Keywords Work psychology, Stress, C

Keywords Work psychology, Stress, Culture (sociology), China, Taiwan
Abstract Towards the end of the twentieth century, the world has witnessed an amazing economic take-off in the East Asia, especially within the territory of so-called "Greater China", encompassing the PRC and Taiwan. Against this economic and cultural background, this study surveyed 258 and 189 employees respectively in Taiwan, and the PRC (Shanghai), to examine generalizability of a generic work-stress model to the Chinese societies. It further examined the sub-cultural differences in the work-stress processes, by drawing contrast of the PRC and Taiwan. In addition, roles of emic constructs of Chinese primary and secondary control beliefs were also examined Results showed that the generic work-stress model could be reasonably applied to Chinese urban work contexts in the PRC and Taiwan. Work stress related as expected to strain effects. At a more refined sub-cultural level, it was found that different sources of work stress became salient contributors to strain outcomes in the PRC and Taiwan. These differences reflect the diverse political, social, and economic characteristics of the two Chinese societies. More importantly, emic constructs of Chinese control beliefs were found to have rather consistent direct effects on strain outcomes. However, indirect (moderating) effects of control beliefs were not strong and inconsistent.

A model of work stress for the Chinese
Work stress has become one of the most serious health issues in the modern world. Researchers have theorized detrimental effects of work stressors on well-being, and have accumulated a substantial and consistent body of research literature, especially in North America and Western Europe (House et al., 1986; Matteson and Ivancevich, 1987; Cooper and Payne, 1978).
However, the validity of a theoretical model has to be established through the process of repeated verification with heterogonous populations of people, time, and culture. The fast emerging Greater China has provided a fertile test field for the work-stress model for three reasons. First, the problem of occupational stress is particularly relevant for the Greater China region, encompassing Taiwan and The People's Republic of China (PRC). Both Chinese societies across the Taiwan Strait are undergoing fundamental transformations of industrial structures from labor-intensive to high-tech, as well as rapid social modernization in both work and life styles. The average annual real growth in Taiwan in 1970-1993 was 8.6 percent; and in the same period the PRC achieved an astonishing 9.3 percent. If the costs of work stress estimated for other countries are equally high in Greater China, it represents a considerable loss of resources.

Second, only recently has attention be given to the application of the Western-originated work-stress model to societies of different cultural characteristics. Both the PRC and Taiwan are collectivistic societies, upholding values and ways of life very different from the individualistic West (Hofstede, 1980). The PRC, in particular, is in the midst of integration with the world since the economic reforms begun in 1978, and the work-stress research is still scant As the population of Chinese in the world is nearly 20 percent of all humans, it is valuable to obtain data from Chinese workers in order to contribute to the generalization of theories and practices in organizational psychology.

Finally, work stress does not occur in vacuum. Work is embedded in the specific political, economic, and social realities (Hofstede, 1980; England, 1975). The Chinese culture is usually represented in a rather monolithic view, and the relatively rich scientific research in Taiwan and Hong Kong are often presumed to be generalizable to all Chinese, including the vast population in the PRC. However, there are rather substantial differences among these distinct Chinese societies, as there are also subtle differences within each of them. In the case of the PRC and Taiwan, although they share a common Confucian cultural heritage and a common Chinese written language, they each developed distinct political and economic systems over the 50-year separation after the civil war. As argued by Child (1996), these systems could then contribute towards shaping observable patterns of organizational behavior. In the case of work stress, salient components of the stress process may vary to reflect these sociocultural specificities in the two societies.

Greater China, then, offers one of the most important contexts for work stress in the world today. It also offers a unique context of a comparison on political, economic, cultural similarity and dissimilarity as reflected in the work-stress process. Based on the extensive review of Western theories and research on work stress, and incorporating salient sociocultural characteristics of a Chinese society (Taiwan in this case), the first author proposed a generic integrative work-stress model for the Chinese (Lu, 1997). This multi-faceted model adopts an interactional view of stress (Cox, 1978; French et al., 1982; Sutherland and Cooper, 1990), and conceptualizes work stress as a personal, subjective, and dynamic process. As presented in Figure 1, the model includes potential sources of stress (stressors), factors of individual differences (moderators/mediators), and consequences of stress (strain) as main components of the work-stress process. As there is no space to go into details of the model, it will suffice to make three brief points regarding the theoretical meta-hypotheses underlying the model.

First, work stress is viewed here as a personal phenomenon, hence id perceived stress" is a necessary mediator linking potential sources of stress and various consequences of stress. Second, vast individual differences in vulnerability to stress mainly reflected in internal and external resources, contribute towards shaping observable patterns of the work-stress process. They may: alter an individual's perception of a potential source of stress (direct effect); impact on the transformation of perceived stress into various consequences of stress (indirect effect); and ameliorate these stress consequences (direct effect). Third, this model takes a person-centered psychological perspective without pre-excluding important sociocultural influences on the work-stress process. Specifically, culture is viewed to shape the values, beliefs, and behaviors of its member through its core issues of concern as well as its distinct political, economic, and societal structures. These prevailing cultural influences are then reflected in the specificities of a particular phenomenon, such as the work-stress process.

To date, a series of empirical research conducted in Taiwan have already lent general support to this generic model of work stress. These studies include analyses focused on potential sources of work stress for employees of large structured organizations vis--a-vis small family-based enterprises (Lu et al., 1995, 1997a; Lu and Lo, 1995); direct and indirect effects of internal vis-d-vis external resources, such as work motivation (Lu, 1999), locus of control (Lu et al., 1999a), and work values (Lu and Lin, 2002); consequences of work stress for the individual vis--vis the organization (Lu et aL, 1997a); individual, job, and occupational differences in the work-stress process (Lu and Kao, 1999; Lu et al, 1997b, 1999b). Although the main axis of potential sources of stress -> perceived stress -> consequences of stress, as well as direct/indirect effects of resources (Figure 1) have been repeatedly supported by empirical evidence from independent samples across a broad spectrum of organizational hierarchies (managers vs non-managers) and occupational background in Taiwan, a fine-grained analysis focusing on the prevailing influences of culture is still needed to enrich theoretical implications of the model. Such an effort can provide a more appropriate cultural context for applications of the model in organizational management, such as job relocation training (Lu and Cooper, 1995). Contrasting the PRC and Taiwan, and relating possible differences in work stress to their distinct political, economic, and social characteristics is an appropriate starting point in the effort of "unpackaging" culture on work stress (Bond, 1998).

A theoretical framework for the present study
Considering the limited capacity of a single empirical investigation, a more concise theoretical framework (Figure 2) was devised based on the generic work-stress model (Figure 1). As can been seen in Figure 2, "demographics and job characteristics", "sources of stress", "control beliefs", and "strain" are four major components of the model.
In Figure 2, "demographic and job characteristics" are treated as background variables to be controlled in analyzes, as all of these listed factors have been shown to impact on the work-stress process (Lu and Kao, 1999; Cooper, 1983; Robbins, 1996; Ross and Altmaier, 1994).
"Sources of stress" are construed as antecedents, including eight distinct aspects of the work life. Although different researchers developed or adopted different schemes to categorize sources of work stress, there are considerable commonalites. For instance, Burke (1988) provided a summary of findings for six categories of stressors: physical environment, role stressors, organizational structure and job characteristics, relationships with others, career development and work-family conflict. Recently, Cooper et al. (1988) identified six sources of stress at work: factors intrinsic to the job, management role, relationship with others, career and achievement, organizational structure and climate, home/work interface. Our eight categories of stressors (Figure 2)