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

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-skilled 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.