Research On The Adjustment Mechanism Of Enterprise Labour Relations

The market competition environment to Chinese enterprises is changing unceasingly, which includes increasingly widespread influence of the globalized economy, more and more complicated status of competition among enterprises, growing diversification in customer demands for the product and service, higher requirements on the product innovation speed and return of equity and etc. All these changes require companies to adopt a more proactive competition strategy, flexible operations, and continuous innovative mentality. When being specified in the domain of labour relations, it embodies that employment should be follow the market principles, structures and forms of the employment tend to be diversified, and factors driving employees to work effectively are more complicated. As a whole, the background of labour relations has been changed dramatically; the nature of the enterprise labour relation matched to that background had moved from a traditional style to a modern one. In the past, enterprises employed employees long-lively, provided a steady job, internal promotion and economic security, and employees paid them back with loyalty and devotion. In the new circumstances, enterprises fail to provide a long-life employment, and fewer chances for internal promotion, so staffs initiative is frustrated greatly and they are no longer loyal to a company unconditionally but think more about their own interests. In the course of confliction between the old one and the new one, the issues of enterprise labour relations break out frequently with two-edged-sword harm. In order to improve the situation, recently human resource practices shoulder the task to balance the labour relations while meeting the needs of the strategy, and gradually becomes the major force in affecting the contents and development of labour relations. Specifically, during the formulation and implementation process of human resource practices, it should safeguard interests of companies and guarantee the rights and interests of employees as well, and try to meet employees'needs for social emotion, strengthen positive emotion links between employees and organizations so as to make employees to exert for organizational interests. It is during the progress of confliction and balance that the characteristics of new style labor relations is getting formed:companies help staff in planning and developing a "boundary-less career", provide more training to improve employees'employability and their market value; employees work hard with their knowledge and skills in order to create a good organizational performance.The above changes aroused great concerns from both practitioners and academicians, and the study that human resource practices adjust the enterprise labour relations is getting popular. After reviewing literatures, however, I found it is still in its exploring stage in this field either locally or overseas. Especially, there are two crucial questions unsettled:1.Due to its uniqueness of system, national and cultural traits, it is necessary to have indigenous theories for guiding the operation of practices to Chinese enterprises. However, most of researches deducted and described concepts only with qualitative analysis, even on the study of the contents of enterprise labour relations. Although, few had done a positive analysis on the structure, which ignored the emotional factors embodied in the enterprise labor relations;2.Researchers from home and aboard have not explored and found the specific process and path on how human resource practices adjust the labour relations. Especially no valuable outcomes have been got in individual psychological recognition and the influence of cognitive results on the content and concordance of labour relations in the process.Starting from the present issues, three goals to be achieved in this study are as following:1.To definite explicitly the content and structure of enterprise labour relations under the Chinese national circumstance, and to put forward a concept model of enterprise labour relations and a scale of enterprise labour relations;2.To propose a model of the adjustment mechanism of enterprise labour relations and test it, based on the social exchange theory and unitary approach;3.To analyze and verify the structural relationship between the various contents of human resource practices and the various dimensions of enterprise labour relations, and discover the specific working mechanism of how human resource practices adjust enterprise labour relations.There are seven chapters to systematically illustrate the study:Chapter 1, Introduction. It gives an overview of the study including the background, significances, goals, methods and the main contents and layout. Especially, there is a detailed explanation on unitary approach, the research method, in this chapter, which establishes the methodological basis on how human resource practices adjust enterprise labour relations;Chapter 2, Literature review. It reviews theoretical basis, the social exchange theory, for enterprise labour relations, different schools and important thoughts in enterprise labour relations, the theoretical modes on adjusting enterprise labour relations, working mechanism of adjusting Chinese enterprise labour relations and etc, which makes an preparation for constructing theoretical model and hypothesis;Chapter 3, Theoretical model and hypothesis. It gives a dedicated exploration and analysis on all the variables in the theoretical model and their relationship, proposes the theoretical model of the adjustment mechanisms of enterprise labour relations and related theoretical hypothesis, and makes a carefully selection on the measuring tools for mature constructs;Chapter 4, Research method and data analysis. It introduces the basic information of samples, and analyzes and pre-processes data to make it suitable for further statistical analysis. In addition, reliability and validity of mature scales are tested;Chapter5, The study on the content structure of enterprise labour relations. On the base of qualitative analysis on relevant literature of labour relations, the questionnaire of enterprise labour relations is developed. The conceptive model of enterprise labour relations is verified further and the scale of enterprise labour relations is proposed;Chapters 6, The study on the adjustment mechanism of enterprise labour relations. By correlation analysis, regression analysis and structure equation model, the model of the adjustment mechanism