Summary
This study examines Chinese workers' job stress through the application of Karasek's (1979) job demand - job control model, and investigates how traditional values influence the interaction between job demands and job control, in affecting workers' anxiety and depressive symptoms. Sample consisted of 281 workers from three state-owned manufacturing companies in China. Traditional values were measured using 8 items taken from the Chinese Individual Traditionality Inventory (Yang et al., 1989). The results indicated that traditional values played a buffering role in the more traditional workers' coping process, whereas this positive effect was not found among the less traditional workers. Implications of the findings were discussed.
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Extract
Role of Traditional Values On Coping with Stress Among Manufacturing Workers in China: An Empirical Study
Introduction
Job stress, in the last three decades, has become a key concept for academic research into people's physiological and psychological health problems (Cooper, Dewe & O'Driscoll, 2001). The detrimental effects of job stress discovered in recent years have also caught the wide attention of practicing managers, human service workers, and health professionals. Balancing work and employee well-being has become central importance to organizations as well as the government. Thus, it is important to help individuals, organizations, and social workers better understand the stressors and the strains, to formulate appropriate coping strategies to minimize the negative consequences of job stress.One of the most prominent stress models is the Karasek's (1979) job demands-job control model. It is a well-recognized theory in western society (of individualistic culture) to examine stress through the interactions between job demands and control in a work context. The model predicts that jobs with high demands and low control (i.e. high-strain jobs) will be most harmful, leading to mental and physical health decrements (Karasek, 1979). However, to what extent is this model adequate and appropriate to understand the phenomena in a different culture? This study aims to shed some light on this quest...See the full content of this document
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