外文翻译人力资源管理专业.doc

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原文：

The Mediating Effects of Psychological Contracts on the Relationship Between Human Resource Systems and Role Behaviors: A Multilevel Analysis

作者：Jin-feng Uen · Michael S. Chien · Yu-Fang Yen
起止页码：215–223
出版日期（期刊号）：3月21日
出版单位：Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

The Mediating Effects of Psychological Contracts on the Relationship Between Human Resource Systems and Role Behaviors: A Multilevel Analysis
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine the mediating effect of the psychological contracts on the relationship between human resource (HR) systems and role behavior.
Design/Methodology/Approach Multilevel analyses were conducted on data gathered from 146 knowledge workers and 28 immediate managers in 25 Taiwanese high-tech firms.
Findings Relational psychological contracts mediated the relationship between commitment-based HR systems and in-role behaviors, as well as organizational citizenship behaviors. Transactional psychological contracts did not significantly mediate these relationships. In addition, the results also indicated that commitment-based HR systems related positively to relational psychological contracts and negatively to transactional psychological contracts.
Practical Implications Commitment-based HR systems could elicit a wide range of knowledge workers’ behaviors that are beneficial to the goals of the firms. Furthermore ,our findings also provide insight into, how HR systems potentially elicit employees’ role behaviors. Organizations could elicit employees’ in-role behaviors by providing financial and other non-financial, but tangible, inducements and facilitate employees’ extra-role behaviors by providing positive experiences, such as respect, commitment, and support.
Originality/Value The study is one of the primary studies to empirically examine the mediating effect of psycho-logical contracts on HR systems and employee behaviors.
Introduction
Human Resource (HR) systems create and support employment relationships. Thus, psychological contracts can be treated as employees’ beliefs stemming from the HR system.
Furthermore, psychological contracts represent employees’ beliefs about mutual employment obligations.Employees tend to perform what they believe, that is, according to their psychological contracts. Thus, psycho-logical contracts are positively related to employees’ role behaviors, turnover intentions, commitment, and trust. In other words, psychological contracts are not only formulated by HR systems but also influence employee behaviors. Consequently, psychological contracts can be viewed as the linking mechanism between HR systems and employee behaviors.
In the past decade, most psychological contract research has focused on identifying the components of psychological contracts and the effects of the fulfillment or the violation of psychological contracts by employers. For example, Robinson et al. (1994) found that the components of psychological contracts included expectations of high pay,pay based on the current level of performance, training,long-term job security, and career development. Based on these findings, Robinson and Morrison (1995) further pro-posed that employees are less likely to engage in civic virtue behavior when these expectations were violated. In summary, researchers have confirmed that violated psychological contracts negatively influence employees’ role behaviors while fulfilled psychological contracts have positive influences. However, no studies have empirically examined psychological contracts as a linking mechanism between HR systems and employee behaviors.
Accordingly, the goal of this study is to empirically examine psychological contracts as a mediator of the relationship between HR systems and role behaviors. Our results will provide insights regarding the reason for HR systems having an effect on employees’ role behaviors. Based on these insights, HR practitioners will gain a better under-standing of how to facilitate employees’ role behaviors (e.g.,by offering them specific inducements). Subsequently, we provide a brief review of psychological contract research, discuss relationships between HR systems and psychological contracts, and propose psychological contracts as mediators of the HR system–employee behavior relationship. HR systems are considered as an organizational level variable, whereas psychological contracts and role behaviors are both considered as individual level variables. Thus, relationships between HR systems and these variables are considered cross-level relationships and will be tested accordingly.
Psychological Contracts
Initially, a psychological contract was defined as an implicit, unwritten agreement between parties to respect each other’s norms and mainly used as a framework that referred to the implicitness of the exchange relationship between an employee and his/her employer. It did not acquire construct status until the seminal work of Rousseau in the 1990s. According to Rousseau (1989, 1995), a psycho-logical contract is an individual’s belief regarding the terms and conditions of a reciprocal exchange agreement between employees and employers. Furthermore, psycho-logical contracts include different kinds of mental models or schemas, which employees hold concerning reciprocal obligations in the workplace.
