Chinese traditionality and career success: Mediating roles of procedural justice and job insecurity
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between Chinese traditionality (an individual-level cultural variable) and subjective career success in the Chinese context. It explores whether Chinese traditionality influences employees’ perceptions of procedural justice and job insecurity, which in turn affect their job and career satisfaction.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected via employee survey from 482 workers in three large companies in China. The HR department helped us to distribute a self-administered questionnaire to the respondents. The authors assured them of confidentiality and protected their anonymity. Path analysis was used to evaluate the relationships in the conceptual model. For testing the mediating hypotheses, the authors employed Sobel tests and bootstrapping.
Findings
The results indicate that Chinese traditionality is related to procedural justice and perceived job insecurity. The authors further found that Chinese traditionality exerts a significant effect on both job and career satisfaction, and such effects are fully mediated by procedural justice and perceived job insecurity.
Practical implications
Based on the findings, Chinese firms should pay attention to employees’ cultural values and their perceptions of work context, which significantly affect their job and career satisfaction. It is also important to ensure a high level of procedural justice and job security as perceived by the employees.
Originality/value
This study is the first exploration of the relationship between Chinese traditonality and subjective career success. It also reveals the mediating role of procedural justice and perceived job insecurity in the above relationship. The new findings add to the cross-cultural research on careers.
Keywords
Citation
Ngo, H.-y. and Li, H. (2015), "Chinese traditionality and career success: Mediating roles of procedural justice and job insecurity", Career Development International, Vol. 20 No. 6, pp. 627-645. https://doi.org/10.1108/CDI-08-2014-0112
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2015, Emerald Group Publishing Limited