Workplace rights and responsibilities differences between conceptions of Romanian and Chinese employees.

ABSTRACT

The current study first identifies the essences of employees' conceptions and rights in two countries China and Romania that have different cultures but have been exposed to a semi-market economy control system. We also attempt to make a comparison between the two conceptions and find the common traits and the differences. The key differences of conceptions of rights and responsibilities between Chinese and Romanian employees are partly explained by the findings in the research up to date.

1. INTRODUCTION

The way that managerial values and norms affect the citizenship behavior, or basic responsibilities and rights of employees, in contemporary organizations has received refreshed attention in recent years (Burdenski and Dunson, 1999; Osigweh, 1990; Huo and Si, 2001). This research may be traced back to the contributions-inducements theory proposed by Barnard, which stresses that organizations are essentially cooperative systems, inducing and integrating the contributions of their individual participants. Barnard's development was continued by Simon, with the results being the Barnard-Simon theory of organizational equilibrium (Mitchell and Scott, 1988). According to this theory, each organizational participant will continue his/her participation as long as the inducements offered are as great or greater then the contributions they are asked to make.

The previous research in this field, however, usually followed a culture-free approach that presumes that the transactions between employers and employees are regulated by certain universal game rules regardless of their national or cultural backgrounds. More over, little attention has been paid to the cross-differences on commonly accepted concepts of employees' rights and responsibilities. However, the cultural dimensions Hofstede identified seem to be affected by personal traits and the value system of the whole society, with the later being defined as "the collective programming of the people in an environment" in Hofstede's conceptual model (1980, 1988).

In this paper we will first identify the essences of employees' conceptions and rights in two countries China and Romania that have completely different cultures but have been exposed to a planned-economy control system. Second, we will attempt to make a comparison between the two conceptions and find the common traits and the differences. These conceptions have been identified using some first-hand data gathered in the two countries. These conceptions are argued being affected by both individual traits and important characteristics of the culture.

Since this is a two-nation comparison study, the cultural factors are not constant. In addition to the national culture, the personal traits of respondents may also explain a significant portion of the variation in the respondent's perceived importance of various rights and responsibilities. As such, in the following section we shall discuss the potential effect of both cultural and individual factors in light of relevant models.

2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

2.1 The notion of rights

To provide a meaningful exploration of the notion of rights in the workplace, the following section approach the definition from a moral, legal, bureaucratic, and social perspectives (Osigweh, 1990). From a moral perspective, individual have certain basic moral rights that originate from characteristics that are unique to qualities of people. Examples of these unique characteristics are the abilities to choose, work, feel pain, speak, etc. The basic moral rights are the bases from which other legitimate rights are derived.

Based on these, and depending on the values of employees and managers, (Saskin and Moris, 1987) in different organizations can exists any number of specific and different rights such as rights to free choice, to work, to a hazard-free environment, to free speech, etc. These basic rights are thus natural, fundamental and inviolable. From a legal perspective, which is a primary way to defend rights, the legal rights are rights either explicitly enunciated in laws, constitutions, rules and regulations or are derived from these rational-legal instruments. However, basic moral rights are often used to defend, criticize, justify, or evaluate specific laws or legally granted rights. This suggests that the fundamental origin of rights may be moral.

From a bureaucratic perspective, the development of rights and pro-rights ideas tend to have increased with the growth of bureaucracy and the accumulation of wealth and its uses. One explanation, is that facing scarcity concerns (e.g. overpopulation), people develop moral character and notions of rights based on the perceptions of conflicts of interests between parties competing for available resources (e.g. between employees and employers). The bureaucracy has a set of laws and rules that regulate this conflict and also establish and protect various rights. Thus, the modern bureaucratic organization minimizes unproductive conflicts or disputes while establishing and protecting the rights of employers and employees in the work place.

From social perspective, the rights are socially derived, because the social processes influence the creation of rights and the exercise of those rights. They originate in the minds of people and prevail only where individuals demand their existence. The persons as part of the society are the centers and originators of social experience. To the society at large the human dignity is attributed and brings with it characteristics that are unique qualities of people from which basic rights originate. Within the dignity of the person is rooted certain basic rights. These rights are fundamental and inviolable and allow people to be treated as worthy of respect.

The above perspective of notion of rights drawn on moral, legal, bureaucratic and social aspects complement one another and are also consistent with moral ideas that reveal that fundamental origin of rights may be moral, and that rights can be defined in terms of the broad and basic rule to do no harm to persons.

