Engineer

The International Journal of Human Resource Management 9:3 June 1998

What motivates employees? A comparison of US and Chinese responses

Cynthia D. Fisher and Anne Xue Ya Yuan

Abstract Differences in culture, history, economy, and political and management systems may lead to differences in employee job attribute preferences across countries. To the extent that this is true, managers and designers of motivation systems must understand the preferences of local employees. This study provides information on the job attribute preferences of Chinese employees at a major international hotel in Shanghai. Employee preference data were compared to published results from other nations. The pattern of preferences in China was unique compared to Russia, Taiwan and the United States. Chinese employees felt that good wages were most important, followed by good working conditions and personal loyalty from the boss and organization. Interesting work was relatively unimportant, especially to older employees, and ‘being in on things’ was not at all important. Supervisors at the hotel also provided information on the preferences which they believed characterized their subordinates. Unlike US managers who often badly misperceive the preferences of their US subordinates, Chinese supervisors accurately reported their subordinates’ preferences. Expatriates in the hotel were much less accurate in ranking local subordinate preferences. Implications for motivating and managing Chinese employees are discussed. Keywords China, motivation, human resource management in China, reward preferences

Introduction There is a long history of research which asks employees to rank the importance of job attributes or rewards. Jurgensen’s (1978) report of thirty years of data collection from 57,000 job applicants at the Minnesota Gas Company is the largest-scale example of such research. Applicants were asked to rank the importance of ten job characteristics to themselves, and then to rank them...