Document Type : Research Article (with quantitative approaches)

Authors

• Fatemeh Karimi jafari ¹
• Abbasali HajiKarimi ²
• leila selki ³

¹ Fatemeh Karimi Jafari 1*, Abbasali Hajikarimi 2, Leila Selki 3 1. Assistant Professor, Department of Management, Faculty of Management and Finance, Khatam University, Tehran, Iran.

² Associate Professor, Department of Management and Accounting, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran.

³ MS, Department of Management, Faculty of Management and Finance, Khatam University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Purpose: Today's organizations face unforeseen events that affect the workforce and the organization's performance and ultimately the organization's survival. The COVID-19 pandemic has created a challenging environment, especially in the field of human resource management, and has increased the need to implement technical, physical, psychological, and social activities for human resource management. On the other hand, due to the rapid development of technology and information and the fierce competition of organizations, the stress of people at work has increased, and concerns for the mental health of employees have become more important. The COVID-19 pandemic and the stress and anxiety caused by it can negatively affect the working lives of employees and disrupt the company's performance, so as to prevent the process of knowledge sharing, which is the essential need of any organization to survive in the tight competition of today's world. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of socially responsible human resource management on knowledge sharing and fearlessness of external events with the mediating role of perceived respect and organizational trust and the moderating role of role conflict and role ambiguity during the outbreak of COVID-19.
Design/ methodology/ approach:  The current study in terms of paradigm; post-positivism, in terms of approach; quantitative, in terms of purpose; practical, and in terms of method; It is a descriptive survey. The statistical population of this research includes 2350 employees of Megamotor Company, and the sample size was determined by using the power analysis method to be 226 people, and considering the expected return rate of 0.7, in order to avoid reducing the generalizability of the sample, it was increased to 323 people. Finally, after the necessary pre-processing, the data of 319 people entered the process of descriptive and inferential analysis. The sampling method is also simple random. Inferential analysis was done through structural equation modeling with the partial least squares variance-based approach in the SmartPLS software version 3.3.9 due to the presence of quantitative constructs as moderators.
Research Findings: All twelve proposed hypotheses were confirmed, among which the effect of socially responsible human resource management on organizational trust has the highest path coefficient (0.747). In addition, promoting perceived respect more than organizational trust can help improve knowledge sharing and fearlessness of external events. In other words, the implementation of socially responsible human resources management policies through creating an environment based on respect and trust as a complete mediator role transfers its effect to the final endogenous structures of the model. Increasing role ambiguity can reduce the impact of socially responsible human resource management policies on organizational trust. Similarly, role conflict is able to reduce the effect of socially responsible human resource management on perceived respect.
Limitations & Consequences: The limitation of this research is that it is carried out in a specific organization, which makes it difficult to generalize it to other organizations. Therefore, conducting studies in this field in other organizations is recommended. On the other hand, the use of questionnaires to measure people's attitudes is one of the other limitations of this research.
Practical Consequences: The prerequisite for the success of an organization is the success of knowledge-based agents in that organization. In this regard, managers should pay attention to the issue of increasing the motivation of employees and creating interest in them to share knowledge. Knowledge sharing plays an important role in innovation and improving the organization's competitive advantage. If organizations provide the necessary infrastructure for knowledge sharing, they provide a platform for sharing and applying knowledge to a large extent. Socially responsible human resources management activities, including communication between compensation and performance evaluation, transparency in performance evaluation criteria, lack of gender and ethnic discrimination in performance evaluation, and long-term attention to training, lead to increased employee trust and employees' voluntary willingness to share knowledge. By implementing socially responsible human resource management policies and, as a result, creating an atmosphere full of respect and trust, it is possible to reduce the stress and fear of employees caused by external events and strengthen action and knowledge sharing.
Innovation or value of the Article: So far, no research has investigated the impact of socially responsible human resource management on the two variables of fearlessness of external events and knowledge sharing. Also, the effect of variables of organizational trust and perceived respect as a mediator in the causal relationship between socially responsible human resource management and knowledge sharing and fearlessness of external events and the moderating role of role conflict and role ambiguity have been examined in this research for the first time.
Paper Type: Original Paper
 

Keywords

• Socially Responsible Human Resources Management
• Knowledge Sharing
• Fearlessness of External Events
• Role Conflict
• Role Ambiguity
• Perceived Respect
• Organizational Trust