle-level managers and 256 employees from 26 organizations.The empirical results supported our prediction that over-investment employee-organization relationship is a significant driver of family-like exchange.Moreover,through the mediating role of family-like exchange,over-investment employee-organization relationship has an indirect,positive relationship with affective commitment.The main conclusions of the dissertation were summaried in the final part of the dissertation,and the limitations and future research directions were also discussed.