Liu, Li (2018) Human resource management and employee well-being in China. École Doctorale Sciences de Gestion TSM (Toulouse).

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Abstract

Context-specific and employee-centred have emerged as two central perspectives to advance HRM research. Context-specific inquires the contextual antecedents and boundary conditions of HRM; employee-centred underlines the incorporation of employee experience, particularly employee well-being into HRM-performance models. The two perspectives extend the classic HRM-performance model into a multilevel model channelled via multiple processes. The present thesis aims to study Chinese HRM by integrating the context-specific and employee-centred perspective. It primarily consists of three papers: a systematic review on the HRM-performance link in the China-based literature (Chapter 2), a construct clarification on employee wellbeing (Chapter 3), and an empirical study on the detrimental effect of guanxi HRM (Chapter 4). By synthesising 52 survey studies, the review (Chapter 2) shows that the Chinese literature is following the West to embrace the context-specific and employee-centred perspective, but the former is less extensively addressed than the latter. This review contributes to the literature by providing a research map on empirical Chinese HRM research focusing on the context-specific and employee-centred perspective. Building on extant well-being models, the second paper (Chapter 3) substantiates employee wellbeing as an equilibrium of multiple dimensions: hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, individual and social well-being, and positive and negative affect. The qualitative and quantitative analyses based on a survey of 544 Chinese employees support the propositions except for the distinction between individual and social well-being. Drawing on basic psychological needs theory, the third paper (Chapter 4) postulates that guanxi HRM creates a detrimental environment that would frustrate employees’ basic psychological needs, and it would undermine employee well-being in sequence; reflecting on the Chinese context, it proposes that the value of perseverance would moderate the process from need frustration to employee well-being. The results based on a survey of 321 Chinese employees support the hypotheses except for the moderating effect of perseverance when employee well-being is operationalised as emotional exhaustion. The thesis contributes to the literature by integrating the context-specific and employee-centred perspective to study HRM in China. It has generated a research map on HRM-performance link, clarified the conceptualisation of employee well-being, and delineated the detrimental effect of guanxi HRM. The exploration invites researchers to contribute to the global HRM research base by addressing the context and paying due attention to employee well-being in China.

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