The effect of knowledge-based human resource management on the sustainable performance of employees with the mediating role of human resources psychological empowerment

Emphasizing a working system with stable performance in a dynamic and competitive economy is vital to increasing the performance of knowledge-based companies. Therefore, the need to achieve sustainable performance has caused these companies to resort to several factors to find a solution to eliminate the negative social and environmental effects on their activities. One of these factors is the participation and stable performance of employees in promoting and improving the company's sustainable performance. The stable performance of employees is an ideal state, in the performance of an organizational role, which describes the ability of a person to perform activities that develop the organization's main capabilities to achieve a desirable state, and its difference is the performance in long-term received results. The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of knowledge-based human resources management on the sustainable performance of employees with the mediating role of psychological empowerment of human resources.

Design/Methodology/Approach: 

The current research is applied research in terms of its purpose, and in terms of data collection, it is research with a descriptive-survey approach. The statistical population of this research includes all employees of knowledge-based companies in Bushehr province, numbering 509 people, and the statistical sample size based on Cochran's sample estimation formula is 219 employees. To collect data and measure the relationship between research variables, a questionnaire was used. Questionnaire criteria to measure the variable of knowledge-based human resource management from Kianto et al. (2017) with four dimensions (recruitment and selection, training and development, performance evaluation and service reward), the variable of psychological empowerment of human resources from Spreitzer and Mishra adapted from Timuranjad and Sorihi Esfastani (2010) with five dimensions (competence, autonomy, influence, meaningfulness, and trust), and the variable of sustainable employee performance was from Zaid et al. (2018) with three dimensions (economic performance, social performance, and environmental performance) were extracted. Also, to analyze the data, the structural equation modeling method was used and SPSS22 and Lisrel statistical analysis software were used.

The results of this research showed that knowledge-based human resource management has a significant effect on the stable performance of employees and the psychological empowerment of human resources. Also, the psychological empowerment of human resources has a significant effect on the sustainable performance of employees. Finally, knowledge-based human resources management has a significant effect on the stable performance of employees with the mediating role of psychological empowerment of human resources.

Considering the close relationship between knowledge-based human resource management and the stable performance of employees, psychological empowerment can help to improve performance and promote the sustainability of the organization and employees. Therefore, the components of psychological empowerment, i.e., competence, autonomy, influence, meaningfulness, and trust, by strengthening the components of knowledge-based human resource management, i.e., recruitment and selection, training and development, performance evaluation, and service reward, affect various aspects of the sustainable performance of employees.