Perceived High-performance Work Systems and Work Well-being in the Express Industry: A Moderated Mediation Model

Abstract

The work characteristics of the express delivery industry are high work intensity and high work requirements, which often lead to work overload of the employees and reduce the subjective well-being of the employees. Although express delivery companies can reduce the negative impact of work overload on work well-being through high-performance work systems (HPWS), existing researches show that mediated mechanism and boundary conditions that perceived HPWS and work overload impact on work well-being are still unclear. To address this gap in existing research, based on conservation of resource theory (COR), this study selected the employees of well-known express delivery companies as samples to empirically test the mediated mechanism and boundary conditions of perceived HPWS and work well-being. The results revealed: emotional exhaustion mediated the impact of the perceived HPWS on the employees' work well-being. Work overload moderated the impact of the perceived HPWS on work well-being through employee emotional exhaustion. That is to say, when the work overload is low, perceived HPWS can improve work well-being by reducing employee emotional exhaustion; when the work overload is high, perceived HPWS cannot improve work well-being by reducing employee emotional exhaustion.