The impact of organizational support on employee performance

Purpose – Building on organizational support theory and social exchange theory, this paper studies the impact of organizational support on employee performance in the context of flexible manufacturing. In particular, we aimed to investigate the mediating role of employee attitude between organizational support and employee performance, and the moderating role of organizational justice.

Design/methodology/approach – A total of 180 participants from 36 work teams employed in 7 large automotive manufacturing enterprises in China were surveyed using a questionnaire designed by the authors. Multiple linear regressions were used to test the proposed hypotheses.

Findings –The results revealed four new performance indicators of frontline workers in the context of flexible manufacturing: continuous learning, teamwork, problem solving, and active work. Organizational support can be divided into reinforcing support and inhibitive support. Reinforcing organizational support has a positive effect on new performance of frontline workers, and a sense of belonging plays a strong mediating role between them. Inhibitive organizational support plays an important role in the sense of awe of employees, but the sense of awe has no influence on new performance of frontline workers. Organizational justice plays a strong moderating role between organizational support and employee attitudes.

Originality/value –This study is one of the first attempts to explore the performance of frontline workers in the context of flexible manufacturing and contributes to the existing literature on the relationship between organizational support and employee performance.