Figure 1 Simmelian ties
High performance work practice system (for short HPWS) is a type of human resource management system that creates sustainable competitiveness for enterprises. Cappelli and Neumark (2001) defined it as the sum of a series of activities and policies that ensure human resource management can serve as the enterprises’ development strategy in their own operations[8]. Scholars have clarified the compositions of high performance work practice system from different perspectives. For instance, Huselid (1995) divided high performance work practice system into the ability of employees, information resource sharing among enterprises’ departments, employee skills training, and employee job rotation. Guthrie (2001) pointed out the main dimensions of high performance work practice system, which were composed of cross-departmental communication, job rotation among employees, and internal employee promotion. Arthur (1994) suggested that the high performance work practice system was composed of employee communication and involvement. This study follows the classification of Qin jian (2012), who indicated that the high performance work practice system mainly consist of three dimensions: cross-departmental communication, job rotation, and employee training.
As complex social network relationships, simmelian ties effect high performance work practice system from cross-departmental communication, job rotation, and employee training. Firstly, unlike isolated two individuals ties, the simmelian ties introduces the third social units which extremely weaken an individual’s bargaining power. This ensures the benefits of participants in cross-departmental communication are balanced. In others words, simmelian ties make the behavior of participants in cross-departmental communication more rational (Zhangwei, 2016). They are able to express oneself objectively and calmly within a reasonable frame and then improve the situation of participants who are in conflict. The third party also makes participants who hold different opinions move towards seeking a common ground while resolving differences and reconciliation could be possible(Krackhardt, 1999). Secondly, according to Sheng ya’s and Li wei’s (2012) research achievements, strong simmelian ties mean that the organizations have active social interaction behaviors. Strong simmelian ties standarize the behavior and social-economic characteristics among knowledge workers. Strong simmelian ties are useful for enterprises to carry out reasonable knowledge division and modularization operation under the existing resource circumstances and the established organization framework. Strong simmelian ties adopt local and gradual way to implement job division and job rotation in order to achieve optimal allocation of knowledge workers. At the same time, weak simmelian ties enrich the social network with new knowledge and a great many of non-redundant knowledge resources, which also help break down the barriers of knowledge transferring among individuals and departments, and improve information exchange in internal enterprise by job rotation. Thirdly, employee training is aimed at updating existing knowledge and improving the professional quality and skills of employees in order to promote the optimization of enterprises’ overall knowledge structure, and achieve the established goals of enterprises. The structure of simmelian ties can enhance knowledge communication and interaction in the process of employee training , which also promote the formation of the consistency of context among knowledge workers. Similar knowledge bases further improve the ability of knowledge workers to absorb knowledge(Zhangwei, Renhao, 2012).
Furthermore, Miao Ren-tao (2013) and other scholars pointed out that the implementation effects of high performance work practice system were restricted by organizational situation. To be more specific, the high performance work practice system becomes more effective and approporiate only when the knowledge workers positively evaluate the fairness of the organization. In networks of simmelian ties, knowledge workers of enterprises become familiar with each other and gradually build up basic trust and abide behavior criterion. The relatively closed and stable tie method makes knowledge workers want to observe and recognize complementary value. This helps to clear up and resolve misunderstanding, and forms positive exchange relationships among knowledge workers and enterprises (Tortoriello, Krackhart, 2010). According to the above mentioned analysis, this study makes hypothesis 1 as follows.
Hypothesis 1: Strong and weak simmelian ties have significantly positive effects on high performance work practice system respectively.