Work Engagement in the Context of Confucian Culture: A Case of Chinese Civil Servants

Abstract

Although work engagement as a positive organizational behavior has gained considerable achievements in recent years, there is still a lack of content research based on certain culture, job, and group characteristics. This study conducts a grounded theory research on work engagement by coding and analyzing the interview files from public servants working in the government located in Eastern China. The result shows a five-dimension construct of work engagement, which includes loyalty to the work, commitment to the working relationships, positive emotion, initiative action, and priority for mixed roles. Additionally, the current study also constructs a theoretical model which discovers the dynamic variables motivating the process of work engagement and the influence of Confucianism.

Transformational Leadership, Ethical Leadership, and Participative Leadership in Predicting Counterproductive Work Behaviors: Evidence From Financial Technology Firms

“…Employee engagement (EE) denotes that an employee putting all resources into self-concept toward a job role to achieve a high level of performance ( Kahn, 1990 ). The EE is also gradually received the attention of Greater China scholars ( Lan et al, 2020 ; Liu et al, 2020 ; Lyu, 2020 ). In addition, Kahn’s (1990) theory has detected three psychological antecedents that can drive an individual to show EE, and the present research suggests transformational leadership (TL), ethical leadership (EL), and participative leadership (PL) as Kahn’s (1990) three psychological antecedents.…”

Formation Mechanism and Dynamic Evolution Laws About Unsafe Behavior of New Generation of Construction Workers Based on China’s Construction Industry: Application of Grounded Theory and System Dynamics

“…Open coding is the process of abstracting different concepts from the original utterance data and merging concepts with similar meanings into subcategories ( Lyu, 2020 ). The researchers imported interview data into NVivo 12.0 software for coding and strictly adhered to the coding procedure.…”

“…Grounded theory is a scientific qualitative research method, which mainly observes a phenomenon and aims to develop a theory based on the data systematically collected and analyzed ( Urquhart et al, 2010 ). This method emphasizes the systematic data analysis program, and extracts the core concepts and categories of the original data via repeated comparison, analysis and refinement ( Lyu, 2020 ). Moreover, it offers excellent support for abstracting and relating categories to each other through different coding processes ( Goldkuhl and Cronholm, 2010 ).…”

“Invalid busyness” behaviors of a few grassroots cadres: Evidence from normative explanation

“…Third, there is a lack of political responsibility. From a public person's perspective, government officials usually have a higher motivation and dedication to public service than the staff of social organizations, and are engaged in doing “things that can make society better” (Bovens, 2010 ; Perry et al, 2010 ; Zhang and Li, 2018 ; Lyu, 2020 ). From a societal perspective, government officials are also rational economic agents who seek to maximize their personal interests and seek to minimize or not to lose their own interests when the public interest conflicts with their personal interests (Suchman, 1995 ; O'Brien and Li, 1999 ).…”