Work stressors, Chinese coping strategies, and job performance in Greater China
Summary (2 min read)
Introduction
- Theaim of this research was to jointly test effects of work stressors and coping strategies on job performance among employees in the Greater China region.
- A self-administered survey was conducted to collect data from three major cities in the region, namely Beijing, Hong Kong, and Taipei (N = 380).
- (1) work stressors were related to job performance, also known as The authors found that.
- (2) Chinese positive coping strategies were positively related to job performance.
- Es más, todos estos efectos fueron demostrados mediante indicadores múltiples de rendimiento de trabajo, una variable raramente estudiada, pero muy importante desde el punto de vista organizacional.
SALIENT WORK STRESSORS FOR CHINESE EMPLOYEES
- In a US–China comparative study, Liu (2002) revealed that heavy workload, interpersonal conflict, and organizational constraints are the common stressors for both American and Chinese workers.
- Lu, in a series of studies conducted in Taiwan, found that heavy workload, lack of work autonomy, and interpersonal conflict are the most prevalent stressors for Taiwanese employees (e.g., Lu, 1997, 1999).
- So far no study has compared the effects of these four stressors in multiple samples from different regions in the Greater China zone.
- In the present study, the authors thus measured these four work stressors among workers in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Taipei, to explore their effects on job performance.
- As detailed above, the authors used constructs of workload, organizational constraints, and interpersonal conflict as defined by Spector and Jex (1998), and lack of work autonomy as defined by Hackman and Oldham (1975).
DO WORK STRESSORS AFFECT JOB PERFORMANCE?
- In earlier studies of stress, the proposed inverse U-shape curve between level of stress and performance aroused a lot of interest (Selye, 1975).
- This attractive proposition has received very little empirical support.
- Following the theoretical work of Lazarus (e.g., Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), more recent studies (LePine, Podsakoff, & LePine, 2005) suggested that work stressors may be appraised as a threat or hindrance, which will be negatively associated with performance; however, they may also be appraised as a challenge, which will produce positive effects.
- As past studies have reported positive, negative, and no associations between overload and performance (Gilboa et al., 2008; LePine et al., 2005; Spector & Jex, 1998), this indicates that overload may represent a hindrance and/or challenge to the focal individual.
- The latter comprises behaviors not directly related, but conducive to task fulfillment, which can be judged on criteria such as good colleague relations, interpersonal facilitation, and job dedication (attendance and involvement).
DOES COPING MAKE A DIFFERENCE?
- One important conclusion reached in the stress and coping literature is that the efficacy of a coping strategy varies across situations, individuals, time, and outcome indicators (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).
- With due caution, some general statements can still be made.
- Definitions of the four factors were not given by the authors, but meanings can be extracted from the content of items used to gauge them, as described above.
- They found that hobbies/relaxation, active action, and seeking social support correlated positively with job satisfaction and negatively with psychological symptoms; whereas passive adaptation correlated negatively with job satisfaction and positively with psychological symptoms.
- Chinese coping strategies will be related to job performance, also known as Hypothesis 2.
Samples and procedure
- The authors used a self-administered structured questionnaire to collect data from employees in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Taipei.
- Respondents were invited to participate through the personnel manager or a contact person known to the researchers in each organization.
- A reminder letter was sent seven days after the initial invitation to boost the response rate.
RESULTS
- The authors nonetheless conducted preliminary analyses within each city sample.
- Table 1 reports correlation results in the combined sample, incorporating item means and standard deviations for relevant scales.
- In all the regression analyses, the combination of work stressors and Chinese coping strategies explained 6–13% of variance on various aspects of job performance.
- Gilboa et al. found that the negative correlation of role overload and performance was higher among managers relative to nonmanagers.
DISCUSSION
- The purpose of the present study was to jointly test effects of work stressors and coping strategies among employees in the Greater China region.
- The authors found that both work stressors and Chinese coping strategies were associated with job performance.
- The authors results show that the most salient work stressors where job performance is concerned are workload, organizational constraints, and interpersonal conflict.
- Spector and Jex (1998) found a similar negative relation using supervisor-rated performance (r = .10).
- First, the survey design was cross-sectional, thus no causal conclusions are legitimate.
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Citations
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References
37,447 citations
"Work stressors, Chinese coping stra..." refers background in this paper
...In transactional stress models (e.g. Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), coping is an integral element in the stress process because coping strategies can help alleviate the effects of stressors on strains....
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6,555 citations
"Work stressors, Chinese coping stra..." refers methods in this paper
...Twenty-three items were chosen from existing Western scales to assess four stressors: workload (5 items; Spector & Jex, 1998), organizational constraints (11 items; Spector & Jex, 1998), interpersonal conflict (4 items; Spector & Jex, 1998), and lack of autonomy (3 items; Hackman & Oldham, 1975)....
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2,846 citations
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...Job performance may be defined along two dimensions: task performance and contextual performance (Borman & Motowidlo, 1993 )....
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