of enterprise labour relations, specific affecting paths and explaining extent of different human resource practices on various dimensions of enterprise labour relations are verified;Chapter 7, Conclusions and recommendations. It summarizes the main conclusions, innovation, research deficiencies and points out further study. It offers some specific suggestions on practices on the management of enterprise labour relations.Four main outcomes are received in this study:1.It clarifies the content and structure of enterprise labour relations in China's current national environment, establishes the model of enterprise labour relations. The model depicts that enterprise labour relations is a higher-order construct composing of work relation and emotion relation, in which work relation includes five elements, that is,salary distribution, the union power, organizational operating performance, organizational protection, while emotion relation includes two components, that is, work context and the sense of work responsibilities;2.It puts forward an indigenous scale of enterprise labour relations. With technologies such as exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, the reliability and validity of the scale is tested, which makes sure it with better application and operability;3.It establishes the model of the adjustment mechanism of enterprise labour relations. The model clearly depicts the structure relationship of all relevant variables in the process of human resource practices adjusting enterprise labour relations. Its content is as following:(1) Human resource practices have a direct and positive impact on enterprise labour relations;(2) Perceived organizational support is a mediator for human resource practices affecting enterprise labour relations;(3) Leader-member exchange is a mediator for human resource practices affecting enterprise labour relations;(4) Leader-member exchange has a positive impact on perceived organizational support.4.It verifies special influencing paths and explaining extent of different human resource practices on various dimensions of enterprise labour relations. Its content is as following:(1) In all relationship of different dimensions between human resource practices and enterprise labour relations, only part of them has direct and positive effects;(2) Each of human resource practices has positive effect on perceived organizational support;(3) Perceived organizational support has positive effect on partial dimensions of enterprise labour relations;(4) Only part of human resource practices has positive effect on leader-member exchange;(5) Leader-member exchange has positive effect only on partial dimensions of enterprise labour relations.All above conclusions are strictly and empirically tested with statistical salience.The innovation and value of the study presents as following:1.It puts forward the concept and scale of enterprise labour relations with indigenous characteristics and relational attribution. Tsui's study (1997) pointed out that there was huge differences across cultures in line with relational attribution, so it was obviously inadequate to follow the present western theories, concepts,scales to study the causes and effects of certain relationship embodied in china'unique humanities environment. Although some researchers had done some indigenous works, the measuring indicators were mostly concentrated in wages, working environment, social security, labour contract, employment disputes, and so on, which ignored the very important emotional relationship in enterprise labour relations. In enterprise labour relations, the relational attribute either incarnates some open and dominant aspects in workplace, such as work environment, management system, labor contracts, or some recessive and emotional determinants needed to be includes on individual psychological feelings and reactions, such as loyalty, trust, satisfaction and expectations. For example, philip lewis (2005) specially emphasized psychological factors should have been included in employment relations. Comparing the concept of enterprise labour relations provided by this study to those in previous studies, the main characteristic is that it is a higher-order concept with both work relationship and emotional relationship. And emotional relationship includes two components, work context and work responsibility. Clarifying the content and structure of enterprise labour relations will help to accurately grasp the content, nature and characteristics of the relationship between organizations and employees, which is a prerequisite for conducting a relevant theoretical research and practical activities. The scale of enterprise labour relations could be used in evaluating harmonious relations within a company, which helps companies to find out the present internal labour relations on time;2.It proposes the model of the adjustment mechanism of enterprise labour relations on the base of social-exchange theory and unitary approach. Quite a lot of researchers agreed with the method that human resources practices adjust enterprise labour relations. But there was no study on the specific adjustment mechanism in literatures. The model of the adjustment mechanism of enterprise labour relations proposed in this study clearly depicts structural path between human resources practices and enterprise labour relations, seriously explains interconnection and working mode of independent variables, intermediate variables and dependent variables. It makes up for the space in the relevant research and pushes the method that human resources practices adjust enterprise labour relations to be specific from abstract, and to be practical from theoretical;3.It finds out special influent paths and explaining extent of different human resource practices on various dimensions of enterprise labour relations. The work on the relationship of all dimensions between independent variables and dependent variables, to some extent, fills theoretical blank and lays the foundation for further study and practices. Meanwhile, the conclusion of the study is helpful to forecast the possible outcome of labour relations from different organizational inputs so as to prevent and handle the contradictions between organizations and employees, carry out management programs in promoting harmonious relations with purpose. It brings a convert in managing enterprise labour relations from traditional feedback control to feed forward control or event control, and this convert is in line with the spirit of modern business management more.