Employee-organization relationships, HRM practices and employee reactions: the moderating role of job complexity

Building on the employer’s perspective of the employee-organization relationship (Tsui, Pearce, Porter, & Tripoli, 1997), Shaw et al. (2009) argue that HRM practices represent the conceptual dimensions of social exchange. A distinction can be made between ‘HRM inducements and investments’, and ‘expectations-enhancing HRM’. To increase our understanding how these HRM approaches influence employee reactions, Shore et al. (2004) call for considering context effects. Several scholars from China, the USA and Europe build on this call to explore the underlying processes in this relationship. We want to contribute to this literature stream. We build on the social exchange theory and HRM literature for developing hypotheses. Starting from the social exchange theory, we assume that whether employees perceive the HRM approach as beneficial depends on whether they need it (Gouldner, 1960; Coyle-Shapiro & Shore, 2007). Whether employees respond to the reciprocity norm by responding beneficially in return to the organization or not, depends on whether the offered HRM approach is beneficial to them. Similarly, it is recognized in HRM literature that different employee groups, such as professionals and non-professionals, have different expectations and they should be managed accordingly (Kinnie, Hutchinson, Purcell, Rayton, & Swart, 2005; Lepak, Taylor, Tekleab, Marrone, & Cohen, 2007; Liu, Lepak, Takeuchi, & Sims, 2003). Since professionals’ jobs vary most significantly from non-professionals in the degree of job complexity (Morgeson & Humphrey, 2006), we incorporate the intervening role of job complexity. Building on these literature streams, we expect that employees in high-complexity jobs have higher needs regarding ‘HRM inducements and investments’ than employees in low-complexity jobs. When the employer fulfils these needs, the employees will repay according to the norm of reciprocity with beneficial reactions to the organization. In contrast, employees in low-complexity jobs may react more functionally to ‘expectation-enhancing HRM’ following economic exchange rules