ABSTRACT

The Influence of Commitment-based HR system on Innovative Work Behavior: Focusing on the Mediating Effect Career Commitment and the Moderating Effect of HR Management Strength

Song, Min Young
Major in Organization and Human Resources,
The Graduate School of Business Administration, Dongguk University


As the changes in the industries are gradually accelerated, and the times are difficult to predict, the ability to respond to rapidly changing technologies and markets have become very important for companies and members. As the business environment companies face becomes more intense, the innovation of the companies has become a new key factor for competition that allows taking sustainable competitive advantage. In the complex and rapidly changing environment, prediction for the future become more difficult day after day, and changing one’s way of thinking is required than ever.
HR management through corporate HR policy and various institutions and systems allows members to contribute to innovative work behaviors, coming up with new and useful ideas. Especially, of several HR systems, the commitment-based HR system refers to human resource management practice expected to be able to draw members’ commitment and voluntary motivation. In other words, the commitment-based HR system is a management method inducing commitment and devotion for autonomous regulation, and members’ commitment can be managed by specific management practices.
Studies of the institutional effect of HR management pay attention to responses in the attitudes and behaviors of individual members today, and recent studies of strategic HR management and high performance and high-commitment HR management began to emphasize individuals’ perceptions of the HR system unlike earlier ones. The reason is that there is a difference between the implementation at the organization level and individuals’ perception, and that the individual members’ perception of the actual HR practices can play a significant role in predicting the performance. It is also because a problem is also pointed out concerning the method of setting a person representing the organization as the HR Director for measurement due to the convenience of data collection in studies at the organization level.
Until now, several preceding studies on the relationship between the commitment-based HR system and commitment, an attitude variable of members have considered organizational commitment, emotional commitment, and job commitment in main relationships. And yet, as the social structure becomes more sophisticated, and competition becomes fierce, in that the commitment-based HR system helping get ready for the uncertainty of the environment should be produced from a continuous and long-term perspective, not in a short time, constructing an HR system in which members can commit themselves can lead to the enhancement of career commitment. Also, as the employment relationship between an organization and its members gradually changes into a transactional relationship, the importance of career comes to the fore, and along with this, the importance of career commitment increases in both the organization and its members.
Career commitment set as a mediator in this study is a significant source that allows individuals to keep their jobs in the situation in which the traditional employment contract relationship gradually collapses. Organizational performance is considered very important by the organization in that it can be achieved by organizational members, exhibiting their competencies, and for this reason, interest and research on career commitment tend to increase.
Concerning HR management strength, set as a moderator at the organization level, members can understand the behavior expected from themselves through the HR system more clearly, and the message delivered by the organization is important for individual members not to misunderstand or misinterpret the system intended by the organization.
Sampling for this study was conducted with employees working at small and medium-sized enterprises. A survey was conducted from November 2019 through August 2020 (utilizing an untact method or online tools with some companies due to COVID-19), and members in various departments except for those in HR Department were asked to respond to that. Through this process, analyzable questionnaires were collected from 1211 members of 46 companies, and finally, questionnaires of 909 members of 41 companies were secured, excluding unreliable responses. Then, statistical analyses were conducted, using SPSS Ver. 22.0, AMOS Ver. 18, and HLM Ver. 6.0.
As a result, it was found that the main effect, commitment-based HR system had a positive (+) impact on career commitment and members’ innovative work behavior, sub-hypotheses, performance-based compensation system, competency promotion system, and employment stability system had positive (+) impacts on career commitment and innovative work behavior. The mediating effect of career commitment according to the commitment-based HR system and sub-hypotheses was also verified. In the relationship between the commitment-based HR system and innovative work behavior, HR management strength at the organization level had a positively moderating effect, and in the relationships of sub-hypotheses, performance-based compensation system and competency promotion system with innovative work behavior, HR management strength had positive moderating effects; however, the employment stability system did not have any moderating effect.
The above result presented through empirical results that the fundamental philosophy of the commitment-based HR system inducing members’ discretionary effort exhibited an actual effect by empirically investigating the institutional aspect of commitment-based HR system itself recognized by members acted as a significant factor affecting career commitment, and , a conclusion can be drawn that the organization’s implementation competency can be a condition for sustainable competitive advantage, delivering the strategic direction intended by the content of HR systems to the members properly to draw their responses fitting for the purpose.
The limitations and suggestions of this study are as follows. As for the number of samples needed for multi-level analysis, the number of individual workers in proportion to the size of each company was not strictly designed, and as for the variables used in this study, there is a limitation related to the problem of common method bias as data were obtained from the same response sources. Discussion and analysis of performance variables at the organization level will develop this study into more valuable research like understanding the strategic performance that actually achieved innovation. Since the commitment-based HR system may not necessarily have a positive effect, it is expected that considering the negative effect at the same time would provide implications concerning side effects.