Fostering mutual gains: Explaining the influence of high‐performance work systems and leadership on psychological health and service performance

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12256
• Published date: 01 April 2020
• Author: Hyunyoung Jo,Hsin‐Hua Hsiung,Samuel Aryee,David Guest
• Date: 01 April 2020

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Fostering mutual gains: Explaining the influence of

high-performance work systems and leadership on

psychological health and service performance

Hyunyoung Jo

1

| Samuel Aryee

2

| Hsin-Hua Hsiung

3

|

David Guest

4

1

Leeds University Business School, University

of Leeds, Leeds, UK

2

Surrey Business School, University of Surrey,

Guildford, UK

3

Department of Psychology, National Taiwan

University, Taipei, Taiwan

4

King's Business School, King's College

London, London, UK

Correspondence

Hyunyoung Jo, Leeds University Business

School, University of Leeds, Maurice

Keyworth Building, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK.

Email: h.jo@leeds.ac.uk

Abstract

Despite the growing importance of sustainable manage-

ment of human resources, human resource management

and leadership research on mutuality in the employment

relationship has proceeded in a parallel fashion. Drawing on

self-determination theory, this study proposes an integra-

tive model of human growth by addressing two interrelated

questions: (a) how and why experienced service-oriented

high-performance work systems (HPWS) and unit service

leadership relate to psychological health and service perfor-

mance and (b) whether thriving at work and psychological

health serially mediate the relationships between the two

contextual antecedents and service performance. Our find-

ings revealed that experienced service-oriented HPWS and

unit service leadership related to service performance but

indirectly through thriving at work. However, experienced

service-oriented HPWS but not unit service leadership

related to psychological health through thriving at work.

Furthermore, thriving at work and psychological health

serially mediated the relationship between experienced ser-

vice-oriented HPWS (but not unit service leadership) and

service performance.

KEYWORDS

high-performance work systems, leadership, psychological health,

service performance, thriving at work

Received: 19 July 2018 Revised: 22 July 2019 Accepted: 25 July 2019

DOI: 10.1111/1748-8583.12256

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1|INTRODUCTION

Although much is now known about the processes through which the contextual antecedents of human resource

(HR) and leadership practices relate to employee performance, recent interest in sustainable human resources has

put a spotlight on the preoccupation with performance at the expense of employee well-being (Donaldson-Feilder,

Munir, & Lewis, 2013; Godard, 2004; Guest, 2017). For example, research has shown that implementation of high-

performance work systems (HPWS) leads to work intensification and ultimately, impairs employee physical and psy-

chological health (Kroon, Van De Voorde, & Van Veldhoven, 2009; Loon, Otaye-Ebede, & Stewart, 2019;

Ogbonnaya, Daniels, Connolly, & Van Veldhoven, 2017; Van De Voorde, Paauwe, & Van Veldhoven, 2012). Similarly,

leadership behaviours such as abusive supervision has been shown to impair employee well-being (Liang, Hanig,

Evans, Brown, & Lian, 2017), precipitating a growing focus on well-being in the wider leadership literature (Dona-

ldson-Feilder et al., 2013; Inceoglu, Thomas, Chu, Plans, & Gerbasi, 2018; Jiménez, Winkler, & Dunkl, 2017; Kelloway

& Barling, 2010; Kelloway, Turner, Barling, & Loughlin, 2012; Kelloway, Weigand, McKee, & Das, 2013; Montano,

Reeske, Franke, & Huffmeier, 2017).

Although there is much to be gained from the emergent focus on sustainable management of human resources

(Pfeffer, 2010), our understanding of how and why HR and leadership practices promote individual and

organisational outcomes is limited by the dearth of research that simultaneously investigates these two streams of

research. Leroy, Segers, Van Dierendonck, and den Hartog (2018) observed that despite their overlapping focus on

effective management of people, research in these two areas have proceeded separately. Furthermore, although

both HPWS and leadership research have examined motivational pathways through which they influence employee

well-being and/or performance, there is a paucity of research that has examined pathways that draw their concep-

tual inspiration from mutual gains perspective. A mutual gains perspective highlights the importance of human

resource and/or leadership practices that promote not only employee and therefore organisational performance but

also the well-being of employees, which in turn accounts for performance (Van De Voorde et al., 2012). As shown in

Table 1, research that examined the influence of HPWS on employee performance and well-being tended to focus

on work-related attitudes such as job satisfaction and organisational commitment or work-related attributes such as

job demands. Although explicating the HPWS–employee performance relationship is important, with the exception

of job satisfaction, these pathways are more likely to impact on performance relative to employee well-being.

One such motivational pathway that reflects the mutual gains perspective and increasingly examined in leader-

ship research is thriving at work. Although a growing number of studies have examined this construct as a pathway

through which different types of leadership style (e.g., transformational, servant, and leader–member exchange)

influence their outcomes, as shown in Table1, these studies focused on performance and not employee well-being.

As a positive psychological state, thriving at work connotes personal growth or optimal human functioning, which, in

contrast to withering, captures the essence of sustainable management of human resources (Spreitzer, Sutcliffe,

Dutton, Grant, & Sonenshein, 2005). Boxall, Guthrie, and Paauwe (2016, p. 104) observed that as “employee-related

variables are key mediators in HRM (and leadership), studies of mediation give us the opportunity to connect to ques-

tions of mutuality in employment relationships ….”Drawing on self-determination theory (SDT), we sought to

address two interrelated questions in this study: First, do the contextual antecedents of perceived HPWSand service

leadership jointly or separately relate to thriving at work and indirectly, to employee well-being and performance?

Second, do thriving at work and employee well-being serially mediate the influence of these contextual antecedents

on service performance?

By addressing these interrelated questions, this study makes two contributions to the literature. First, as the two

antecedents are critical to shaping employees' experience of work (Leroy et al., 2018), research that seeks to illumi-

nate our understanding of how to sustainably manage human resources for long-term organisational viability

(Kowalski & Loretto, 2017) must include HPWS and leadership as well as employee and organisationally relevant

outcomes (Guest, 2017; Kowalski & Loretto, 2017; Van De Voorde et al., 2012; Wood & Ogbonnaya, 2018). Indeed,

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