員工心理資本、組織公平、信任領導與情感承諾的關係研究

Abstract

In the aera of the economic globalization and international market competition, the enterprise competition grows increasingly fierce. The competition between enterprises can be boiled down to the competition of talents, which makes many enterprises realize that human resource is the core competition advantage. This makes the competition become the competition of empolyees’ psychological capital. If the enterprise can obtain, develop and make use of the psychological capital effectively and continuously, it can create and possess the core competitiveness in the increasingly fierce competition without being eliminated by the market, and gain further competitive advantage. Luthans (2004) proposed the core of positive mentality strength after analyzing the characteristics and differences of the economic capital,social capital and human capital from the perspective of positive psychology and positive organizational behavior, so that people can focusing on the psychological capital and its impact on leaders and employees.

The behaviors of enterprise talents will not only be impacted by the employee psychological capital, but also by the enterprise environment. In the age of opening information, fairness has always been concerned by organizations, and it involves the moral principles, as well as the fairness and rationality of the entire social order,and the decision process and results of organizational resource distribution. In the enterprise with employment relationship, organizational justice is related to the work morale and positive degree of employees, as well as the enterprise stability and development. According to the domestic and foreign researches, organizational justice has a huge impact on the mentality and behaviors of employees. The valued outcome variables include job performance (Konovsky & Pugh, 1994) and work attitude (McFarlin & Sweeney, 1992) etc. Organizational justice is mainly reflected by three dimensions: distributive justice which is the fairness of measuring the result fairness gained in a certain distribution decision; procedural justice which is the fairness of applying the distributive decision procedure; interactive justice which is the fairness measuring the interpersonal interaction.

In Chinese enterprises, the relationship between employees and leaders impact the behaviors of employees and leaders greatly. Numerous behaviors of employees are mostly impacted by the leader-member relation. And the employee’s trust in leadership (trust in leadership) is a significant factors. The so-called trust is the foundation of the interaction between human, as well as human and organization. Trust is the subject of interpersonal interactive relation in the organization, and the employees’ trust on the superior and organization has a positive impact on the work attitude, including the work satisfaction and organizational commitment, and it may decline the employee turnover tendency (Aryee, 2002). With the increasing attention paid to the significance of organizational trust, McAllister (1995) divided trust into the emotional trust and cognitive trust according to the attitude of the one who trust. In the relationship between the emotional trust and cognitive trust, Lewis insisted that the cognitive trust is the platform of the trust establishment and maintenance, while the emotional trust may contribute to the cognitive trust.

The employee trust in leadership may further impact their attitude and commitment to the organization. The so-called organizational commitment refers that the individuals’ identification and willingness to participate in one specific organization. Meyer and Allen (1991) divided the organizational commitment into emotional commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment. The employees’ attitude to the organization will be directly impacted by the leadership. Consequently, the trust in leaders may impact their commitment to the organization. Compared with the continuance commitment and normative commitment, the emotional commitment emphasizes on the emotional reliance and cognition of employees to the organization. Therefore, it is more likely to be impacted by the trust in leaders when compared with the other two organizational commitments.

The employees’ trust in leaders is impacted by the organizational environment and attitudes (such as the organizational justice), as well as their own characteristics (such as the psychological capital).Meanwhile, trust in leaders may further impact their attitudes to the organization (such as the emotional commitment). Therefore, the research is carried out aiming at the relationship between the psychological capital, organizational justice, trust in leaders, and affective commitment.

According to the social exchange theory, social exchange offers the conceptual foundation about the work behaviors and attitudes. Social exchange requires the trust in others and fulfillment of obligations. The reciprocity and fairness is the significant principle of social exchange. In enterprises, the relationship between leaders and employees can be interpreted with the social exchange theory. Leaders wish to obtain the trust from employees, so that employees can work with a positive attitude and behaviors, thus improve the performance of organizations. Employees would evaluate the gains (including the material and spiritual interest) and cost through the perception of leadership, and have different feelings for fairness in psychology. The fair or unfair perception may infect their trust in leaders. If they trust in leaders, exchanges would be conducted according to the reciprocal fairness principle, and employees would reward the leaders with more positive work attitude and behaviors, or they may have negative work attitude and behaviors (2005, Wu).

