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Article Excerpt
Subjective well-being (SWB) refers to satisfaction with one's life and experience of more frequent pleasant emotions as compared to unpleasant emotions (Diener et al., 1999). In the workplace, SWB affects the productivity of employees, their ability to make decisions, and attendance (Danna and Griffin, 1999). Because employees spend a substantial part of their lives at work, and are dependent on their job to meet several personal needs, their work and personal lives are intertwined. As a result, stressors may originate from the conflict be tween these roles and that conflict may affect the overall well-being of an employee (Danna and Griffin, 1999). Yet despite the causes and effects of SWB related to the workplace, SWB remains an under-explored subject in the work domain. As Danna and Griffin noted in their review of past research, "Indeed, for a variety of reasons these [health and well-being] issues should occupy a much more prominent niche in mainstream organizational research" (1999: 357; words in brackets added).
While cross-cultural studies on SWB have found differences in average SWB scores of respondents across countries and have attributed it to various factors including individualism-collectivism, status of human rights, and wealth (Diener et al., 1995), not much research has been conducted to examine the mechanisms that link nationality to SWB. Accordingly, our study aims to extend past research by identifying the role of two work domain factors--work locus of control and family-work conflict--in explaining cross-cultural differences in SWB. We examine these linkages in the case of managers in the United States and the People's Republic of China.
With a population of nearly 1.3 billion and a gross domestic product of nearly $8.86 trillion (Central Intelligence Agency, 2006), the People's Republic of China (referred to as "China" in the subsequent text) has emerged as an important player in the world economy. The international marketplace recognizes significant business opportunities in China: joint ventures, outsourcing partnerships, low-cost suppliers of a wide variety of goods from toys to high-tech electronic products, and significant and largely untapped markets (e.g., Erickson, 2001). Cross-cultural researchers have highlighted the difficulties managers face when seeking to transfer management techniques such as human resource management practices and policies into the Chinese context (Teagarden and Von Glinow, 1990) and have documented the myriad ways that the eastern culture in China differs dramatically from western cultures such as the U.S.
In addition to differing economic, legal, political, and educational systems in the U.S. and China-such as the smaller proportion of private sector jobs (Lu et al., 2002) and the intensely competitive educational system (Tang, 1999) in China-research over the past 20 years demonstrates that Chinese and U.S. managers differ considerably on a number of cultural dimensions such as individualism-collectivism, power distance, and long-term orientation (e.g., Chen, 1995; Earley, 1989, 1993; Hofstede, 1991, 1993; Hofstede and Bond, 1988; Ralston et al., 1993; Schwartz, 1994; Shenkar and Ronen, 1987; Smith et al., 1996). Of these dimensions, a greater volume of research has focused on the differences between the U.S. and China related to individualism-collectivism, which refers to the extent to which individuals are connected to their society (Earley and Gibson, 1998). Pursuing individual goals is more important than pursuing group goals in an individualist society. A meta-analysis of individualism-collectivism research (Oyserman et al., 2002) supported Hofstede's (1991) assertion that people in the U.S. were higher in individualism and lower in collectivism compared to the Chinese.
Another cultural dimension with significant differences between the two nations is power distance. In high-power distance societies, employees are thought to accept hierarchy and power differences and comply quickly and automatically with the decisions of the powerful (Hofstede, 1980, 1986). Studies have supported the idea of greater acceptance of hierarchy in East Asia than in low-power distance, Western countries (Bond et al., 1985; Schwartz, 1994; Westwood and Everett, 1987). Similarly, China is characterized by a long-term orientation, while people in the U.S. tend to be more focused on the short term (Bond, 1987).
These cultural differences are also manifested in employee well-being. Spector's results indicated that employees in China have lower psychological and physical well-being and reduced job satisfaction relative to their U.S. counterparts (Spector et al., 2001, 2004). Similarly, Diener and his colleagues found lower SWB among people in China compared to people in the U.S. (e.g., Diener and Suh, 1995). However, there is a growing recognition that research needs to focus also on the mechanisms that explain how nationality affects SWB (Diener et al., 2003; Hong et al., 2000; Joplin et al., 2003). The purpose of our research is to fill this gap by uncovering additional mediating variables between nationality and employee well-being in the U.S. and China. In particular, we focus on work locus of control and family-work conflict as the primary factors that differ between the U.S. and China and are instrumental in explaining differences in SWB. We argue that the effects of work locus of control and family-work conflict on SWB will be further mediated by social support and active coping. The relationships are depicted in Figure I, and are explained in the following sections.
NATIONAL CULTURE AS PREDICTOR OF WORK LOCUS OF CONTROL, FAMILY-WORK CONFLICT, AND SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING
Work locus of control (WLOC) is an extension of Rotter's (1966) concept of locus of control which asserts that individuals differ in terms of their beliefs about whether they control the outcomes in their lives (i.e., internal locus of control) or the outcomes are controlled by factors such as luck and other people (i.e., external locus of control). Building on the argument of Paulhus and Christie (1981) that there might be a generalized perception of control for various spheres of an individual's life, Spector (1988) formulated the work locus of control scale. The notion of WLOC has frequently been linked with increased job satisfaction and psychological well-being (Karasek, 1979; Spector, 1986; Spector et al., 2002).
While WLOC differs greatly among individuals, cross-cultural research suggests national culture can have an impact on the level and the ways in which WLOC is experienced (e.g., Lu et al., 2003). Individualism-Collectivism is one dimension of national culture that can influence WLOC. Individualism is an expression of the need for independence and self-sufficiency whereas collectivism is an expression of the need for affiliation (Hofstede, 1980). For example, members of individualistic societies perceive themselves as having primary control over events in their lives and place value on autonomy and achievement as the result of one's actions. On the other hand, in collectivist societies individuals give primacy to group goals over personal goals. Consequently, in a collectivist society, it may be considered appropriate to grant power to the group (or social institutions) for actions and outcomes in one's personal life. Thus, it has been suggested that members of collectivist societies experience secondary control through their emphasis on interpersonal relationships and the social environment (Triandis, 1994). In a study comparing the U.S. and Japan, another collectivist society, researchers found that individuals in Japan were more likely to form alliances with powerful people so as to be better assured of outcomes. In such a society, a feeling might generate among individuals that their fate rests in the hands of powerful others rather than in their own hands (Weisz et al., 1984). Given the emphasis on primary control in individualist cultures such as the United States, and the emphasis on secondary control in collectivist cultures such as China, our hypothesis is:
Hypothesis 1a: Employees in the U.S. are likely to report a higher internal work locus of control than employees in China.
[FIGURE I OMITTED]
Collectivist societies tend to be comparatively more homogeneous because people have a common heritage going back several centuries causing the perception of the society to be that of a big family (Earley and Gibson, 1998). Triandis et al. (1988) used the terms idiocentric and allocentric to refer to people in individualist and collectivist cultures, respectively. Idiocentric people have a self-concept independent of others whereas allocentric people have an inter-dependent self-concept. In individualist societies the concept of kinship refers to immediate family (spouse and children), while people in collectivist societies extend the concept of kinship to distant relations, neighborhood, and other institutions of the society. In the United States nuclear families are often located a great distance from parents and siblings, while in China it is more likely that families will live near the extended family. As Hofstede argued, "individualism implies a loosely knit social framework in which people are supposed to take care of themselves and of their immediate families only" (1980: 45). Thus, one would expect higher importance being accorded to the family in an individualist society compared to a collectivist society where the family is on level ground with...
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