2.2 The notion of responsibilities

The notion of responsibilities in the workplace is based on the foundation that rights have corresponding obligations that imply responsibilities. In addition, there is a reciprocal nature to all employee and employer relationships. Thus, every right is defined by (or at least correlated with) a duty or responsibility of another person or party. This view has been expressed well by Osigweh (1988) that argues "when a person has a moral right, some other person or persons have corresponding obligations".

The reciprocal character of rights emphasize that each party to a relationship (person, group, organization) should regard the others as equal possessors of rights and benefits and treat them with equal respect and dignity. Indeed, employees expect that because they are held accountable for exerting high levels of effort, their managers have a reciprocal obligation to strive hard to provide them with resources needed to perform the job (Salipante and Fortado, 1989). For example, the employee's right to refuse work in an unsafe environment without fear of employer reprimands, and the employer has the responsibility to provide a safe place to work. Reciprocally, the employer has the right to expect uninterrupted quality work from worker, and the worker has the responsibility to be present and do the job mindfully.

In sum, the notion of responsibilities is strong related and interwoven with the notion of rights and is the cornerstone for any discussion of workplace rights and their application in organizations. Dealing with the notions of rights and responsibilities requires further understanding of the characteristics of them. This paper will not attempt to identify the "basic" set of rights and responsibilities but how the conception oh rights and responsibilities are affected by culture and other factors.

2.3 Conception of rights and responsibilities

Research studies did not explored enough how the employment relationship might be defined differently in various cultural environments. However, Barnard and Simon's work on organizational equilibrium, which focuses on the search of the perfect balance between contributions and rewards, seems to be universally applicable. Even for such a universally applicable principle of management as organizational equilibrium, culture may still play a critical role in moderating the specific ways contribution and rewards are balanced in real-life organizations. This is because the implicit contracts that govern all transactions between employers and employees must address three basic issues that are culture dependent. First will analyze the cultural-dependent issues concerning the contributions on employees such as the magnitude, the differentiation and the regulation of contributions and than will analyze the cultural-dependent issues concerning the reward of employees' contributions.

2.4 The magnitude of contribution

This first issue concerns the acceptable magnitude of contribution because organizations in different societies may have different norms concerning how much contribution would be viewed as adequate. The answers to the following questions could provide a definition of the magnitude of contribution: Is everyone expected to put maximum efforts in order to achieve the best performance? If an employee only wanted to work with the minimally effort required, should employer tolerate it or should fire him? How tolerable is this sort of job behavior? The answers to such questions are not universal and the actual standards in use may still vary widely across different organizations.

2.5 Differentiation of contributions

The actual differentiation of employees' relative contribution may be considered more problematic in some societies than in others. People in different cultures may have different views on how easily the level of individual contributions may be differentiated in practice. Such views are seldom explicitly stated, but they can be inferred from the reward and incentive system used in organization. In practice it is widely believed that:

Employees' relative contributions can never be differentiated reliably and accurately. The rewards would more likely be dispensed to employees in a relatively egalitarian manner.

2.6 Regulation and control of the employment relationship

Given the fact that contributions are not always tangible, measurable, or differentiable, many organizations may resort to bureaucratic tools, such as policies, rules, and procedures, in order to determine a minimum level of behavioral compliance from their employees. Corporate regulations and rules may also affect how individuals obtain a balance between labor and leisure that enlarges one's capacity for friendship, for family life, and for community (Burdenski and Dunson; 1999), People in different cultural environments may have different tendency to use such bureaucratic means to regulate the interaction between employees and employers. These three issues are not only important for the management of contributions but also for management of inducements. The same theoretical arguments as for "contribution management" can be applied to the inducement counterpart and a series of similar questions and concerns must address on the reward side: Magnitude of reward: How much reward is considered to be adequate? Differentiation of rewards: To what extent can be rewards be differentiated? Regulation of rewards: How should the rewards be regulated by the use of various bureaucratic tools?

3. CULTURE'S CONSEQUENCES

A key issue for individuals and organizations is the effect of culture on the employment relationship. A natural question is: How might specific characteristics of culture affect the way the issues of contributions-rewards management model (magnitude, regulation and differentiation) are addressed? In both management and marketing research, culture has often been seen as a crucial independent variable. Although a large number of theoretical paradigms have been proposed for cress-cultural research, the Hofstede's (1980) model is adopted for this exploratory study and is explained briefly. Hofstede defined culture as "an interactive aggregate of common characteristics that influence a group's response to its environment" and described it using four criteria:

3.1 Power Distance.

The first dimension of Hofstede's model deals with the issue of inequality between members of a given society because the physical and intellectual capacities of people are different. Power distance measures the degree that societies allow these inequalities to perpetuate over time. The cross-national difference in power distance may significantly affect how contributions and rewards are regulated. In a country with high power distance: Employees are less likely to be treated as equal-status members of the organization; Managers are likely to be capable to fire or punish incompetent employees; Lower-level employees are less likely to be encouraged to make suggestions on policies and rules.

