The New Chinese Working Values

The task of generalizing the individual working values of a whole nation, especially when it comes to the most populated one – China, undoubtedly has its complexity. The first and most important thing that must be taken into account is that the values of employees may significantly vary when it comes to people of different age, geographic region of origin, gender and level of education. In our beliefs, the first differentiation – the different age, appears to be the most important factor for determining the individual working values of people. In the case of China, due to constant social changes that have occurred during the last hundred years, people from different generations significantly differ from each other in terms of working values.

In order to clarify the Chinese working values of the new generation we are going to apply a deductive approach using three benchmarks - the level of Individualism, Collectivism and Confucianism. Based on provided reading materials and our profound observations we can conclude that the new generation values are clearly more individualistic, less collectivistic and less committed to the Confucian philosophy. These findings could be easily explained with the increased openness and freedom in China during the last twenty to thirty years. In addition to the latter, the so-called ”one-child policy” which resulted in mostly single-child families is another precondition for the higher individualism among the young generation of Chinese. Having in mind the findings about Individualism, Collectivism and Confucianism, and using them as a foundation, we could carry on with our more in-depth analysis of the Chinese working values. Afterwards we will try to point out the differences and the similarities between Chinese working values and the ones in our countries – Bulgaria, Italy, France Norway, Sweden and Thailand.

Based on our collective decisions and on the findings discussed above we concluded that the following five descriptions embody the working values of most Chinese employees: 1) committed to work people sharing the philosophy ”work to live and live to work” 2) money driven 3) mobile 4) likely to risk in the pursuit of profit and last but not least 5) more materialistic.

Based on our group discussions, we found out plenty of similarities and differences between the working values in our own countries of origin and China. Beginning with the differences, the first thing that is unique to countries like Norway, Sweden and Italy is a flat hierarchical structure, something that cannot be said about most Asian countries. Second important feature of our countries, except Thailand, is the encouragement of creativity. In Western countries, for example, it is highly appreciated when an employee shares his or hers ideas about the company’s grow. Third, a huge difference could be observed when it comes to respect for older people and people who are higher on the work ladder; here