A Survey on the Impact of HPWS on Labor Productivity in Service SMEs: Mediating Role of Social Capital and Knowledge Exchange and Combination

Abstract

The present study aimed at opening up the black box on how high-performance work systems affect labor productivity by investigating the mediating role of social capital and knowledge exchange and combination. The statistical population consisted of managers and employees of professional services companies in Tehran metropolis in 2018. To collect the data, 800 standard questionnaires were distributed directly or via email among the sample who were recruited through random sampling, out of which 461 completed questionnaires (57.6%) were received. After confirming the validity and reliability of the collected data, the research hypotheses were analyzed using structural equation modeling using SPSS and SmartPLS2 softwares. The findings show that a high-performance work system has a positive effect on labor productivity. In addition, the mediating roles of social capital (with the impact intensity of 0.48) and knowledge exchange (with the impact intensity of 0.22) in the relationship between high performance work systems and labor productivity were confirmed. It can also be argued that social capital has a positive and significant effect on the development of the process capabilities of knowledge exchange and combination in the organizations studied.

Keywords

• high performance work system
• knowledge exchange and combination
• social capital
• labor productivity