3.2 Uncertainty Avoidance. The second dimension of Hofstede's model refers to the way that societies deal with an uncertain future. The socialization process in some societies enables individuals to face the future with less anxiety. This cultural dimension has important implications for the measurement of contributions and regulations of inducements. Cultures of high uncertainty avoidance tend to: Rely more heavily on policies and rules to control employees' job behavior; Organizations in such cultures also tend to resist change, as any change would inevitably increase the likelihood of potential failure or malfunction of the control mechanism; Tangible contributions are likely to be emphasized more heavily over intangible ones, as the real values of intangible contributions are usually hard to appraise.

3.3 Individualism/Collectivism. The third dimension of Hofstede's model involves the fundamental issue of the relation between an individual and other individuals within a regional or national grouping. In general, people in a more collectivistic culture are more likely to: Recognize an employee's intangible contribution to the organization trough maintaining smooth interpersonal relations (Porter, Pearce, Tripoli and Lewis, 1998); See more overlapping between the personal life and wok life; Pay more attention to the collective contributions made by the team as a whole; Conversely, individualistic cultures would probably stress: Pay respect to the self-esteem of individual workers; Recognize that individual employees' contributions are likely to be uneven; See a clear line of demarcation between personal life and work life.

3.4 Masculinity/Femininity. The fourth dimension concerns the roles between sexes in society. Social role divisions are arbitrary. Roles of men and women vary from society to society. Hofstede (1980) states that societies may be classified based on whether they try to minimize or maximize the social role division. The dominant feminine values of the society are usually associated with newer, more modern values. If we consider masculinity as an indicator of the propensity to pursue the highest achievement in material terms, a high score of masculinity would imply: The tendency to set higher standards for employees' contributions; An emphasis on relatively tangible aspects of contributions and inducements; An unavoidable responsibility for the employer to help their employees achieve the maximum career success.

4. METHODS

In order to assess the major characteristics of Romanian employees' conceptions of employee rights and responsibilities, we conducted a survey with 40 employees from different companies. These companies are private companies although some of them were formerly state-owned companies that have been privatized. It is interesting to see what is the system of value of employees in a country that has a transitional economy from a controlled to free-market economy. Also it is interesting to make a comparison with the western and China, that represent a completely different culture and to see how the different cultures have shaped the system of value for each country. At the end the paper will explore what are the key differences between the conceptions of rights and responsibilities at Romanian and Chinese employees.

4.1 Questionnaire Design

The questionnaire used in this study was a published one used in an exploratory study conducted in China (Huo and Si, 2001). This questionnaire taps into six primary aspects of employee relations, including basic work ethics, compensation, interpersonal relationship, policies and rules, job skills, inter-organizational relations and includes 31 items. Each item addresses a potentially important employee right or responsibility. The respondent was asked to rate it on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from "strongly disagree" (1) to "strongly agree" (7).

4.2 Sample

Forty questionnaires were distributed to employees who worked in two different companies in Bucharest, the capital of Romania. It is the largest city of the country with its over 2 million population. With regard to the choices of industries, the surveyed employees are working for private and state-owned companies. The industries covered in this sample are travel and transportation industries. The basic demographic features of respondents seem to indicate that the sample represents only a portion of the homogenous work force in Romania. The majority of the respondents are young, below 40 of age (80), which is convenient cut-off point for distinguish between older and younger generations of Romanians. The gender distribution is slightly skewed to females (65).

The majority of them have a University degree (80). 38 percent of the respondents were classified as managers ("manager" is defined as anyone who supervised at least 2 subordinates). The majority of respondents worked in a state-owned company (65).

5. FINDINGS

Since the study is exploratory, no specific hypothesis is formally stated. However, our earlier discussion on the cultural and demographic effects should make it easy to generate testable hypothesis for further studies based on this findings. An application will be the study of differences between employees' perceptions of rights and responsibilities between Romanian and Chinese employees. We expect to find differences due to cultural influences.

