China’s unique social conventions make it impossible to apply some western management practices to the Chinese office. To mention just a few culture differences, in China a cultural norm exists to “return a favor with more favor”; employees have been socialized to respect the status quo and not to “rock the boat”; and companies tend to have a very hierarchical structure with a high power distance between supervisors and employees. In this environment how can a company motivate employees to step up and take charge in constructive ways to improve policies and procedures when such behaviour may result in disagreement or conflict?

CEIBS Associate Professor of Organizational Behaviour and Human Resource Management Tae-Yeol Kim explores this in a new study. Prof. Kim, along with co-authors Zhiqiang Liu of the Management School at Huazhong University of Social Science and Technology and James M. Diefendorff of the Akron University Department of Psychology collected survey data from supervisors and their employees at eight large organizations in Wuhan and Shanghai, China. Their results show that when there is mutual liking, trust and respect between an employee and their supervisor - what academics refer to as high-quality leader-member exchange (LMX) – employees tended to exhibit take-charge behaviours more often. In addition, their findings showed that employees who have had a relatively short tenure at a company are more likely to exhibit taking charge behaviours. Longer-tenured employees tended to take charge less often.

These findings suggest that companies may want to provide incentives and support to employees in order to encourage these desired behaviours. They also may want to encourage managers to make their subordinates feel more empowered by developing a good LMX quality with them. Though many know they should do this, because of the high power distance inherent in Chinese culture, some Chinese managers may focus more on developing an “upward” relationship with their supervisors and be less willing to invest in “downward” relationships with their subordinates. The findings also suggest that it may be more beneficial to put more effort on encouraging taking charge behaviours in newer employees. 

The results of the study appear in the paper titled “Leader-member Exchange and Job Performance: The effects of taking charge and organizational tenure” which has been published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior.

Read the paper here

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