Attend To One Thing And Loss Another:the Influence Of Ambivalent Humance Resource Practices On Employee's Behaviors

The perspective of theoretical research on human resource(HR)practices vary from employer-oriented to employee-oriented which gradually take employee's needs into consideration.The human resources management System is divided into two subsystem including performance-oriented HR System and maintenance-oriented HR System according to Katz and Kahn's System theory which prove the system is composed of maintain and output.Performance-oriented HR systems encourage employees to master domain-relevant skills through the receipt of significant respect on their career advancement.However,maintenance-oriented HR provide protection of job security and workplace equal rights when employee pursue domain-relevant skills.Both motivation factors and hygiene factors are beneficial to promote individual work motivation according to hygiene-motivational factors of Herzberg.Therefore,employees have both incentive needs,such as skill development and career advancement,that performance-oriented HR systems can meet,and stable needs,such as protection of job security and workplace equal rights,that maintenance-oriented HR systems can satisfy.Strategic Human Resourc Management(SHRM)scholars have emphasized that the functioning of HR systems depends on all of the system's elements together to simultaneously fulfill multiple employee needs.Despite the recognition that the effects of different HR systems may be contingent on each other and the call for examining potential synergy among different HR systems,the interplay between different HR systems has curiously received little attention.A recent review of the SHRM literature suggests that a fertile area for future research is to take a contingency approach to understanding when HR systems may function more or less effectively.Performanceoriented HR system is incentive,while maintenance-oriented HR system is stable in the field of management.These two forces which are in a dynamic change process continue to coexist in the human resource system.Therefore,performance-oriented HR System and maintenance-oriented HR system is ambivalent in nature.Our study focuses on how two kinds of ambivalent human resource practices—maintenance-oriented HR system and performance-oriented HR system—impact emploee's ambivalent attitude as well as proactive behaviors and withdrawal behaviors.The moderating effect of regulatory focus are discussed.Further,we used the response surface to analysis the dynamic changes of the two kinds of practices on the ambivalent attitude.The result verified the differences of two practices on the ambivalent attitude in the process of change.Questionnaire survey is adopted in our study.We collected 425 questionnaires,among which 390 are valid.According to the data analysis of SPSS and MPLUS,we have the following conclusions:(1)The interaction of employee-experienced performance-oriented HR systems and maintenance-oriented HR systems have a negative effect on ambivalent attitude.(2)The interaction of employee-experienced performance-oriented HR systems and maintenance-oriented HR systems have a negative indirect effect on proactive behaviors and withdrawal behavior through ambivalent attitude.(3)Regulatory focus moderates the relationship of the positive indirect effect of the interacted employee-experienced performance-oriented HR systems and maintenance-oriented HR systems on proactive behaviors via ambivalent attitude,such that the strength of this indirect effect will be negatively related to Regulatory focus.(4)Regulatory focus moderates the relationship of the negative indirect effect of the interacted employee-experienced performance-oriented HR systems and maintenance-oriented HR systems on withdrawal behavior via ambivalent attitude,such that the strength of this indirect effect will be negatively related to Regulatory focus.(5)The more aligned employee-experienced performance-oriented HR systems and maintenance-oriented HR systems are,the worse the ambivalent attitude.The aligned employee-experienced performance-oriented HR systems and maintenanceoriented HR systems have an inverted u-shaped relationship on ambivalent attitude.As the aligned level keeps increasing,the ambivalent attitude increases first then starts to drop.(6)Ambivalent attitude is higher when employee-experienced maintenanceoriented HR systems is higher than performance-oriented HR systems rather than when employee-experienced performance-oriented HR systems is higher than maintenance-oriented HR systems.