The responsibilities receiving the strongest support from the Romanian employees in our sample is that "It is very important/or managers to respect the self esteem of their employees (Q3) " (mean=6.83, SD=0.38) followed by the "Employees should make as much contribution as they possible can to the success of their organization in exchange for the greatest possible regards for their efforts (QI)" (mean=6.73, SD=0.45). The doubt on credibility on this findings is cleared by the reverse concept, "Rewards in organizations should be dispensed on the basis of egalitarianism (i.e. everyone is treated equally regardless of contribution) (QI 7)" that received the lowest approval rate (mean=2.88, SD=2.14). Although research in the past usually predicts a higher degree of egalitarianism in the socialist system that in capitalism system (Osigweh and Huo, 1993), it is noted that the transition economy that has been going on for the past 12 years in Romania, has affected the perception of the responsibilities and rights and produced a mentality change. The current study summarizes the conceptions that received the highest support (see Appendix 1).

The first most important concept, "It is very important for managers to respect the self-esteem of their employees (Q3)", although seems to echo the egalitarian concept and reflects a relatively high power distance between superiors and subordinates, actually it is a reflection of the need that the individuality of the person should be respected, and therefore is a proof of change of mentality from collectivism to individualism. Nevertheless, although equity has replaced equality as a valued concept in the reward structure, egalitarianism is still desired by Romanian employees. This is inferred from the fact that the concept receiving one of the highest support is "Everyone in the organization deserves being treated as an equal-status team member (Q2)" (mean=6.23, SD=1.00). In other words, Romanian employees probably believe that people should be treated as "equal status team member" even though they vigorously accept the idea of unequal rewards, so long as the rewards are commensurate with individual contributions. The most valued rights and responsibilities tend to highlight some universally accepted work ethics, but to have a clearer picture we will examine the low-end of responses. With the response of 4 as the threshold point that separates approval from disapproval, there are only three items that received average ratings of less than 4 in this sample. These items reflect the rights and responsibilities that are not valued or even disapproved by Romanian employees. The current study summarizes the conceptions that received the lowest support (see Appendix 1).

As mentioned earlier, an egalitarian reward structure that disregards relative contributions is disapproved. The respondents seem to strongly disagree with the notion that "The contributions of employees in our organization are not dramatically different from each other (Q12)" (mean=3.29, SD=L91). The relative contributions are perceived different across employees and it is easy to understand why the egalitarian reward structure is disliked "Rewards in organizations should be dispensed on the basis of egalitarianism (i.e. everyone is treated equally regardless of contribution (QII)" (mean=3.10, SD=1.75). Regarding the policies and rules, the respondents in our sample seem to oppose the idea of making easy to change the policy or rule. This reflects the higher uncertainty avoidance of Romanian culture and reflects a conservative mindset. In addition it shows that the Romanian employees have a propensity to challenge the status quo, a desire to make improvements and are willing to be empowered.

As for the key differences between Chinese and Romanian conceptions, after assessing the factors that could affect the conceptions of the rights and responsibilities in the work place, we directly compare the mean of the agreements and disagreements for several questions. The means of answers for the questions that received the highest support from Chinese employees are compared with the corresponding ones from Romanian employees. The data is presented in Appendix 1. Apparently, there is a significant difference is considered the difference that is greater or equal than 10. The following picture highlights the differences greater than 10 between the mean of the answers that received the highest support (mean>4). Surprisingly, in spite of the fact that we expected a lot of differences due to cultural, economic system and demographic factors, there are only 3 conceptions that are significantly different: Q5, Q7 and Q10.

Chinese employees believes stronger than the Romanian ones that "An employee's personal life should not have anything to do with her/his work life (Q10)". This is due to the difference in cultural dimension and also in demographics (younger people in the Romanian sample).

6. CONCLUSION

The key differences between conceptions of rights and responsibilities of Romanian and Chinese employees are summarized in the following section. Also, it is given a possible explanation about the factors that probably have produced these differences. First, Chinese employees believes stronger than the Romanian ones, that "Employees have a responsibility to get along with one another peacefully (Q5)". This is a reflection of the cultural influence of the individualism/collectivism dimension. As we have seen, the collectivism dimension in China is higher that in Romania and this would have an impact on this conception.

Second, Chinese employees believes stronger than the Romanian ones, that "it is the responsibility of employees to find ways to improve their work skills (Q7)". However we expected the opposite because of a stronger masculinity in China, (research showed that culture with a higher masculinity tend to see that employers have a greater responsibility to help their employees achieve a maximum career success), this result shows that there is another independent variable except culture that affect this conception. Chinese employees believes stronger than the Romanian ones that "An employee's personal life should not have anything to do with her/his work life (Q10)". This is due to the fact that the people in the Chinese sample are older than Romanian ones (the demographic independent variable seems to have a stronger influence), even if the higher collectivism in China would lead to more overlapping of personal and work life. In conclusion, the above key differences of conceptions of rights and responsibilities between Chinese and Romanian employees are partly explained by the findings in the research up to date. This paper found that also the demographic characteristics have an influence and can counter balance the effects of the culture influence. Further more studies are necessary to discover the link and the validity of the proposed model and explore in depth the relationships, if any, between conceptions of employees, the system of values and the independent variables such as culture, demographics, and economic system.

