2.1. Implications of PO Value Fit toward Job Performance
Personal values are beliefs that guide a person to make decisions and behavior choices, while organizational values are norms that guide an organization to allocate resources and constrain its members [
13]. PO value fit, as mentioned above, is the similarity between the personal values of employees and organizational values [
3,
4]. It is a criterion for employees to guide work behavior, evaluate work value, and measure whether their goals are in line with organizational expectations [
14].
By employing SDT, PO value fit can act as an autonomous motivator. Conceptually, autonomous motivation is characterized by an individual being engaged in an activity with a full sense of willingness, volition, and choice [
9]; while PO value fit reflects the degree to which personal values of employees fit with organizational values and can be expressed through the process of identifying and internalizing organizational values [
15]. Previous studies have shown that when employees identify with the worth and purpose of their organizations, they are likely to become more autonomously motivated and reliably perform better [
12]. This indicates that if an employee fits well with his/her organization in terms of values, they are more likely to exhibit a certain behavior based on their own will and free choice at work. Moreover, through the course of sharing values and identification, employees are further entrusted with greater responsibilities, made to feel more empowered, and accustomed to viewing the organization’s successes and failures as their own [
16]. Inversely, those misfit employees are more likely to experience controlled forms of motivation, leading to lower job performance.
In addition, PO value fit can influence employee job performance by satisfying their three basic psychological needs [
17,
18]. First, PO value fit supports the autonomy of employees by organizations in a variety of ways, including considering employee perspectives, providing opportunities for input, and sharing information across organizational levels, thereby promoting job performance [
18]. Second, a high degree of PO value fit brings about a sense of competence for employees, and their work confidence and ambition are enhanced [
19], thus creating better job performance. Third, PO value fit facilitates the employee’s sense of relatedness. It supports similar values among employees and strengthens the emotional connection between the organization and its employees [
20]. In turn, employees feel harmonious and tend to interact with others in a way that promotes effective communication, mutual trust, and common perspectives [
14,
21], making teamwork more efficient.
Therefore, we speculate that perceived value fit may rule as an autonomous motivator that can directly improve employee job performance by satisfying the three basic psychological needs. Based on this, we formulated the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1. PO value fit plays a crucial role in positively predicting job performance.
2.2. The Mediating Role of Happiness
There are also reasons to expect a mediated mechanism in the relationships between PO value fit and job performance. In this study, we put happiness at the forefront. Happiness, an eternal topic, is aspired to by all human beings and understood as the ultimate goal from a philosophical point of view. In the view of SDT, happiness is better described in terms of thriving or being fully functioning [
7] rather than merely by the presence of positive feelings and absence of negative ones [
22]. Thriving is characterized by vitality, awareness, access to, and exercise of one’s human capacities, and true self-regulation. Individuals who are fully functioning enjoy a free interplay of their faculties in connecting with both their inner needs and states [
7].
SDT holds that all human beings progress inherently toward psychological growth, internalization, and happiness and the three basic psychological needs are essential for happiness and facilitating effective functioning. Specific environmental elements such as the degree of congruity between personal attributes and contextual factors can either facilitate or hinder psychological need satisfaction [
12]. Employees in value-aligned organizations will boost a sense of autonomy [
23], competence [
24], and relatedness with their organization [
25]. This indicates that when employees work in an organization characterized by congruent values, organizations are more likely to provide environments that allow employees to have their three basic psychological needs met, while the satisfaction of the three needs yielded greater happiness. Previous research has also found that happier employees are more likely to be encouraged intrinsically and to be more autonomous and creative, which contributes to better job performance [
26], forming a virtuous circle between employees and their organization. Thus, we establish a foundation regarding PO value fit, happiness, and job performance as follows:
Hypothesis 2. Happiness plays a mediating role in the relationship between PO value fit and job performance.
