Amy Wei Tian

Intra-national variation in organizational commitment: evidence from the Chinese context

This study demonstrates how organizational commitment can differ at the sub-national level. We develop and test hypotheses based on levels of economic development and related shifts from collectivism to individualism. The data comprise 1017 retail employees drawn from two economically distinctly different parts of China. We find that organizational commitment is higher in ‘less economically developed’ regions. Affective and normative commitment (NC) negatively predicted turnover intentions, whereas continuance commitment related positively to turnover intentions. Unlike earlier findings using Western samples, this study finds the effect of NC on turnover intentions considerably stronger, suggesting that NC is more predictive of turnover intentions. As expected, our results indicate that continuance commitment is more predictive of turnover intentions in the ‘more economically developed’ regions.

Staying and performing: How human resource management practices increase job embeddedness and performance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the effect of human resource management (HRM) practices on employees’ organisational job embeddedness and job performance. Following the ability-motivation-opportunity (AMO) model of HRM, the authors predicted that ability-, motivation- and opportunity-enhancing HRM practices would relate to fit, links and sacrifice components of job embeddedness, with these components mediating the relationship between HRM and employee job performance. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from a matched sample of 197 Chinese state-own firm employees and their supervisors. Multiple mediation test was used to test direct and mediating effects. Findings – Results indicated that HRM practices contribute to the creation and development of embeddedness, and the improvement of job performance. The job embeddedness components of fit, links and sacrifice were found to mediate the HRM-job performance relationship. The results suggest that organisations can ...

On the Association between Perceived Overqualification and Adaptive Behavior

Purpose – The purpose of this research was to offer an autonomous motivation perspective to explore the relationship between perceived overqualification and adaptive work behavior and examine job autonomy as a factor that may moderate the association.Design/methodology/approach – The hypotheses were tested in two culturally, demographically, and functionally diverse samples: Sample 1 was based on North American community college employees (N = 215); sample 2 was based on full-time workers, employed in a Chinese state-owned enterprise specializing in shipping (N = 148).Findings – In Study 1, perceived overqualification was negatively related to self-rated adaptive behavior. A follow-up Study 2 extended these findings by demonstrating that perceived overqualification was negatively related to supervisor-rated adaptive work behavior when job autonomy was low, rather than high.Implications – The results of this research offer an autonomous motivation perspective to explain why perceived overqualification relates to adaptive behavior and suggests a job design approach to encourage adaptive behaviors of people who feel overqualified – a sizable segment of the current workforce.Originality/value – This is one of the first studies to explore adaptive behavior of workers who feel overqualified – an outcome that has not been examined in this domain. Our findings further point out what can be done to encourage adaptive behaviors among overqualified employees.

Challenged and satisfied: the role of organisational ownership and employee involvement

Abstract This study aims to offer a more fine-grained approach to our understanding of the relationship between job stress and job satisfaction. Building on organisational theory and Job Demand-Control model, we investigated an important institutional characteristic – organisational ownership – as an additional moderator to influence the interactive effects of job demands and control upon job satisfaction. Using data collected from 1838 Chinese retail sector employees, we found that this three-way interaction was strongest for employees working in foreign-invested firms, who experienced higher employee involvement at work and perceived a high level of challenge-related stress. The relationship was weakest for employees in state-owned enterprises who reported low levels of both employee involvement and challenge-related stress. Our study constitutes an early attempt to assess the impact of institutional characteristics such as ownership on aspects of human resources management, and highlights the need for further research to recognise the importance of such characteristics as contextual factors that influence the effect of organisational practices and the work environment upon individual work-related outcomes. The paper’s concluding sections elaborate on the contributions our research makes both to theory as well as to the practicalities faced by human resource managers in contexts such as China.

Enriching individual absorptive capacity

The purpose of this paper is to offer an understanding of the development and consequence of absorptive capacity (AC) at the individual level of analysis. The authors assess how perception of organizational commitment to learning and intrinsic motivation affects individual potential AC, and employee creativity and job performance as the key outcomes of individual AC. Furthermore, the authors examined the dual role of realized AC as a mediator in the potential AC-creativity relationship, and a moderator on the creativity-job performance relationship.,This paper draws from 125 paired supervisor-employee survey data, where supervisors rated subordinates’ creativity and job performance. Hierarchical regression was used to test the proposed hypotheses.,The results confirm that both perception of organizational commitment to learning and intrinsic motivation contribute to the development of individual potential AC (above and beyond extrinsic motivation). Individual realized AC mediated the potential AC-creativity relationship. Employee creativity was positively related to job performance.,This study speaks directly to the question of how an organization can encourage its employees to absorb new knowledge, and the benefits of employee learning activities on their creativity and job performance.,This is one of the first studies to offer a more nuanced understanding of the development and consequences of individual AC – a level of analysis has been lack of empirical studies. It further point out how individual characteristic and perceptions can influence their learning capacity, and in turn, their performance.

Motivation, Knowledge Sharing, and Need Satisfaction in Groups

Research confirms that there are many forms of motivation associated with various organizational outcomes, and that there are various ways in which motivation can be supported. Self-determination t...

The Role of Intellectual Capital-Enhancing HR in Organizational Absorptive Capacity and Innovation

This study investigates the role of intellectual capital (i.e., human, social and organization capital) enhancing HR practices in the development of a firm’s potential and realized absorptive capacity, as well as the impact of absorptive capacity on the firm’s innovative performance. Results show that while human capital enhancing HR (acquisition and developmental HR) is positively related to potential absorptive capacity, social capital enhancing HR impacts on potential absorptive capacity through egalitarian practices and realized absorptive capacity through collaborative practices. Organization capital enhancing HR practices contributes to potential, but not realized absorptive capacity. Finally, our findings confirm that innovative performance is driven only by realized absorptive capacity.