고몰입 인적자원관리에 대한 인식이 직무스트레스에 미치는 영향: 노사관계 분위기의 조절효과를 중심으로

High-commitment human resource management (HC-HRM) aims to increase organizational effectiveness by encouraging employees to be highly involved in the organization and committed to their work. As HC-HRM has been considered to be positively associated with organizational performance, it has received a great deal of attention from HR researchers. The existing literature on HC-HRM has shown that it influences employees' attitudes toward their organizations or job, which in turn contributes to firm performance and productivity. However, despite the significant volume of research on HC-HRM, its effectiveness in terms of individual level outcomes remains unknown. In order to fill this gap, the present study attempted to investigate the relationship between employees' perceptions of HC-HRM and job stress. HC-HRM includes HR practices such as performance-based compensation, job security, employees' high involvement, and extensive training, all of which are regarded to have a positive effect on the attitude of employees. Effective HC-HRM is characterized by motivation, knowledge sharing, the maximizing of employees' participation, and an increase in the commitment to their job or organization (Guest, 2000). Participation in decision-making tends to allow employees to improve their work environment in order to relieve job stress. HC-HRM also allows employees to have a high level of autonomy, which may lead to their empowerment. Added to this, employment security tends to increase the emotional or psychological stability of employees. In other words, HC-HRM contributes to making a job interesting and satisfies employees, and this in turn decreases their stress at work. Thus, we suggest Hypothesis 1: Employees’ perceptions of HC-HRM have a negative relationship with job stress. This means that employees who perceive that their employers adopt a great deal of HC-HRM practices are less likely to suffer from work stress than those who their employers adopt a few HC-HRM practices. Employee perception of the industrial relations climate can influence not only their job stress but also their emotional well-being, one of the critical elements in a successful working environment. Unlike adversarial labor relations, cooperative labor relations are likely to guarantee that employees become highly involved in decision making regarding their own work. When management is supportive of the union, employees tend to resolve problems that would otherwise result in a poorer work environment. In addition, if cooperative industrial relations are established, management will attempt to improve working conditions because they consider the union or employees to be partners in the pursuit of the common goal of increased productivity. Therefore, if employees perceive the relationship between the union and management to be cooperative, they are less likely to experience stress on the job than are those employees who perceive an uncooperative relationship. This leads to Hypothesis 2: Employees' perceptions of the industrial relations climate has a negative relationship with job stress. Finally, this study examines whether the relationship between the perceptions of HC-HRM and job stress is moderated by employees' perceptions of the industrial relations climate. Given the effectiveness of HC-HRM, it is influenced by the industrial relations of the organization. Industrial relations are also one of the most important elements in the workplace affecting employee work stress. We thus suggest Hypothesis 3: For employees who perceive that the management adopts high levels of HC-HRM, the relationship between their perception of HC-HRM and their job stress is likely to be stronger than that for employees who perceive that the management adopts low levels of HC-HRM. Participants were recruited from the employees of six plants operated by a large South Korean automobile company that has an employee union. Results show that employees' perceptions of HC-HRM have a negative relationship with job stress. Participants those who perceive that the management adopts high levels of HC-HRM are likely to report lower levels of stress at work than those who perceive that the management adopts low levels of HC-HRM, supporting Hypothesis 1. In addition, employees who perceived strong cooperative relations between management and the union are likely to suffer less stress on the job than those who perceived at atmosphere of non-cooperation between the firm and the union, thus supporting Hypothesis 2. Finally, the results indicate that the relationship between the perception of HC-HRM and job stress is moderated by employees' perceptions of the industrial relations climate, failing to support Hypothesis 3. Findings from this study have important theoretical and practical implications. First, this study contributes to the HC-HRM literature by empirically investigating the effectiveness of HC-HRM in reducing job stress, an individual level outcome. Next, the results of this research indicate that the effectiveness of HC-HRM is not as strong in workplaces with a cooperative industrial relations climate. Finally, this study suggests that it is important for companies to establish an environment in which employees recognize a cooperative relationship between management and the union. Employees who view the industrial relations climate at work to be supportive are likely to show lower levels of stress. Therefore, management and the union should both aim to cooperate with each other in order to improve employee well-being. This study has some limitations resulting from the characteristics of the participants. The findings are based on a male-dominant sample (98.9%) with a mean age of 47. Future research needs to be conducted to include a greater demographic range in terms of gender, department, education, and industry. Future research also needs to be conducted using multi-level analysis to determine the effect of HC-HRM and labor relations on employee job stress in that HC-HRM and labor relations are correlates of group/organizational level to job stress. In addition, this study adopted a cross-sectional approach at a single point of time. In order to generalize the findings of this research, it is recommended that longitudinal data be used.