1. Introduction
In recent years, global governments and scholars have been paid great attention to the study of employability, covering the development of students’ cultivation for employment and the enhancement of employees’ ability. As De Vos, De Hauw and Van der Heijden [
1] indicated, employability means the individual’s ability of acquiring knowledge, skills and other characteristics in order to meet the needs of employers and exert professional potential. The research results and contributions may diverge, as related issues of employability differ in specific research situations and research designs. Some studies have pointed out that related issues of employability can be divided into two categories. The first category is to examine the influence of organizations and individuals on employability from the employee’s perspective. The second category is to examine the influence of universities and individuals on employability from the student’s perspective. This study focuses on organizational behavior to discuss the direct correlation between the motivations and learning ability gained from education and training, and the overall economic performance of Western countries. Hence, the issue explored in this study emphasizes how employees in the labor market can quickly adapt to the changing work environment, job demands and emerging technologies [
2]. In addition, as employability policies are almost made specific to the overall labor force rather than to the unemployed and underrepresented groups, related research relates to meeting job security rather than assisting the individual to get a job [
3]. Therefore, one of the issues discussed in this study is job security.
Basic changes in the labor market have provided inspiration for this research, namely, how to reduce job insecurity among employees [
4]. Therefore, for employees, employability comes with two interesting revelations. Firstly, employability is favorable to the career development of employees [
5]. Secondly, the development of employability stems from more job insecurity [
6]. This shows that the potential consequences of employability-related issues can be regarded as labor market assessment indicators, such as salary, employment experience, and non-voluntary mobility rate [
7].
Most previous studies of organizational behaviors have concentrated on how to enhance employees’ job satisfaction through the psychological factors of leaders, the organization and employees, but few studies have examined the relevance of the relationship between the employability of employees and their life and job satisfaction [
8]. De Vos et al. [
1] discussed the career success factors of employees from the perspective of personal ability, namely, how employees exert their professional potential through acquiring knowledge, techniques, skills and other valuable characteristics [
9,
10,
11]. In other words, only by enhancing the competitiveness of individuals in the job market and acquiring problem-solving skills, can they enhance their psychological satisfaction. In addition, few previous studies have combined the organization with individual initiatives to enhance the development of employees’ employability [
8,
12]. In this regard, in addition to the research framework of De Vos et al. [
1], the relationship between employees’ employability and satisfaction was also studied from the perspective of job security.
On the other hand, scholars believe that interregional comparison results can provide significant insights, so that most scholars adopted interregional methods to compare the different research results in different contexts [
13]. According to the World Happiness Report in 2016, the happiness indexes of Taiwan and mainland China were 34 (6.379) and 83 (524.5), respectively. However, in terms of the indexes of economic development, the GDP growth rate of mainland China was about 6.5%, while that of Taiwan was only 1.6%. Contrasting to the happiness index, the huge difference in GDP growth is worthy of further study. Therefore, in this study, employees in mainland China and Taiwan were taken as the research samples of the interregional comparison in order to learn about the relevance of the research variables.
To summarize, there are three contributions of this study. Firstly, from the perspective of capability development and employability, it provides some insights into the career success factors and addresses a vacancy of related research. Secondly, from the perspective of the employees, it discusses the growth patterns of employability based on organizational factors, and adds job security as the factor stimulating employees to enhance personal abilities and employability, thus enriching the theoretical framework of employability. Thirdly, from the perspective of the huge differences in GDP growth and happiness index, employees in Taiwan and mainland China were studied to examine the differences among the variables in order to provide more valuable practical significance.
5. Discussion
Taking the employees in the service industries as the research sample, in this paper, a competence enhancement model was used to examine the relationships among job security, perceived organizational support, perceived employability and job satisfaction, thus to bridge the theoretical gap of applying Western theory to the Asian situation, and to enhance the generalization level of the theory. In addition, this study also followed the suggestions of scholars to find the crux from the real world to verify the differences in the relationships among variables in the research framework of Taiwan and mainland China [
67,
68]. According to the results, the following findings can be concluded.
Firstly, the results of the study show that, for both the Taiwan and mainland China research samples, the perceived organizational support has a positive impact on job security, employability and job satisfaction. This means that when the organization or supervisors take the initiative to provide employees formal and informal assistance at work, the employees will feel the organizational identification and goodwill, which can not only improve their job security and job satisfaction, but also promote them to strengthen individual problem-solving ability at work and their perceived employability [
1].
Furthermore, it has been found for all the paths of perceived organizational support that, for both the Taiwan and mainland China samples, the job security coefficient is the highest. This means that most employees in Asia have suffered from job insecurity, which can contribute to the employees’ responsibility of supporting the family (parents and children). Even so, job insecurity may have a negative impact on their work attitudes. When they obtain the affirmation and support from the organization, their sense of job insecurity will be lower.
In addition, the difference analysis of the path coefficient demonstrates the influence of the perceived organizational support on employability and job satisfaction. The perception of Taiwan samples is stronger than that for mainland China, indicating that Taiwan employees regard the support from the organization or supervisors as the power source of enhancing their employability. Only by continuously improving competitiveness can they obtain a high degree of sense of achievement and job satisfaction [
1,
11]. The interesting thing is, for mainland China samples, the influence of the perceived organizational support on the perception of job security is greater than that of Taiwan samples. Analysis of the political and economic development process of mainland China shows that that mainland China employees have strong recognition and confidence in their country and organization because of the ideology of socialism and “loving the factory as your family” [
68]. In other words, as employees are highly trusted in the organization, the perceived organizational support will enhance their job security, as well as motivate employees to work hard, and hence, enhance their job performance.
