In the Confucian collectivist Chine

In the Confucian collectivist Chinese organization, authoritarian rather than democratic, paternalistic rather than egalitarian managerial culture still prevails. Furthermore, a certain amount of autocratic management is accepted and expected as authoritarian control is a legitimate paternal attribute, and may even be interpreted as signs of care and compassion (Cheng, 1995). It is thus not surprising that perceived control at work may not be a useful concept in understanding the work-stress processes for the Chinese people.

Although the autocratic feature of Chinese organizations renders both objective and subjective control at work almost irrelevant, being able to do the job as one wants to could be independent of believing that one has control over life at large. There are so many subtle and delicate processes that the Chinese culture has construed and sanctioned to facilitate personal well-being in the face of unbearable loss of control viewed by a Western eye (Kojima, 1984). In the present study, it was indeed found that primary control as a general control belief conceptualized from a Chinese culture vantage point was related to job satisfaction in both Chinese groups, as well as physical well-being in the Taiwanese sample (see Table IV). Chinese primary control beliefs were also found to buffer the work stress-job satisfaction relationship in general, and "Recognition"-job satisfaction relationship in particular (see Figure 3(A) and (B)). These results should alert us that although the Western etic model of work stress can be applied to a Chinese context in general, emic constructs such as Chinese control beliefs need to be incorporated to help us achieve a deeper and fuller understanding of the work-stress process as embedded in a particular cultural context (Figure 1).

The different roles played by Chinese primary and secondary control beliefs in the work-stress process are intriguing. As we hypothesized, primary control is generally a stress resistance factor whereas secondary control is a stress vulnerability factor (see Table IV. These results corroborated recent findings pertaining to general subjective well-being for both Chinese and British (Lu et al., 2001a, b; Lu, 2001a, b). This convergence of evidence has further supported our notion that for contemporary Chinese people, an autonomous, initiating, striving, and achieving attitude fits well with the efficiency-emphasizing, achievement-orienting and competition-based urban existence. In contrast, a traditional attitude of submission, withdrawal, and apathy toward life can be maladaptive in modern, vibrant Chinese societies. This disparity of control beliefs should be even more pronounced in the urban work contexts, as our present study has demonstrated.

Sub-cultural differences in work stress: the PRC vs Taiwan

The process of work stress is culture-specific, just like many other human behaviors and adaptation. In addition to the East-West cultural differences outlined above, only a handful of studies devoted to the sub-cultural differences in organizational behaviors (Kirkcaldy and Cooper, 1992; Siu et al., 1999; Huang, 1994). As outlined in Table I, although the PRC and Taiwan are both collectivist societies with Confucian traditional roots, and economically as well as socially undergoing enormous transformations, they nonetheless possess diverse social institutions and systems, have different regional development histories, and are influenced to rather different extent by foreign cultures and powers. As predicted by the generic work-stress model (Figure 1), the present study found substantial sub-cultural differences in work-stress processes in the two Chinese groups.

There were different predictors of work morale and personal health in the two Chinese groups. For Taiwanese, "recognition" was the most important source of work stress to affect work morale, and "home/work balance" to affect personal well-being. Taiwan has been free of major political or ideological upheavals since 1949, and Confucianism has remained a dominant philosophical system and guiding ethics in daily life, Confucianism advocates that one should be benevolent to others in a hierarchical order, depending on the intimacy of one's relationship with the other. This kind of structured intimacy is viewed as "hierarchical benevolence" in anthropological studies (Hsu, 1988). Furthermore, once a social position is prescribed to a Chinese person, he/she must show respect and unconditional obedience to his/her superior. Therefore, the Confucian "righteousness" for ordinary people is very different from the Western concepts of "democracy" and "justice" which are highly valued in Christian civilization. These Confucian ethics is still prevailing in contemporary Taiwanese organizations (Walder, 1983; Cheng, 1995).