Institutional Forces and Organizational Culture in China: Effects on Change Schemas, Firm Commitment and Job Satisfactio

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and

Forces in

Schemas,

China:

Organizational Effects

Firm

Change

on

and

Commitment

Job

Satisfaction Chung-MingLau*

CHINESE UNIVERSITY OF HONG

KONG

David K. Tse** UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG

Nan Zhou*** CITY UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG

This paper examines the effects of institutional forces on change schemas of senior managers, mid-level managers and front-line workers of differenttypes of firms in China. We postulate that several socio-economic forces including regional economic prosperity, firm type (stateowned and foreign-invested), within-firm ranks, and organizational cultures are at work. The cognitive differences among people in local INTRODUCTION Institutional theory has been a major theoretical pillar as researchers examine

and foreignfirms operatingin similar contexts are examined. Through a survey of 3,960 managers and workers we test hypotheses thatrelatevarious intitutional forces on how individuals perceive, evaluate and infer future changes that challenge them. We also examine the effects of individual change schema on firm commitment and job satisfaction, two indicators that may mediate future changes in these firms. themimeticandconformingprocessesof organizationsby the forcesof theirrelevant

institutions

(Pfeffer,

1997;

Scott,

*Chung-Ming Lau is Chairman and Professor in the Department of Management at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His current research interests include strategic change, organizational culture, and management of Chinese organizations. **David K. Tse is Professor of International Marketing and Director of Chinese Management Centre at the University of Hong Kong. He also holds a concurrent Chair Professor of Marketing at the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University. ***Nan Zhou is Associate Professor and Head, Department of Marketing, City University of Hong Kong. The authors would like to thank the research assistance of Jenny Tien as well as the helpful comments of three anonymous reviewers. Tse and Zhou acknowledge the financial support provided by the Hong Kong Research Council (CERG CityU 1176/97H). JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONALBUSINESSSTUDIES,33, 3 (THIRDQUARTER2002):

533-550

533

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INSTITUTIONALFORCESAND ORGANIZATIONALCULTURE

1995; Tolbert and Zucker, 1996). These institutional forces are present at the macro socio-economic level, the industry level, and the firm level. These forces are known to be more complex and stronger in transitional than those in free-market economies (Hoskisson, Eden, Lau, and Wright, 2000; Peng and Heath, 1996; Shenkar and von Glinow, 1994). Accordingly, institutions and their effects have been a common focus in firm-behavior research in transitional economies across various disciplines including economics (North, 1990), sociology (Walder, 1995), political science (Cheng and Wang, 1993), and international business (Child and Tse, 2001). These studies have examined ins