Research On Union Commitment Of Employee In Chinese Enterprises

Union commitment reflects the relative strength of employee’s sense of belonging of and identification with trade union.It is important and valuable to exploring the formation of union commitment and it impact on individual performance,which can help to solve the current issue of lack of attractiveness and cohesion of trade unions and answer the question of whether trade unions are benefit to enterprises in China.Unlike the practice of trade unions in the western context,Chinese trade unions have adopted various “inducing” and “coercive” measures to stimulate employees’ participation in union activities.An argument arises that whether union participation might promote employees’ union commitment by enhancing their union instrumentality.In addition,whether employees with high level of union commitment show better job performance as trade unions expected to indirectly promote the stable production and development of enterprises.In response to the above questions,this paper mainly focuses on six issues as following:(1)can “induced-type” and “compulsory-type” union participation effectively promotes the union commitment of employee in China?(2)what are the specifics path that union participation leads to union commitment?(3)what situational factor influences on the path that union participation leads to union commitment?(4)whether union commitment influence on job performance through the mediating role of employee participation?(5)how does organizational commitment affect the relationship of union commitment,employee participation and job performance?(6)whether the representativeness and generalization of the conclusions of the first to fifth research questions exist?Around the above six research questions,this paper design three sub-studies for verification by using questionnaire survey method.Based on triadic reciprocal determinism and cognitive dissonance theory,the first study proposed a multi-level model on the relationship of union participation,union instrumentality,union commitment and enterprise ownership,and tested it by a sample of 443 employee from 14 state-owned enterprises and 11 non-state-owned enterprises in order to response to the first three research questions.Based on social identity theory,self-verification theory and cognitive dissonance theory,the second study proposed a model on the relationship of union commitment,employee participation,job performance and organizational commitment,and tested it by a sample of 596 employee from 33 enterprises in order to response to the fourth and fifth research questions.In order to obtain more stable test results,the third study integrates the first and second study into a whole model and proposed two new hypotheses,and tested it by a sample of 795 employee from 19 state-owned enterprises and 23 non-state-owned enterprises in order to response to the sixth research questions.It also finds that the multi-link transformation mechanism of the union participation on job performance.By doing so,this paper draws the following conclusions:First,“induced-type” and “compulsory-type” union participation is an important inducing factor to stimulate union commitment of employee in Chinese context.Second,“induced-type” and “compulsory-type” union participation promotes union commitment by enhancing the perception of union instrumentality in Chinese context.Thirdly,the mechanism of union participation influences on union commitment has obvious Chinese situational characteristics.Compared with non-state-owned enterprises,the effect of union participation on union instrumentality and the intermediary effect of union instrumentality between union participation and union commitment are stronger in state-owned enterprises.Fourth,employees with high level of union commitment tend to show high level of employee participation,which in turn helps to enhance their job performance.Fifth,organizational commitment helps to strengthen the positive relationship between union commitment and employee participation.Employees with high level of organizational commitment and union commitment are more willing to show actively employee participation and strengthen the output of individual performance.Sixth,the findings of this study are not accidental discoveries.These findings are not isolated coincidences but have its inherent regularity,representativeness and generalization.Seventh,this study unexpectedly finds that union participation can not only strengthen the level of union commitment of employees but also stimulate the output of employees’ work performance.Specifically,the relationship between union participation and job performance mediated by union instrumentality,union commitment and employee participation.The academic contributions of this paper can be summarized as following.First,this paper proposes and finds that union participation is an antecedents of union commitment in Chinee context based on triadic reciprocal determinism and cognitive dissonance theory.Which is different from the conclusion in the western context.Second,this paper pays attention to the mechanism of union participation on union commitment,reveals the mediating role of union instrumentality and the moderating role of enterprise ownership.Which contains obvious situation with Chinese characteristics.Thirdly,this paper reveals the process impact of union commitment on job performance based on social identity theory,self-verification theory and cognitive dissonance theory,which provides a new theoretical perspective for understanding the relationship between union commitment and job performance.Fourthly,this paper finds the multi-link transformation mechanism of union participation on job performance in Chinese context,which is different from the intermediary mechanism revealed in previous studies of the formation of job performance.Fifth,it promotes the integration of achievements in interdisciplinary research fields.Lastly,the practical enlightenment of this paper can provide some reference and theoretical guidance for China’s grass-roots trade unions on how to enhance the commitment of employee toward trade unions and enterprises on how to operate trade unions and improve the performance of employees.