A Causal Relationship between Self-Efficacy and Job Engagement in Organizational Support and Organizational Culture as Mediating Roles on SMEs’ Low-Level Employee in Yiwu City, China
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This study examines the role of self-efficacy in shaping job engagement among low-level employees in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Yiwu City, China, with perceived organizational support and organizational culture proposed as mediating variables. SMEs in labor-intensive sectors often operate under structural constraints such as limited managerial resources, informal human resource systems, and highly standardized work processes, conditions that may weaken the motivational mechanisms proposed in mainstream engagement theories Accordingly, this study investigates: (1) the effects of four self-efficacy dimensions—mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, and emotional/physiological states—on perceived organizational support and organizational culture; (2) the direct relationships among self-efficacy, organizational support, organizational culture, and job engagement; (3) the mediating roles of organizational support and organizational culture; and (4) the applicability of dominant employee engagement theories within labor-intensive SME contexts. An explanatory sequential mixed-method design was employed. Quantitative data were collected from 410 low-level, full-time SME employees in the manufacturing, logistics, and trading sectors in Yiwu City using structured questionnaires and convenience sampling. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, reliability testing, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) with bootstrapping. Qualitative data from semi-structured interviews were analyzed thematically to provide contextual interpretation of the quantitative findings.
The results indicate that: (1) Objective 1: Verbal persuasion significantly influences perceived organizational support (β = 0.755, p < .001) and organizational culture (β = 0.546, p < .001), while emotional and physiological states also show significant positive effects on organizational support (β = 0.420, p < .001) and organizational culture (β = 0.639, p < .001). In contrast, mastery experiences and vicarious experiences show no statistically significant effects on either organizational support or organizational culture (p > .05). (2) Objective 2: No significant direct relationships are found between the self-efficacy dimensions and job engagement (p > .05), and organizational support (β = 0.131, p = .249) and organizational culture (β = −0.330, p = .674) also show no significant direct effects on job engagement. (3) Objective 3: Bootstrapping analysis indicates that organizational support and organizational culture do not significantly mediate the relationships between self-efficacy dimensions and job engagement, as all indirect effects are statistically insignificant and confidence intervals include zero. (4) Objective 4: The overall pattern of findings suggests that theoretical mechanisms commonly proposed in employee engagement research—particularly those emphasizing individual psychological resources and supportive organizational climates—may operate differently in labor-intensive SME environments characterized by standardized tasks and limited autonomy.
Conclusion: The study concludes that job engagement among low-level SME employees appears to be shaped more strongly by structural and economic employment conditions than by individual psychological resources or organizational perceptions. These findings highlight the need for greater contextual sensitivity in organizational behavior research and suggest that engagement theories developed in high-autonomy professional settings may have limited explanatory power in labor-intensive SME contexts.
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