The Impact Mechanism Of High Performance Work System On Employee Engagement: The Mediating Effect Of Work Well-being

Employee engagement is an important issue among recent human resource management research. Studies have shown that engaged employees are energetic, dedicated, hard working, high-performance, creative, and able to bring to organization with a sustainable competitive advantage. As environment becoming increasingly complex and dynamic, employee engagement is becoming more important in achieving organizational innovation, competitive advantage and helping organization to adapt to the environment. However, Gallup consecutive years of global employee engagement survey report shows that, Chinese enterprise employee engagement is generally low. Thus, how to motivate employees to do their due work excellently and engage in work, is not only the great challenge of the current human resource management research in China, but also the organizational problems to be solved. In this context, exploring factors that affecting employee engagement and generating mechanism has important theoretical and practical significance.High performance work system is a group of complementary and synergistic human resource practices that dedicated to improve the organizational performance, and it has a significant impact on employee engagement, but its mechanism needs further study. This study first begins with the positive psychology perspective, through the survey of theoretical and literature, in-depth analysis of the relationship between high performance work system and employee engagement, and then treats work well-being as an intermediary variable, to build the model of the impact mechanism of high performance work system on employee engagement and proposes the corresponding assumptions. Second, on the basis of small sample preliminary research, we launch two rounds of large-scale survey, interval of two months. With the use of statistical software such as SPSS, LISREL to do statistical analysis of survey results, we test the theoretical model validation and assumptions. Last, using the results of the above study, we propose suggestions and countermeasures of how to implement high performance work system to improve employee engagement. At the same time, this study enlightenment organization to strengthen the construction of organizational environment, attention to employee emotional management, then build a happy and engaged workforce.This study concludes that: ① High performance work system is an important environmental factor that effect employee engagement. Differs from other human resource practices that emphasize reciprocal exchange, high performance work system focuses on building a motivated work environment, which can stimulate employees’ intrinsic work motivation and has positive effect on employee engagement. ② The positive effects of high performance work system on employee engagement is not direct, the core concept of well-being, positive emotion and job satisfaction fully mediate their relations. However, negative emotion doesn’t play a mediating role. This finding reveals the key role of work well-being for promoting employee engagement and broadens the theoretical explanation of the mechanism of high performance work system. ③ In addition, we explore the intrinsic link between the three dimensions of work well-being, and found that emotions are an important predictor of employee job satisfaction. ④ Finally, we also found another path to generate employee engagement, that positive emotions promote employee engagement through increased job satisfaction.