Sustainable Development of Human Capital Structure and Firm Performance<br/>—Based on Chinese A-Share Listed Companies

Abstract

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.