Going the extra mile for patients: Service-oriented high-performance work systems drive nurses’ job crafting and extra-role service behaviour

Aim

This study intends to investigate whether, how and when service-oriented high-performance work systems (SHPWSs) drive nurses' extra-role service behaviour.

Design

This was a quantitative cross-sectional study conducted with matched nurse–patient participants.

Method

We tested hypotheses using data from 284 nurses and their matched 566 patients. The data were collected in 2019. We conducted a set of hierarchical regression analyses to test our hypotheses.

Results

The results showed that SHPWSs have a positive impact on job crafting, which, in turn, mediates the link between SHPWSs and extra-role service behaviours. Additionally, the influence of professional identification moderates these relationships. Specifically, SHPWSs are significantly and positively associated with job crafting among highly professionally identified nurses. The indirect effect is significantly positive when nurses strongly identify with their profession but not significant when their professional identification is low.

Conclusion

The results indicated that SHPWSs can elicit job crafting among higher professional identifiers, which further increases extra-role service behaviours towards patients.

Impact

Our research emphasizes the significance of HRM themes in the healthcare service industry and their direct impact on healthcare personnel. Shifting from a management-centric to an individual-centric perspective, we focus on the proactive role of nurses. Furthermore, this study enhances the understanding of the boundary conditions for the effectiveness of SHPWSs.

Patient or Public Contribution

Nurses and their mated patients from a Chinese hospital contributed to this study by completing the survey.