In accordance with MacNeil’s (1985) typology of promissory contracts, Rousseau (1990) also categorized psychological contracts into two types: transactional and relational. Based on Rousseau and McLean Parks’ (1993) framework, transactional and relational psychological contracts differ on the following five characteristics: focus ,time frame, stability, scope, and tangibility. Specifically, transactional contracts focus on economic terms, have a specific duration, are static, narrow in scope, and are easily observable. Relational contracts simultaneously focus on both economic and socio-emotional terms, have an indefinite duration, are dynamic, pervasive in scope, and are subjectively understood.
In summary, transactional psychological contracts refer to employment arrangements with short-term exchanges of specified performance terms and relational psychological contracts refer to arrangements with long-term exchanges of non-specified performance terms. Empirical evidence supports not only the existence of these two different types of psychological contracts, but also the movement between them. For example, Robinson et al. (1994) found that as contracts become less relational, employees perceived their employment arrangements to be more transactional in nature.
Hypothesis 1 Commitment-based HR systems will positively relate to relational psychological contracts.
In contrast, when an organization applies a low commitment-based HR system, such as narrowly defined jobs, limited training efforts, relatively limited benefits, and lower wages, employees will perceive that the organization has committed to offer them little to no training or career development. These perceptions will shape employees’transactional psychological contracts, which primarily focus upon the economic aspects of their short-term reciprocal exchange agreement with the organization. Accordingly, we hypothesize that commitment-based HR systems will negatively relate to transactional psychological contracts.
Hypothesis 2 Commitment-based HR systems will negatively relate to transactional psychological contracts.
The Mediating Effects of Psychological Contracts on the Relationship Between HR Systems and Role Behaviors.
Organizations and their employees can be considered as the parties in the social exchange relationships. Based on the organization’s actions, such as HR systems, employees will generate their own perceptions, which in turn will determine their role behaviors in reciprocation to their organizations. In other words, employees’ perceptions regarding the exchange agreement between themselves and their organizations mediate the relationships between HR systems and employees’ role behaviors. Consequently, psychological contracts are expected to mediate the relationships between commitment-based HR systems and role behaviors.
Role behavior refers to the recurring actions of an individual appropriately inter-correlated with the repetitive activities of others, to yield a predictable outcome. There are two types of role behaviors: in-role and extra-role behavior. In-role behaviors are those behaviors required or expected within the purview of performing the duties and responsibilities of an assigned work role (Van Dyne et al. 1995). Since they are required for the work role, employers adopt formal reward systems which provide financial and other non-financial, but tangible inducements in exchange for employees’ in-role behaviors.
The exchange of financial and tangible inducements is a key feature of economic exchange (Blau 1964) and, thus, the exchange relationships between commitment-based HR systems and employees’ in-role behaviors could be treated as a kind of economic exchange. In other words, commitment-based HR systems elicit employees’ in-role behaviors by shaping perceptions regarding the economic terms of the exchange agreement between themselves and their organizations. Since both relational and transactional psychological contracts focus on economic terms of exchange relationships (Rousseau and McLean Parks 1993), employees with transactional or relational psychological contracts will perform in-role behaviors in order to exchange those higher salaries and more extensive benefits in commitment-based HR systems. Accordingly, we hypothesize that both relational and transactional psychological contracts will mediate the relationships between commitment-based HR systems and in-role behaviors.
Hypothesis 3 Both relational and transactional psychological contracts will mediate the relationships between commitment-based HR systems and in-role behaviors.