Appendix A:

A1. Responsibilities/Rights That Received Strongest Support (Romanians)

                                                               Mean
Questions                                                      (S.D.)

Q3. It is very important for managers to respect the self-     6.83
  esteem of their employees.                                   (.38)
Q1. Employees should make as much contribution as they         6.73
  possible can to the success of their organization in         (0.45)
  exchange for the greatest possible rewards for their
  efforts.
Q9. It is the management's responsibility to provide on-       6.28
  the-job training for employees.                              (0.99)
Q2. Everyone in the organization deserves being treated as     6.23
  an equal-status team member.                                 (1.00)
Q25. In emergency situations, an employee should not decline   6.20
  the manager's request for working overtime.                  (0.82)
Q6. Corporate management should sponsor employees continual    6.13
  education that help improve their job skills.                (1.09)
Q8. Employees should be encouraged to suggest changes          6.10
  whenever they identify a problem with the policies           (1.22)
  or rules.
Q28. An employee should pursue the best possible performance   6.05
  even if he is not asked to do so.                            (0.75)
Q26. An organization should retain only those employees who    6.08
  have tried their best to do a good job.                      (1.07)
Q29. Employees have the responsibility to help their           5.98
  organization to build a mutually beneficial relationship     (1.03)
  with other organizations.
Q30. Reward in an organization should be based solely on       5.98
  each employee's contribution.                                (1.25)

A2. Responsibilities/Rights That Received Weakest Support (Romanians)

                                                               Mean
Questions                                                      (S.D.)

Q11: Rewards in organizations should be dispensed on the       2.88
  basis of egalitarianism (i.e. everyone is treated equally    (2.14)
  regardless of contribution).
Q12: The contributions of employees in our organization are    3.10
  not dramatically different from each other.                  (1.75)
Q22: Those who violate policies or rules should still be       3.60
  penalized even if their intention is good.                   (1.58)

A3. Comparison Between Chinese and Romanian
Perception of Strongest Support

                                                     Mean      Mean
Questions                                            (S.D.)    (S.D.)
                                                     Chinese   Romanian

Q1: Employees should make as much contribution as    6.39      6.73
  they Possibly can to the success of their          (1.00)    (0.38)
  organization in exchange for the greatest
  possible rewards for their efforts.
Q2: Everyone in the organization deserves being      6.38      6.23
  treated as an equal- status team member.           (0.93)    (1.00)
Q3: It is very important for managers to respect     6.25      6.83
  the self-esteem of their employees.                (1.10)    (0.38)
Q4: Policies and rules in the organization should    6.14      5.93
  be strictly enforced.                              (1.11)    (1.02)
Q5: Employees have a responsibility to get along     6.12      5.30
  with one another peacefully.                       (0.21)    (1.25)
Q6: Corporate management should sponsor employees'   6.08      6.13
  continual education that help improve their job    (1.08)    (1.09)
  skills.
Q7: It is the responsibility of employees to find    6.08      5.28
  ways to improve their work skills.                 (1.07)    (1.20)
Q8: Employees should be encouraged to suggest        6.07      6.10
  changes whenever they identify a problem with      (1.17)    (1.22)
  the policies or rules.
Q9: It is the management's responsibility to         6.04      6.28
  provide on-the-job training for employees.         (1.27)    (1.99)
Q10: An employee's personal life should not have     6.03      5.33
  anything to do with her/his work life.             (1.18)    (1.85)

A4. Comparison Between Chinese and Romanian
Perception of Weakest Support

                                                     Mean      Mean
Questions                                            (S.D.)    (S.D.)
                                                     Chinese   Romanian

Q11: Rewards in organizations should be dispensed    2.24      2.88
  on the basis of egalitarianism (i.e. everyone      (1.65)    (2.14)
  is treated equally regardless of contribution).
Q12: The contributions of employees in our           3.29      3.10
  organization are not dramatically different        (1.91)    (1.75)
  from each other.
Q13: Policies and rules should be observed but       3.36      4.03
  sometimes can be violated if an employee think     (1.92)    (1.87)
  it is necessary.
Q14: Employees who just want to perform their        3.49      4.33
  jobs adequately (i.e. meet minimum acceptable      (1.84)    (1.94)
  standards) should be fired.
Q15: Those who do not try to excel on their jobs     3.74      4.2
  should be penalized.                               (1.84)    (1.78)

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Steven X. Si, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania