領導信任、組織支持對知識型員工工作投入的影響—以舜宇光學科技(集團)有限公司為例

Abstract

Chinese private technology enterprises are facing historic opportunities and challenges, the most critical issue of which is the management of knowledge-based employees or innovative talents. In the current knowledge-based economy, the most important assets of enterprises are knowledge talents and their R&D technologies and innovation models. In the huge wave of changes of the times, the professional knowledge ability, learning ability, market response ability, ability to update and iterate technology, ability to identify effective information and innovative ideas of knowledge talents are valuable assets of enterprises. How to effectively manage knowledge workers, bring their abilities into play, and guide them to complete their work tasks and innovative activities has become a concern for many business managers.

From the perspective of management practice, the entry point for the management of knowledge workers is their work engagement, because this factor can determine the cost, quality, and efficiency of work results, affecting the individual performance and ultimately the overall effectiveness of the team and the organization. Both leadership and organizational management factors may affect the work engagement of knowledge workers. Based on the author’s own management experience and a review of relevant theoretical literature, the author have initially identified three major influencing factors: leadership trust, organizational support and organizational system, and thus put forward the following research questions: first, how to improve employees’ work engagement through organizational and leadership management practices; second, how leadership trust and organizational support can play a role in improving employees’ work engagement; third, whether the effectiveness and efficiency of organizational system ensure that leadership and organizational management practices improve employee engagement, or not?

In order to answer the above three questions, the author has taken his own company as an example and conducted a combination of qualitative and quantitative research to form the six major parts of this paper, as follows:

The first part explains the research background, research questions, research objectives, research significance, research subjects, research content, research methods, and research roadmap of this paper. The author’s enterprise strictly conforms to the academic and policy definition of a private technology enterprise; the investigated employees are engaged in management or technology work, which conforms to the definition of knowledge workers. The basic framework of the study is explained through a general introduction.

In the second part, the theoretical literature on work engagement, leadership trust, organizational support, and organizational systems is reviewed to define the theoretical constructs of the core issues. Through a literature review, the connotations of the four core variables, their measurement and related studies are reviewed, and the theoretical connotations of the core variables are initially explored in the study.

In the third part, based on the author’s personal work experience and secondary data analysis, on-site observation and semi-structured interviews in the case company, the key factors influencing employees’ work engagement are identified. The specific data include the author’s personal summary, the author’s on-site observations, the case company’s website information, annual reports, monthly management reports, year-end summaries, and some meeting minutes, books written by the founder, and interview records of 18 employees of different ranks in four subsidiaries. Finally, based on the management practices, the roles of leadership trust, organizational support, and organizational systems are summarized, the relationships among these elements are inferred, relevant propositions are made, and the foundation for quantitative empirical research is laid.

In the fourth part, based on the classical management theoretical frameworks such as leadership-member exchange theory, path-goal theory, substitute leadership theory, job demands-resources model, and signaling theory, we propose hypotheses on the relationships among the four core variables of work engagement, leadership trust, organizational support, and organizational system, and finally construct a moderated mediation model.

In the fifth part, the empirical study is conducted based on the data from the annual employee survey of the case companies. The core variables are measured by the management consulting scale of a business consulting firm, which is a long-term partner of the case company and has been applied in a large number of companies. Considering the academic scales of previous scholars and the performance of the core concepts in management practice, the authors selected appropriate questions from the management consulting scale as the measurement or operational definition of the core variables in this study. The author used SPSS software to conduct descriptive analysis, correlation analysis, scale validatioin, analysis of variance, t-test, and regression analysis on the responses of 10,058 domestic management or technology employees in the case company to conduct hypothesis testing. The results revealed that (1) there is a positive correlation between leadership trust and employee work engagement; (2) organizational support mediates the relationship between leadership trust and employee work engagement; (3) organizational system negatively moderates the correlation between leadership trust and work engagement, while it positively moderates the correlation between organizational support and work engagement, and the moderated mediating effect is significant.

In the sixth section, the author summarizes the main findings of the previous paper, explore the research contributions, limitations, and future research, then finally draw conclusions.

Overall, this paper has three theoretical contributions: (1) to explore the mechanism of leadership trust as a management style, so as to further understand the leadership style and leadership role of managers in private technology enterprises, and to discover the importance of leadership trust and organizational support to give full play to the personal initiative of knowledge workers, and finally to enhance their work engagement; (2) to discover the mechanism of “double-edged sword” effect of organizational system, to answer the leadership role question again, and to draw its own conclusion on the traditional issue of “rule by man” and “rule by law” in enterprises, and to understand the role of the organizational system through the two opposite moderating effects; (3) to expand the connotation and application of the traditional theoretical framework, for example enriching the application and connotation of leadership-member exchange theory and signal theory in the new context.

For private technology enterprises similar to the case enterprises, the author also gives suggestions in the management of knowledge workers: on the one hand, it is necessary to establish an atmosphere of mutual trust, improve the organizational system, and enhance employee work engagement; on the other hand, it is necessary to create a knowledge-worker-friendly environment so as to enhance the core competitiveness of the enterprise.

Date of Award	25 Sept 2023
Original language	Chinese (Traditional)
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Hong LING (External Supervisor) & Huazhong ZHAO (Supervisor)