Study On Influence Mechanism Of Enterprise Knowledge Workers In New Generation Self-identity Over Organizational Behavior

Currently, workers typically born in1980s or1990s, also known as the new-generationknowledge workers, are becoming the major labor force. Statistics show that they are takingup60-70%of the total number of workers. Their knowledge skills and innovation ability arerare and precious resources for modern companies. The point is that those workers grow up insuch a special era in which they develop unique personality traits, work values and socialvalues. With the advent of the so-called “risk society”, companies in recent years are havingsevere tensions with their workers due to the unprecedented self-identity crisis, existenceanxiety, trust crisis as well as self-division that the knowledge workers are going through.This reveals theorists and human resources departments have not paid enough attention tothose workers and the lag of performances in the management level. In view of this, more andmore practitioners and theorists begin to study the their characteristics as a special group aswell as their organizational behaviors, actively seeking a better way out for both companiesand workers to grow, a consistent organizational identity between the individual workers andtheir organizations. The factors affecting workers’ organizational behaviors are made theresearch focus. Given that their organizational behaviors are especially related to theirindividual psychological changes, the researcher borrows “self-identity” from sociology andpsychology to explain how workers’ self-identity influences their organizational identity andthe occurrence of organizational behaviors. The aim of this research is to provide newpossible explanatory variables and research perspectives for studying organizationalbehaviors.Based on the contract theory from psychology, the social identity concept from sociologyand the difference theory from organizational behavior, in combination with achievements inthe self identity theory of sociology and psychology, organizational identity of organizationalbehavior, knowledge management and human resource management, this research studies thenew-generation knowledge workers’ characteristics and their organizational behaviors byfollowing the line of “self-identity—organizational identity—organizational behavior”.With a review on previous studies, the research hypotheses and theoretical models areproposed in accordance with the conditions in China; the theoretical model on interactionsamong new-generation workers’ self-identity, organizational identity, organizational civilbehaviors, job satisfaction and turnover tendency. Qualitative studies, interviews andquestionnaires are used; SPSS21.0and AMOS19.0are used to testify the theoretical modeland the research hypotheses. The ultimate goal of this research is to explore how the new-generation workers’ self-identity influences their organizational civil behaviors, jobsatisfaction and turnover tendency.Compared with previous studies, this research is innovative in the following aspects.Firstly, it studies the new-generation workers’ characteristics and their organizationalbehaviors. It starts with defining them through literature study; then it collects thecharacteristics with individual interviews and group interviews to form an open questionnaireform to study the new-generation workers and try to generalize their characteristics and tofurther identify the new-generation workers by comparing them with other generations. Theninterviews and questionnaires are used to study the new-generation workers’ organizationalbehaviors to categorize the major characteristics of their organizational behaviors.Secondly, this research develops the structure and measures of the new-generationworkers in China, which tends to enrich the identity theory, since this concept is borrowedfrom psychology and sociology, and there is so far little research on the structure andmeasures of self-identity in the field of organizational behavior. In China the new-generationworkers have their distinctive characteristics;workers in different organizations may beinfluenced differently by the dynamic effect of social environment, leading to widely variedfeelings about their work. In this context, the common rules and special characteristics are thebasis for developing the measures, and developing the structure and measures ofnew-generation workers’ self-identity in China is the very basis for thoroughly studying thenew-generation workers’ organizational behaviors. Based on the local cultural backgroundand characteristics as well as the features of the new-generation workers, and with theclassification method, the Delphi technique and the related measure development procedures,this study has developed a self-identity scale for the new-generation workers, which includes12questions in three dimensions including self-judgment, self-ascription and selfdevelopment.Thirdly, this study has built up a model to describe the relationship between thenew-generation workers’ self-identity, organizational identity and their organizationalbehaviors. Through theoretical analysis and field interviews, it constructs a theoretical modelon the relationship between the new-generation workers’ self-identity and organizationalidentity and their organizational citizenship behavior, job satisfaction and turnover tendencyfrom the perspective of self-identity and organizational identity. It proposes researchhypotheses to study the characteristics of the new-generation workers’ self-identity as well asits impact on those workers’ organizational behaviors for seeking new variables of the outputof the workers’ organizational behaviors. Fourthly, this research has tested the function route and internal interaction mechanismof the new-generation workers’ self-identity with their organizational behaviors. It hasconducted statistical analysis on the610valid samples retrieved with SPSS21.0and AMOS19.0by integrating qualitative analysis, factorial analysis, correlation analysis and StructuralEquation Modeling to testify the model and research hypotheses. Results show that most ofthe hypotheses are verified; the three dimensions of self-identity have direct positiveinfluences on the two dimensions of organizational behaviors; organizational behaviors havenegative influences on turnover tendency; self-identity has little influence on organizationalcivil behaviors, job satisfaction and turnover tendency, whereas self-identity has significantinfluences on organizational civil behaviors, job satisfaction and turnover tendency viaorganizational behaviors. Such results have proved the relationship between self-identity andorganizational civil behaviors, job satisfaction and turnover tendency is totally mediated byorganizational identity. These conclusions are likely to provide theoretical instructions andpolitical suggestions for promoting the new-generation workers’ job satisfaction and theirorganizational civil behaviors in the companies in China; meanwhile they may also providesuggestions for resolving the new-generation workers’ self-identity crisis so as to help thembetter adapt to the society.