Work Values: Cross-Cultural Comparison Between the U.S. and China

Introduction to Work Values

A value is "what a person consciously or subconsciously desires, wants, or seeks to attain" (Locke, 1983). Peterson and Gonzalez (2005) say values "are motivational forces" and "influence the role work plays in people's lives." Dawis (2005) asserts that each person (P) has requirements that need to be met, most through their environments (E). Dawis claims that "many of P's needs in adulthood can be met at work." The needs that matter most to P are the environment's ability to deliver reinforcers — such as pay, prestige, and working conditions — that satisfy P's needs. Similarly, the environment has parallel and complementary requirements that can be met by P, making P a satisfactory worker. Thus, understanding work values benefits both individuals, as they seek work environments that support their values, and organizations, which gain from employing satisfied workers.

Work values represent the desires, expectations, and priorities workers bring to their jobs. From a theoretical standpoint, they can be defined as what workers most value, from a list of alternatives, out of their working experience. This definition implies that individuals attach meaning to their work activity, rather than viewing meaning as inherent to the job situation itself (Tilly and Tilly, 1997). Work values "thus refer to general attitudes regarding the meaning that an individual attaches to the work role as distinguished from his [or her] satisfaction with that role." This essay is a comparative analysis of work values between China and the United States.

Work Values in the United States

An inquiry into the work ethic concept reveals two directions of thought: one theoretical and one empirical. The theoretical approach to work ethics is more definitive and has been widely studied across the social sciences, from psychology to economics. The empirical approach to analyzing the work ethic, however, is complex and remains open to debate among scholars, researchers, and practitioners alike.

Job values are a product of ever-evolving social and economic forces and are not driven solely by the desire for monetary reward. Therefore, job values are inherently flexible and subject to change. Values show a high degree of variability cross-culturally, for example. How people view their work and the rewards they strive to attain differs in the United States compared to other countries (Kalleberg and Stark, 1993). Furthermore, these desired rewards not only change over time within the United States (Yankelovich, 1985; Yankelovich, 1994) but also across the working career of a single individual (Lorence and Mortimer, 1985). This is especially true of young workers struggling to adapt to the realities of their job prospects (Johnson, 2001; Johnson, 2002). Thus, the value of work is not static but subject to significant change, and operates as a function of specific cultural, historical, and life-course factors.

In reaction to the changing economic climate — especially in the face of globalized competition — the view of bureaucracy that glorified hierarchical control as a symbol of efficiency and strength throughout the post-World War II economic expansion was radically and quickly altered. Bureaucratic characteristics are now more likely to be seen as a major reason why the United States has lost ground internationally in recent years (Heckscher, 1995; Fraser, 2001; Smith, 1990; Nocera, 2002). Long-term job security is viewed as an archaic remnant of the past that allows underperforming workers to retain their positions regardless of output, while holding down the most talented employees under layers of hierarchy (Fraser, 2001).

The impact of this major restructuring of the relationship between worker and firm was an increase in job insecurity concerns among employees. The fear of losing one's job and the perceived difficulty in finding comparable work in terms of pay and fringe benefits rose in the U.S. in the mid-to-late 1990s (Schmidt, 2000). These fears were grounded in labor market realities. Both involuntary job loss and the resulting earnings penalty were greater in the 1990s than in the previous decade (Farber, 1997; Farber, 1998). Job satisfaction measures mirrored these fears as well, with trends showing historical stability since the post-World War II expansion followed by a "virtual free fall" in the mid-1980s (Cappelli, 1997). By the late 1990s, the rising level of job stress was characterized as "a threat to the health of workers" by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (1999).

Partly in response to these changing employment practices, and partly resulting from the changing definition of success in society at large, some researchers argue that American workers now place less emphasis on traditional work values such as security and promotional aspirations, and instead embrace individualistic notions of work focused on autonomy and interesting work (Florida, 2004). As employment security is seen as a "false promise" in today's business climate (Pink, 2001, p. 87; Bennett, 1990; Zuboff and Maxmin, 2002) and most workers believe that organizations are not committed to the welfare of their workforce (Cappelli, 1997), workers have rejected organizational commitment and instead emphasize marketable skills and professional contacts in order to move from job to job whenever the opportunity arises (Sennett, 1998). Workers see this as a strategy to "hedge their bets": if one project comes to an abrupt end, they can fall back on these skills and contacts to find additional work (Pink, 2001).

Not only did workers' views toward their employers shift, so too did their relationships with fellow employees. While in the past people regarded their co-workers as distant family members, today's workers view that picture as an illusion (Pink, 2001). Many now primarily identify with their professional peers, technical communities, and skill groups (Florida, 2004; Pink, 2001; Ross, 2003), and value the idea of "career development" in which workers see their careers as a lifelong process involving multiple job changes and therefore multiple sets of co-workers (Bernstein, 1997).

Work Values in China

The People's Republic of China (PRC) is in the midst of a critical economic transition (Rosser and Rosser, 1996; Jones, 2000). Since the Communist takeover in 1949, China's economy and the production of each factory have been planned by the state, with an implicit guarantee of job security and subsistence for everyone — a concept known as having an "iron rice bowl" (Taormina, 1998, p. 477). These policies included rights to lifetime employment and social programs encompassing housing, nurseries, schools, and medical care (Takahara, 1992). According to Weldon and Vonhonacker (1999), even though the iron rice bowl policies have been abandoned, they still affect the management of human resources in China.

In recent years, China's economy has grown to become the third largest consumer economy in the world (Rosen, 1999). The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts that China will overtake the U.S. and Europe to become the world's largest economy (IMF Briefs, 1999). However, the Western understanding of Chinese work values is inconsistent, as theories of Western management still prevail. The theoretical foundation of Chinese management is in its formative stage, primarily because China has been a relatively closed society for much of the past half century (Ralston, Equ, Stewart, Terpstra, and Kaicheng, 1999).

China's entrance into the World Trade Organization (WTO) affects the fundamental economic interests of not only China but also its foreign trading partners. According to WTO documents (1999), in 1998 China was the world's ninth largest exporter and eleventh largest importer. Foreign opportunities for exporting to or investing in China will increase significantly. Managers in multinational companies that either employ Asian workers or trade with Asian firms will be at a serious disadvantage if they overlook the importance of Asian traditions and values (Robertson and Hoffman, 2000).

Conclusion

An investigation of work values and attitudes in China and the U.S. as determined by demographic variables — such as gender, age, educational level, and managerial level — will assist organizations working in China or in the U.S. that employ workers from either culture. Because of the dynamism within the socioeconomic environment over the last two decades, these factors may reveal value differentiation that will affect conceptual models of motivation. Comprehending China's massive labor force and work ethic can be an organizational competitive advantage.