The Effect Of Superior-subordinate Guanxi On Employee’s Thriving At Work

Thriving at work is one of employees’positive psychological states at work and is a marker of individual growth and forward progress. The more thriving employees experience at work, the easier they feel dynamic and motivational, the more they learn and grow continuously. In the Harvard Business Review, the article Creating Sustainable Performance is pointed out that," the thriving workers demonstrated 16% better performance than others(as reported by their manager)and 125 %less burnout (self-report) than other peers. They were 32% more committed to the organization and 46% more satisfied with their jobs. They also missed much less work and reported significantly fewer doctor visits, which meant health care savings for their company (Spreitzer,2012) ". Therefore, to explore employees’ thriving at work in Chinese companies and its formation mechanism will help to guide human resource management practice and incentive mechanism for employees in Chinese companies.This paper reviews and summaries the previous studies, aiming at the shortcomings of the previous studies, combining with the characteristics of Chinese companies’culture, building the research model of this paper and put forward a series of hypothesis. The author discusses how the supervisor-subordinate guanxi in Chinese companies influence on thriving at work through the following two studies. First of all, in study1,discuss the relationship between the superior-subordinate guanxi, basic psychological needs and employees’thriving at work. On the basis of self-determination theory, using human basic psychological needs as mediators to explore how the superior-subordinate guanxi impact on the thriving at work from the employees’ individual psychological point of view; Secondly, as a supplement to the study1, the study2 explore how the on the superior-subordinate guanxi impact on the basic psychological needs, and take the organizational trust into the mediating mechanism of the relationship. Using the statistical software SPSS 17.0 to analysis and get the following conclusion:(1) supervisor-subordinate guanxi has significant positive effect on employees’thriving at work. The satisfaction of basic psychological needs act partially mediating effect in the relationship between supervisor-subordinate guanxi and employees’thriving at work. In the three dimensions of basic psychological needs, autonomy needs and relatedness needs play partially mediating effects in the relationship between supervisor-subordinate guanxi and employees’ thriving at work, and autonomy needs’mediating effect stronger than the relatedness needs, the other dimension competence needs’mediating effect isn’t significant.(2) Organizational trust has partially mediating effect in the relationship between supervisor-subordinate guanxi and the satisfaction of basic psychological needs, at the same time, organizational trust has partially mediating effect in the relationship between supervisor-subordinate guanxi and the satisfaction of autonomy needs, and the fully mediating effect in the relationship between supervisor-subordinate guanxi and competence needs, relatedness needs.In this paper, based on the two mediation mechanism studies above, have further understanding on the relationship between the prosperity and relationship between supervisor-subordinate guanxi and employees’ thriving at work, unlock the "black box" between supervisor-subordinate guanxi and employees’ thriving at work. Trying to provide some theoretical guidance to managers about how to motivate employees or promote employees’ positive work attitude.At the same time, this paper also has certain limitations and deficiencies, it also provides the direction for future research.