The impact of ability-, motivation- and opportunity-enhancing HR sub-bundles on employee wellbeing: an examination of nonlinearities and occupational differences in skill levels

Lai, Yanqing ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9107-3464, Lin, Cai-Hui Veronica, Saridakis, George and Georgellis, Yannis (2024) The impact of ability-, motivation- and opportunity-enhancing HR sub-bundles on employee wellbeing: an examination of nonlinearities and occupational differences in skill levels. Human Resource Management Journal. ISSN 0954-5395

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Abstract

Existing research examines the impact of human resource (HR) practices on employee wellbeing by considering each practice in isolation or multiple practices as a bundle, focusing on linear associations. Drawing on the too-much-of-a-good-thing (TMGT) meta-theory, we examine possible nonlinear effects of Ability-Motivation-Opportunity (AMO) sub-bundles on job satisfaction and job stress. We, also, examine boundary conditions on whether and how the nature of the identified curvilinear associations varies across employees in high-, medium-, and low-skill occupations. Using data from the Workplace Employment Relations Study (WERS2011), we uncover an inverse U-shaped association between motivation-enhancing (ME) practices and job satisfaction and a U-shaped association between opportunity-enhancing (OE) practices and job stress. No evidence of a curvilinear ability-enhancing (AE) practices-wellbeing association emerges. Additionally, occupational differences in skills levels moderate the curvilinear ME practices-stress association. Likewise, occupational skills differences moderate the associations between OE practices and job satisfaction, and work stress. There is no suggestion that occupational differences moderate the AE practices-wellbeing association. These findings underline the contingent nature of the TMGT effect and call for a more nuanced investigation of the HR-wellbeing association.