The Influence Of Organizational Tenure On Job Performance

Confronted with rapid aging of the population,China is actively preparing for the policy of delaying retirement age and extending working life so as to make full use of human resources.However,many enterprises do not favor this policy in management practice,because they fear this policy may weight against them keep innovative capacity.As a result,some companies come into initiate the policy of early retirement that enables the companies to keep younger and improve enterprise performance.This ambivalent phenomenon raises the question of how employees' organizational tenure will influence their job performance.Based on social exchange theory,this study investigates what impact will organizational tenure has on their in-role performance(i.e.,task performance)and extra-role performance(i.e.,organizational citizenship behavior)in Chinese context.Meanwhile,this article also attempts to examine the interaction effect of organizational tenure and work status(i.e.regular employees vs temporary employees)as well as LMX(i.e.high-quality LMX vs low-quality LMX)on job performance.By using the method of questionnaire investigation,the present study verifies all the hypotheses through hierarchical regression analyses with the paired data of 31 supervisor questionnaires and 315 employee questionnaires of 31 ICBC outlets in the two cities of Nanjing and Zhenjiang.The results show that the relationship of employees'organizational tenure with job performance is an inverted U-shaped curve,but not linear in Chinese context.The curvilinear relationship exists not only between organizational tenure and task performance,but also between organizational tenure and organizational citizenship behavior;that the inverted U-shaped relationships of organizational tenure with task performance and organizational citizenship behavior are stronger for temporary employees than for regular employees;that the inverted U-shaped relationships of organizational tenure with organizational citizenship behavior are stronger for high-quality LMX than for low-quality LMX;nonetheless,the moderating effect of LMX on the curvilinear relationship between organizational tenure and task performance is non-significant.The findings may also provide some theory and practice values.The present study examines the inverted U-shaped relationship between organizational tenure and job performance through a new theoretical perspective,which complements the previous theoretical perspectives and enriches the relevant theories of job performance.Moreover,the results could help managers identify the inflection points when employees' behaviors are most likely to change;for the enterprises who attempt to initiate the policy of extending working life,the managers should pay more attention to better stimulate the job motivation and job engagement of long-time job incumbents.In the last part of this article,we point out the disadvantages and future research.