Therefore, this study mainly comprehend the impact on the psychological capital, organizational justice, trust in leaders and affective commitment from the perspective of employee psychological capital based on the psychology capital theory and social exchange theory, as well as the studies on previous related literatures. Through the study of literature review and empirical study, it is proved that psychological capital, organizational justice, trust on leaders and affective commitment have connection. Through the large-scale investigation conducted in 17 enterprises in Shanghai, Jiangsu, Guangzhou, Chongqing,etc. 2330 effective questionnaires are collected, and data analysis is conducted through the descriptive statistics, independent sample T check, multiple comparison, linear regression, etc. The research results have shown that:

(I) There is a positive correlation between the psychological capital and organizational justice. The four dimensions of the psychological capital (self-efficacy, hope, resilience and optimism) are positively correlated with the three dimensions of the organizational justice (procedure justice, distributive justice and interactive justice) respectively. The hope of employees has a strong impact on its positive correlation with the fairness organizational procedures, while the resilience has a weak impact on its positive correlation with the distributive justice. (II) There is a positive correlation between the psychological capital and trust in leaders. The four dimensions of the psychological capital (self-efficacy, hope, resilience and optimism) are positively correlated with the two dimensions of trust in leaders (emotional trust and cognitive trust) respectively. The hope of employees has a strong impact on its positive correlation with the trust on leadership, while the self-efficacy has a weak impact on its positive correlation with the cognitive trust, and the resilience has a weak impact on its positive correlation with the cognitive trust on leadership. (III) There is positive correlation between organizational justice and trust in leaders. The three dimensions of the organizational justice (procedure justice, distributive justice and interactive justice) are positively correlated with the two dimensions of the trust on leadership (emotional trust and cognitive trust) respectively. The interactive justice has a strong impact on its positive correlation with the emotional trust on leadership, while distributive justice has a weak impact on its positive correlation with the cognitive trust on leadership. (IV) There is a positive correlation between trust in leaders and affective commitment to the organization. The two dimensions of trust on leadership (emotional trust and cognitive trust) are positively correlated with the affective commitment respectively. Emotional trust in leaders has a strong impact on its positive correlation with the affective commitment to the organization, while the cognitive trust on leadership has a weak impact on its correlation with the affective commitment to the organization. (V) Trust in leadership plays a mediating effect in the organizational justice and affective commitment. The sub-dimension (cognitive trust and emotional trust) of the trust in leaders plays a mediating role in its correlation with the three sub-dimensions of organizational justice (distributive justice, procedure justice and interactive justice) and affective commitment. (VI) Some of the dimensions of psychological capital play moderating roles in the correlation between the sub-dimensions of the organizational justice and emotional trust in leaders. The self-efficacy plays a positive moderating role in the relationship between distributive justice and emotional trust in leaders, and it plays a positive moderating role in the interactive justice and emotional trust in leaders. The hope of employees plays a positive moderating role in the distributive justice and emotional trust in leaders, as well as the interactive justice and emotional trust in leaders. The resilience plays a positive moderating role in the three dimensions of the organizational justice (distributive justice, procedure justice and interactive justice), and emotional trust in leaders. In addition, some of the dimensions of the psychological capital have a marginal moderating effect.

The theoretical contributions of this study are in the following aspects: firstly, the impact of psychological capital on the organizational justice, trust in leaders and affective commitment is explored, and new theoretical research perspective is brought in for the study on psychological capital; secondly, the function of employee psychological capital on the organizational justice and trust in leaders in the Chinese context is verified, which expands the applicability of theoretical concept of psychological capital; thirdly, it reveals the function mechanism of psychological capital on the organizational justice and trust in leaders. Such framework of interpretation is agreed by employees with strong explanation efficacy. Fourthly, the moderating effect of psychological capital is discussed, which gives a new explanation on its effect on the organizational justice and trust in leaders; fifthly, the mediating role of trust in leadership was given which indicates that enterprise behaviors may impact the employees’ attitudes to enterprise through the leader-member relation. The study supports the importance to study leader-member relation in the enterprise management in the cultural context of China which will be of great significance for promoting the study on related fields.

The practical contribution of this study are in the following aspects: firstly, the psychological capital can have a positive impact on the organizational justice. In addition, it can also have a remarkable positive impact on their trust in leaders. In previous organization management, enterprise managers usually motivate employees through the material incentive or spiritual incentive. This study shows that psychological capital is a significant factor that impacting the organizational justice significantly. In addition, psychological capital can also have a positive impact on their trust in leaders. Therefore, enterprise managers shall try to recruit employees with higher psychological capital, and focus on institutional design that inspiring the psychological capital of employees. Secondly, researches have shown that employees’ trust in leaders can play a mediating role in the organizational justice and affective commitment, showing that managers should try to create fair organizational environment, and take a series of measures to enhance the mutual trust for promoting employees’ affective commitment to the organization. The trust in leaders can reduce the management friction and lower the management cost, and it is the significant approach of improving the operation performance. The trust in leaders can improve the employees’ affective commitment to the enterprise. Affective commitment is employees’ identification with the enterprise, which can bring abundant economic and non-economic benefit to the enterprise. Thirdly, enterprise managers shall realize the relationship between the organizational justice and trust in leaders is positively moderated by psychological capital, which further shows the significance of employee psychological capital. Consequently,as for the enterprise managers,it is necessary to focus on the development, investment and cultivation of employees’ psychological capital, so as to benefit from the positive role of psychological capital in the organizational justice, trust on leadership and affective commitment.