2.3. Love of Money as a Moderator
In addition to the indirect effects on job performance via happiness, PO value fit could also have an indirect impact on job performance through potential moderators. Research examining possible moderators of the relationships between PO value fit and work-related outcomes has identified a multitude of variables, with personality traits [
27], demographic characteristics [
28], and situational variables [
29] included. We propose that the mediated effects of happiness on PO value fit and job performance can be partially explained by considering the desire for money.
Money is a vital element of human life and a sign of personal wealth. Each of us spends most of our life making and spending money. Money is such a crucial issue in this material world on account of its economic function (a medium of exchange, etc.) and psychological function (a symbol of achievement, respect, and power, etc.) [
30] that it has been widely recognized as a motivator to attract and retain employees in organizations. When money was taken into account, numerous results have shown that those making higher wages were happier in their lives than those making lower wages because money can be exchanged for goods that increase one’s utility [
31,
32]. Moreover, many studies have found an inverted U-shaped relationship between money and happiness [
33,
34], indicating a “diminishing marginal utility”. Specifically, when an individual has much money, his/her happiness increases, however, when money is enough to cover his/her daily expenses, no matter how much money an individual has, his/her happiness does not increase.
Nevertheless, happiness does not necessarily depend on what individuals have, but rather on their attitudes. Human beings have ambivalent attitudes toward money. On the one hand, there are many idioms meaning “money is the root of all evil” [
35]. On the other hand, many people are still focused on achieving material success and regard the accumulation of money and material possessions as a basic life goal [
36]. Different attitudes toward money can cause individuals to have different perceptions of happiness even when they possess the same amount of money. Therefore, happiness may not be well explained by rising incomes because money desires are also rising. In other words, the more we obtain, the more we want. Although employees with higher incomes are somewhat happier than those with lower incomes, if those with higher incomes are strongly extrinsically oriented in their aspirations, they are less happy than those with lower incomes who do not overvalue money [
31]. Based on this, some researchers are more focused on the influence of LOM rather than income, on happiness.
As one of the most commonly used constructs in money psychology, LOM is captured as a multi-dimensional variable, including affective, behavioral, and cognitive components [
37]. It is operationalized by the LOM scale, which consists of three factors: richness, motivator, and the importance [
38]. The richness dimension reflects one’s affection (i.e., love or hate orientation, feeling, or emotion) toward money. The motivator dimension measures one’s intention to move forward toward a money target. The importance dimension captures one’s key beliefs, ideas, or money values. A strong desire for more money is negatively correlated with happiness [
33]. Those individuals with high LOM, possess greater desires for satisfying their physiological and psychological needs [
39] and believe that money can not only meet their basic survival needs but also give them power [
40], buy happiness [
41,
42], and signal their feelings of success [
43]. As a result, they are more likely to make far more money than they require [
44]. However, from the SDT perspective, when individuals are obsessed with external monetary contingencies, less attention is distributed to acquiring the three basic psychological needs that are fundamental to enhancing their happiness [
15].
Nevertheless, LOM is not always coupled with perishing consequences. To some, it is an accelerator. Referring to SDT, LOM represents an extrinsic motivation that can powerfully compel or seduce individuals into action in an immediate sense [
7]. LOM can also promote career advancement and personal financial optimism, as individuals will go to any length to achieve their objectives until they achieve ultimate success [
45]. This means that when the motivator of LOM functions, employees achieve goals effectively and efficiently [
35]. Building upon the motivational property of LOM, the interaction effect on the positive relationship between happiness and job performance is hypothesized as follows:
Hypothesis 3. LOM lessens the significance of PO value fit in affecting job performance by diluting happiness.
Based on the above analysis, the purposes of this study are threefold: (a) to verify the effect of PO value fit on the job performance of post-90s employees in China; (b) to test whether happiness mediates the relationship between PO value fit and job performance, and (c) to examine whether the indirect association between PO value fit and job performance via happiness is moderated by LOM. Altogether, these three objectives constitute a moderated mediation model (see
Figure 1).