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High Commitment Work Systems in Chinese Organizations: A Preliminary Measure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2015

Zhixing Xiao  and
Ingmar Björkman
Translated by
肖知兴
Zhixing Xiao
Affiliation:
China Europe International Business School, China
Ingmar Björkman
Affiliation:
Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration, Finland
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Abstract

The concept of a high commitment work system (HCWS) has mostly been used in the West to study the relationship between a firm's work systems and organizational performance. In this paper, we introduce a preliminary measure of HCWS in China based on the definition of Baron and Kreps (1999). In study 1, we tested the measure by surveying 442 employees in China's information technology (IT) industry. In study 2, we re-tested the same measure from the perspective of human resource (HR) executives in 126 foreign-invested companies. The analyses not only provided some evidence for the construct validity of this preliminary measure of a high commitment work system, but also produced some interesting results that can only be understood with regards to the history and institutional backgrounds of Chinese organizations.

Keywords

high commitment work systemChinascale development高投入工作系统中国量表开发
Type
Articles
Information
Management and Organization Review , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , November 2006 , pp. 403 - 422
Copyright
Copyright © International Association for Chinese Management Research 2006

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