Author(s)

Yan Zhang^1,2, Rujian Lian¹

¹School of Political Science and Public Management, Shanxi University, Taiyuan, China.
²Faculty of International Trade, Shanxi University of Finance and Economics, Taiyuan, China.

Human capital is identified as one of the main determinants of firm performance. Nevertheless, existing studies have to some extent ignored the effect of human capital structure on enterprise performance. This paper is based on Chinese A-Share Listed Companies from 2010 to 2022, not only the impact of sustainable development of human capital structure on firm performance are discussed, but also the different intermediate paths of the change of human capital structure on enterprise performance are explored. By constructing a sustainable index of human capital structure and a relative peer human capital structure index, we found that sustainable development of human capital structure is an important driving factor in improving firm performance. We also found that there is no positive interaction mechanism between human capital and innovation, and the interaction mechanism is affected by the level of human capital structure and innovation; the internal pay gap has a negative regulatory effect on the sustainable development of human capital structure on enterprise performance; labor productivity plays a part of intermediary effect in the impact of sustainable development of human capital structure on enterprise performance. Furthermore, we proved the importance of sustainable development of a human capital structure for enterprise performance based on the regional market. This paper has important reference value for human resource management. Specifically, managers should not only pay attention to improving the level of human capital structure, but also explore and establish interaction mechanism between human capital and innovation, and pay attention to the moderating role of internal pay gap.

Sustainable Index of Human Capital Structure, Relative Peer Human Capital Structure Index, The Interaction Mechanism, Internal Pay Gap, Labor Productivity

Zhang, Y. and Lian, R. (2023) Sustainable Development of Human Capital Structure and Firm Performance
—Based on Chinese A-Share Listed Companies. Theoretical Economics Letters, 13, 549-567. doi: 10.4236/tel.2023.133035.