How does Human Resource Management help service organizations to thrive in uncertainties and risks: Postcrisis as a context

Abstract

With heightened uncertainties and risks in the fluctuating business environment, existing studies have concentrated on elucidating how service organizations leverage human resource practices to adapt to and survive such unforeseen and disruptive threats. However, how such practices could serve the strategic objective of cultivating a sustainably thriving workforce across different situations is not well understood. Thriving is a core transitional state that fosters positive behaviors, such as creative customer-related problem-solving. Applying social information processing theory, we propose and test a model by exploring how organizations that engage in thriving-oriented human resource management (HRM) encourage employees to take responsibility and promote constructive change, thereby activating their creative problem-solving behaviors. Specifically, we theorize and develop measures to promote thriving-oriented HRM in Study 1. In Study 2, we collected multisource and multi-wave data from 296 frontline service employees and 45 supervisors in China. Our findings reveal that thriving-oriented HRM is positively related to felt responsibility for change, which ultimately encourages creative problem-solving. We also show that the threat imposed by a crisis, that is, the COVID-19 pandemic, strengthens the positive relationship between thriving-oriented HRM and felt responsibility for change. Our study contributes to the HRM literature, especially on thriving-oriented HRM and employee perception, and has practical implications for service organizations in the uncertain context.