Secondly, the study assumes that job security is negatively related to employability, but further analysis has proved that this hypothesis is false. For Taiwan samples, job security has a significant positive relationship with employability, which indicates that employees will continue to enhance their strengths and competence in a comfortable work environment. A possible reason for this situation is that Taiwan employment comes with less competitive pressure and lower salary levels, so that even if they have higher sense of job security, they will still work harder to get access to lucrative jobs. This finding implies that Taiwan employees will attribute their success or failure to their individual ability. They deem their success as the results of efforts and their failure as due to incompetence and insufficient preparation. Although the research result is contrary to that of Cuyper et al. [
16], it is consistent with their findings, namely, job security is positively related to employability.
Thirdly, this study assumes that job security is positively related to job satisfaction. It has been found that job security has a significant positive relationship with job satisfaction in Taiwan samples but is not significant in mainland China samples, so this hypothesis is partially correct. The intriguing results showed that job security has an insignificant negative relationship with job satisfaction, which is inconsistent with the findings of Mak and Mueller [
32], Strazdins et al. [
33]. This situation may be caused by three factors. Firstly, the scale used in this study was developed by Western scholars, so interregional factors have led to different results. Secondly, employees’ sense of job security does not necessarily lead to positive job satisfaction. The organizational culture of China stresses authority, hierarchy and high-power distance, so even if employees have a stable working environment, it is still difficult for them to obtain the authority from the organization and their supervisors to deal with professional problems in the work. Based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory, this study infers that the mainland employees call for emotional demand but have relatively lower demands for respect and self-actualization on the higher positions of the hierarchy.
Fourthly, this study assumes that perceived employability has a positive relationship with job satisfaction. It has been confirmed in this study that the perceived employability has a positive relationship with job satisfaction in both sample groups, and this result is consistent with the findings of Gamboa, Gracia, Ripoll, and Peiró [
69], namely, that improvement of employees’ perceived employability will promote their job satisfaction. In addition, the difference analysis on the path coefficient of the two groups shows that the influence of perceived employability on job satisfaction is greater in Taiwan than mainland China. As Fugate et al. [
10] note, individual employability is the integration of human capital, social capital, professional identity and personality adjustment. Similarly, Taiwan employees solve a variety of professional problems in daily work through organizational authorization and support, and thus cultivate personal human capital to meet employers’ expectations, to achieve individual career goals, and to obtain higher job satisfaction.
5.1. Practical Implications
The study also has significant practical implications. Firstly, it is found in this study that in both Taiwan and mainland China, employees’ perceived organizational support has a positive impact on job security, job satisfaction and perceived employability. This means that perceived organizational support, no matter in the Asian or Western contexts, is a significant positive physiological and psychological factor affecting employees. Both perceived organizational support and job satisfaction can be regarded as a predictor of job performance. Therefore, this study suggests that organizational management can adopt the practical methods that have been confirmed by scholars to enhance employees’ perceived organizational support, such as enhancing perceived organizational justice [
70] and employees’ job autonomy [
41], so as to enhance employees’ sense of organizational support.
Secondly, the core dimension of this study is employees’ perceived employability. The research result has shown that perceived organizational support has a positive impact on employability. From the perspective of organizational ability, employees solve their problems through organizational support, and thus enhance personal human capital and their perceived employability. In return, organizational ability can be enhanced as well. Although some scholars believe that educational training and on-the-job learning can enhance employees’ employability, it still cannot succeed without the support from colleagues, supervisors and the organization to create a motivating learning environment [
1], and thus achieve a good organization performance and working environment.
Thirdly, in terms of the insignificant part of mainland samples in the research framework, this study can provide practical suggestions on human resource management acquired from Taiwan businessmen who invest in mainland China. Unlike Taiwan employees, mainland employees do not have to maintain strong learning initiative after entering the job market. As a result, in this study, it is suggested that Taiwan management, first of all, should strengthen the employees’ learning motivation, create a competitive working environment and enhance employees’ job autonomy through authorization to improve employees’ sense of job security, so as to enhance their perceived employability, job satisfaction and job performance.
5.2. Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research
The research data of this study was acquired from a 2015 questionnaire, which reflects only a single point in time rather than completely presenting the dynamic process of employees’ job insecurity. This also neglects the influence of time and social changes on the research results. Reviewing the past related research on job insecurity, in addition to the longitudinal study of Dekker and Schaufeli [
38], Mauno and Kinnunen [
71] and Hellgren and Sverke [
72], all other studies are cross-sectional. Therefore, in this study, it is suggested that more longitudinal research is conducted into job insecurity in the future, to further explore the influence of job insecurity on employees and the organization.
Moreover, in this study, questionnaires developed by different scholars were adopted to process data collection and analysis, so that it is not clear whether there are other factors affecting employability. Therefore, focus group interviews and other qualitative data collection methods can be used to help deepen the analysis of the research results, the understandings of the current situation, and the difficulties of the organization in promoting employability. Therefore, it is suggested, in this study, that different independent variables or related situational variables can be added to further research to enhance employees’ perceived employability.
Purposive sampling, instead of random sampling, was utilized in this study. Although the samples of mainland China were collected from many provinces, only enterprises in Zhejiang and Fujian provinces were subject to the questionnaire survey due to the limitations in time and funds. The difference in GDP of each province of mainland China may result in the diversity of research results. Thus, future researchers are suggested to expand the scope of investigation, find the distinction between provinces before the statistical analysis, and then improve the degree of generalization of research results.
Finally, in the complex work environment, in addition to employees, other stakeholders include supervisors and colleagues. However, this study mainly discusses employees’ perception of employability, and does not investigate whether knowledge and skills have met the expectations of management and the organization. Therefore, it is suggested that dual level data be adopted in further measurements of employability as a comparison, and the influence of cross-level factors can be discussed in different groups, thereby helping understand the cognitive differences of employees and other stakeholders in the work environment in terms of perceived employability.