Title: Enhancing employee's work ethics and social responsibility awareness in Chinese organisations: the roles of Confucian diligence tradition, western values and participative leadership

Authors: Thi Hong Nhung Nguyen; Quey-Jen Yeh

Addresses: Department of Business Administration, College of Management, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan ' Department of Business Administration, College of Management, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan

Abstract: Work ethics and social responsibility (WESR) as corporate's ethical decisions do not only highlight organisational values and commitments, but also portrait business relationships with all stakeholders. As a primary internal stakeholder, employee's WESR awareness appears to be worthwhile in facilitating organisation's ultimate success for employee's job performance and well-beings. This paper engenders significant contributions with attempts to explore crucial enablers driving employee to perceive the importance of WESR policies embedded in modern Chinese business, where both traditional Confucianism and innovative Western values are co-exhibited. These organisational values integrated in a hybrid culture model, together with different typical management leaderships (participative vs. power-distant) were examined as main antecedences. Furthermore, to demonstrate the promising benefits of WESR in human resource, the positive link between WESR awareness and work performance efficacy was firstly evidenced, extended by its mediating effects in the research model. An empirical study was conducted from 213 Taiwanese employees, CB-SEM results supported all proposed hypotheses.

Keywords: Confucian diligence value; western innovative values; work ethics and corporate social responsibility; work performance efficacy; WPE; participative leadership; power-distant leadership; Chinese organisations.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBGE.2022.119341

International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics, 2022 Vol.16 No.1, pp.54 - 87

Received: 10 Apr 2020
Accepted: 02 Oct 2020

Published online: 01 Dec 2021 *

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