Abstract

The study introduces three forms of employee participation in decision making in SMEs (work role, HR, and strategic) and tests two competing hypotheses regarding their positive and negative relationships with one aspect of employee wellbeing, namely job satisfaction. It further explores if one internal boundary condition – firms’ exploitation and exploration – moderates the three participation-satisfaction relationships. Using multilevel data collected from top managers and employees in Swedish SMEs, the results support positive connotations of participation, with work role participation having the strongest relationship with employee job satisfaction. The results additionally highlight the role of firms’ explorative orientation as an internal boundary condition for the three participation-satisfaction relationships. Specifically, the positive relationships of work role and strategic participation forms with job satisfaction were stronger under high levels of exploration. Surprisingly, participation in HR issues related negatively to satisfaction under the same conditions. The study advances HRM-SME research by discussing these findings, highlighting their implications for practitioners in SMEs, and proposing avenues for future research.

摘要

该研究介绍了员工参与中小企业决策的三种形式（工作角色、人力资源和战略），并检验了两种相互竞争的假设，即它们与员工福祉的一个方面（即工作满意度）之间的正负关系。它进一步探讨了一种内部边界条件——公司的开发和探索——是否调节了三种参与-满意度关系。使用从瑞典中小企业的高层管理人员和员工收集的多层次数据，结果支持参与的积极内涵，工作角色参与与员工工作满意度的关系最强。结果还强调了公司的探索导向作为三种参与-满意度关系的内部边界条件的作用。具体来说，在高探索水平下，工作角色和战略参与形式与工作满意度的正相关关系更强。令人惊讶的是，在相同条件下，参与人力资源问题与满意度呈负相关。该研究通过讨论这些发现，强调它们对中小企业从业者的影响，并提出未来研究的途径来推进 HRM-SME 研究。