Chinese and Their Work Culture
China consists of 56 different ethnic groups (Wang, 2015). The Han constitutes majority of the total population, with sub groups such as Cantonese and Hakka (Erbaugh, 2000); the other 55 groups are generally referred to as the minority groups (Wang, 2015), such as the Mongols, Hui people and Tibetan people (Dwyer, 2005). According to Heathfield (2016), work culture refers to values, beliefs, thought processes, attitudes and behaviours shared by a group of people, which is a set of unspoken and unwritten rules at work. Work culture plays an important role in making a group of people stick together to achieve goals (Tsai, 2011).
According to Pye (1972), Confucianism is the most influential thought which forms the …show more content…
Work values play a significant role in many domains of organizational behavior, such as job satisfaction (Berger & Olson, 1983) and organizational commitment (Mottaz, 1986). Work value which refers to the tendency to like or dislike one’s own job and workplace is believed to affect work attitudes (Shapira and Griffith, 1990). Nie, Luo, Wentworth and Sturkie (2014) designed a study using the data from Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) conducted in 2005. They suggested that men are more likely to be involved in professional, managerial and technical jobs and women are more likely to have a clerical or service jobs. This is because they have different work values, where men tend to seek for extrinsic rewards (Huang & Gamble, 2015), such as wages and promotions; however, women value intrinsic returns (Clark, 1997), such as growth and advancement (Newman & Sheikh, 2012) and customer appreciation (Bent & Freathy, 1997). Nevertheless, women started to aware of the pay inequality and expect for greater gender equality in the workplace (Cohen & Wang, …show more content…
Recently, China has become the fourth largest economy in the world and also one of the top three destinations of foreign direct investment (Fernandez & Hogenboom, 2007), thus, it is important to generate good relationship bonds with the Chinese. The differences between Chinese work culture and Western work culture might cause problems while working with the Chinese. Different cultures have different core values, what is considered normal in Western countries might be considered weird in China, therefore, understanding the core values of the Chinese is important in order to work and deal more efficiently with them.
However, there is limited research on the Chinse work culture, also, most studies on the Chinese work culture may be somewhat outdated, which might not be applicable to the Chinese society now. Research on the Chinese work culture is required due to their increasing economic and political influences around the world. Besides that, most of the researches and studies done on the Chinese work culture are based solely on Westerners’ viewpoints. Future research should include the Asians’ viewpoints such as the mainland Chinese and Taiwanese, which might give different
China consists of 56 different ethnic groups (Wang, 2015). The Han constitutes majority of the total population, with sub groups such as Cantonese and Hakka (Erbaugh, 2000); the other 55 groups are generally referred to as the minority groups (Wang, 2015), such as the Mongols, Hui people and Tibetan people (Dwyer, 2005). According to Heathfield (2016), work culture refers to values, beliefs, thought processes, attitudes and behaviours shared by a group of people, which is a set of unspoken and unwritten rules at work. Work culture plays an important role in making a group of people stick together to achieve goals (Tsai, 2011).
According to Pye (1972), Confucianism is the most influential thought which forms the …show more content…
Work values play a significant role in many domains of organizational behavior, such as job satisfaction (Berger & Olson, 1983) and organizational commitment (Mottaz, 1986). Work value which refers to the tendency to like or dislike one’s own job and workplace is believed to affect work attitudes (Shapira and Griffith, 1990). Nie, Luo, Wentworth and Sturkie (2014) designed a study using the data from Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) conducted in 2005. They suggested that men are more likely to be involved in professional, managerial and technical jobs and women are more likely to have a clerical or service jobs. This is because they have different work values, where men tend to seek for extrinsic rewards (Huang & Gamble, 2015), such as wages and promotions; however, women value intrinsic returns (Clark, 1997), such as growth and advancement (Newman & Sheikh, 2012) and customer appreciation (Bent & Freathy, 1997). Nevertheless, women started to aware of the pay inequality and expect for greater gender equality in the workplace (Cohen & Wang, …show more content…
Recently, China has become the fourth largest economy in the world and also one of the top three destinations of foreign direct investment (Fernandez & Hogenboom, 2007), thus, it is important to generate good relationship bonds with the Chinese. The differences between Chinese work culture and Western work culture might cause problems while working with the Chinese. Different cultures have different core values, what is considered normal in Western countries might be considered weird in China, therefore, understanding the core values of the Chinese is important in order to work and deal more efficiently with them.
However, there is limited research on the Chinse work culture, also, most studies on the Chinese work culture may be somewhat outdated, which might not be applicable to the Chinese society now. Research on the Chinese work culture is required due to their increasing economic and political influences around the world. Besides that, most of the researches and studies done on the Chinese work culture are based solely on Westerners’ viewpoints. Future research should include the Asians’ viewpoints such as the mainland Chinese and Taiwanese, which might give different