In contrast, extra-role behaviors, such as organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB), are those behaviors that benefit the organization and go beyond existing role expectations (Van Dyne et al. 1995). OCBs are not required for the work role, and employers do not formally reward them. For this reason, employees perform OCBs to reciprocate only when they have had positive experiences, such as involvement, commitment, and support, with the organization (Organ 1990; Robinson and Morrison 1995).Since commitment-based HR systems are labeled ‘‘commitment maximizers’’ (Arthur 1992, 1994), they are likely to facilitate employees’ OCBs by offering those positive experiences.
The reciprocation of these positive experiences is a kind of social exchange (Cropanzano and Mitchell ). In other words, to elicit employees’ OCBs, socio-emotional terms need to be in the exchange agreement between employees and their organizations. Since transactional psychological contracts do not focus on socio-emotional terms of exchange relationship (Rousseau and McLean Parks 1993), they are not expected to mediate the HR system–OCBs relationship. Accordingly, we hypothesize that relational psychological contracts mediate the relationship between commitment-based HR systems and OCBs.
Methods
Sample and Procedure
The solid strength of Taiwanese high-tech industries is a critical factor in the global economy (Einhorn ).Knowledge workers,such as R&D professionals and engineers, have been viewed as a core human resource for high-tech firms, and these firms would like to adopt commitment-based HR systems in managing their knowledge workers (Lepak and Snell ).
Since personal contacts significantly facilitate company access in Chinese societies (Easterby-Smith and Malina 1999), we accessed high-tech companies through personal contacts and a snowballing technique. All of these companies are publicly held companies or have employees numbering over one hundred. We distributed 75 survey packages to 60 high-tech firms. Each survey package contained an immediate manager questionnaire and five knowledge worker questionnaires. A cover letter for immediate managers attached to each survey package explained the objective of the survey, assured respondents of the confidentiality of their responses, and asked them to randomly select five subordinates to complete the knowledge worker questionnaires. Thirty-two survey packages were returned for a response rate of 42.67%. Specifically, we received questionnaires from 32 immediate managers and 146 knowledge workers from 25 high-tech firms. After deleting incomplete questionnaires and records with unmatched supervisor-worker dyads, we had data from 28 immediate managers and 127 knowledge workers from 25 high-tech firms,representing effective response rates of 47 and 42 percent.
Eighty-seven percent of immediate managers were male. The average age was 40 years old, and respondents had on average 11 years (SD = 7.67) of experience in a high-tech field. Twenty-six percent of them had PhD degrees, 52% had master’s degrees, 9% had bachelor’s degrees, and 13% had vocational school diplomas. Compared to immediate managers, 68 percent of knowledge workers were male. The average age of the knowledge worker was 33 years old, with 80 months of work experience. Sixty-four percent of them were engineers, and 29% were R&D professionals. Ten percent had PhD degrees,42% had master’s degrees, 34% had bachelor’s degrees,and 14% had vocational school diplomas.
Measures
Commitment-based HR System
Lepak and Snell’s () twenty-item scale was adopted to measure the extent to which an organization’s HR system nurtured employee involvement and maximized the organization’s return on its HR investment. The original scale was in English. It was translated into Chinese and then back-translated into English (Brislin 1980) by two Chinese bilingual academics. We then gave the English and Chinese versions of the questionnaires to yet another Chinese academic (a professor of HRM) to check whether the Chinese version was accurate. The response scale ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). These employees perform jobs that empower them to make decisions.
Discussion
Our study contributes to both the human resource management and psychological contract literature in a number of ways. Research results indicated that commitment based HR systems would be significantly and positively associated with their in-role behaviors and OCBs, adding to our understanding of the relationship between HR systems and role behaviors. The results further indicated that relational psychological contracts mediate the relationship between commitment-based HR systems and role behaviors. In other words, when a firm adopts a commitment-based HR system concerning its knowledge workers, the knowledge workers might perceive that they have open-ended employment arrangements based upon mutual trust, thereby, are willing to perform higher level in-role behaviors and OCBs. This finding not only empirically supports W