Re-designing Internal Market Orientation and Its Impact on Employees’ Productivity
(A2020-59372)

AUTHORS

xini hu, canterbury christ church university; Qionglei Yu, University of Kent

KEYWORDS

Internal Market Orientation; Work and Family Balance; Chinese Manufacturing Industry

ABSTRACT

With the increasing challenges of employee management, internal market orientation (hereafter IMO) is proved to be able to satisfy employees’ needs and wants by collecting, disseminating and responding to internal market intelligence. This paper extends the previous IMO framework by including the employees’ needs and wants relating to their family situations as well. By collecting data from 417 domestic migrant workers in China, the results suggested that the extended IMO impact positively on employees’ happiness and morale in the manufacturing industry in China. Findings of this research re-emphasise the profound impact of IMO on organizational performance, in particular its contributions to enhancing employees’ positive attitudes and productivity. We argue that morale has a positive effect on both employee productivity and intention to stay. However, happiness does not affect intention to stay but does lead to higher productivity. This study extends existing theory and practice by employing work-family balance theory and developing an extended IMO construct. The results also show that the new IMO framework has its significant contributions for employees to achieve work and family balance as well as productivity, not only in the service sector but also in the manufacturing context.

REFERENCES

First and foremost, I would like to show my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. QiongLei Yu. She is respectable, responsible researcher. Especially, during this time, Dr Yu provided me with valuable guidance in every stage of the writing of this conce