A Survey On Work Values Among MNC Employees In Mainland China And Its Implications For Employee Motivation

Many western researchers have been devoted to the study of work values and their structure from different perspectives. However, the results of their study are more or less biased by western mind as the instruments are designed based on western ways of thinking and values. Besides, few attempts have been made to specifically explore the work values among employees of Multinational Corporations (MNC) in Mainland China. The present thesis, focusing its attention on this group of people, strives to outline their work value structure and to examine the relative importance of each work value items for them. Based on the previous theories and empirical studies, such as Hofstede's IBM survey and Chinese Value Survey, a 15-item questionnaire is designed and distributed to MNC employees mostly in 6 cities around the country. Principal Components Analysis (PCA) is carried out among the data collected from 120 respondents to help outline the work value structure, and the standard scores of the work value items are calculated to examine their relative importance. It is discovered that the work values among MNC employees in Mainland China generally relate to 5 dimensions in the work context, i.e. job responsibility, participation, interpersonal relations, physical resources and non-material rewards. The relative importance of these work value items is found to be in accordance with the historical theories to some extent, such as Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs and Herzberg's Hygiene– Motivation theory, and meanwhile in line with the distinctive Chinese culture. In light of these findings, some implications in terms of employee motivation are proposed for Human Resource (HR) managers in MNCs.