Developmental Human Resource Management and Employee Improvisation: A Moderated Mediation Model

ABSTRACT Employees need to take actions quickly to respond to unpredictable changes and developments in today's volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) era. Not surprisingly, employee improvisation has attracted managers' attention. How to motivate employees to adopt improvisation remains contested, with significant gaps in the research on the impact of human resource management practices on employee improvisation. Based on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study examines the effects of developmental human resource management's (DHRM's) three dimensions (training opportunities, performance appraisal, and career development) on employee improvisation through employees' “role breadth self‐efficacy” (RBSE) paradigm. This study also investigates the moderating role of job autonomy. Analyzing the responses of 208 corporate employees, the results show that the three dimensions of DHRM all have a significant and positive impact on employee improvisation and RBSE fully mediates these relationships. Furthermore, job autonomy moderates the positive links between the three dimensions of DHRM and employees' RBSE, making the effect stronger as well as strengthening the indirect theoretical effect that DHRM could have on employee improvisation. This study presents the internal mechanism of employee improvisation from the perspective of enterprise human resource management practice, expanding the existing research and provides practical guiding value for organizations to activate employee improvisation.