Personal values: A basis for work motivational set and

work attitude*1
Simcha Ronen
Graduate School of Business Administration, New York University, USA
Received 8 April 1976.
Available online 26 August 2004.

Abstract
This paper investigates the interrelationships among the employee's personal value system, job attitude,
and organizational reward system. It was assumed that individual values are part of the set with which
employees approach their work environment and evaluate the organizational reward system. Two separate
and distinct Israeli employment universes were investigated and compared. They were that of industrial
workers on the kibbutz and that of persons employed by private sector industries. It was found that workers
from the kibbutz industry, where differential financial renumeration does not exist, reported a higher level of
self-realization values and more satisfaction with intrinsic job aspects than those employed in the private
sector. In contrast, employees in the private sector, who receive differential extrinsic rewards, reported a
higher level of both aggrandizement values and extrinsic job satisfaction. In both samples, personal values
were found to be related to aspects of job satisfaction.

Cultural values and work attitudes of Korean

industrial workers in comparison with those of
the United States and Japan.(Special Issue:
Dynamics of Asian Workplaces)

Work and Occupations

| February 01, 1997 | Bae, Kyuhan; Chung, Chinsung | COPYRIGHT 1997 Sage Publications, Inc.
This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington
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The uniqueness of Korean work attitudes is described with a survey of 1,288 blue-
collar and white-collar workers in the 10 largest Korean conglomerate business firm.
Compared to the Lincoln-Kalleberg survey results for Japanese and U.S. workers, the
Korean survey results indicate that Korean workers harbor a discrepancy between
their expectations toward work and their evaluations of their actual situations. Korean
workers tend to be more committed to and satisfied with their work but less proud of
their jobs and companies than Japanese and U.S. workers. The findings suggest that
several factors, including culture, industrialization, labor market conditions, and labor
policies, influence work attitude formation.

Korea's rapid industrialization has been attributed partly to the high performance of
its industrial workers.(1) The diligence of Korean workers is said to reflect their loyalty
and commitment to the firm. Cross-cultural studies (Abegglen, 1958; Lincoln &
Kalleberg, 1990; Vogel, 1963) on worker attitudes show that work commitment is
linked to satisfaction and employment stability. Korean workers, however, harbor
ambivalent attitudes: They show a high degree of commitment but are critical of and
unsatisfied with their working conditions. This article attempts to clarify and analyze
the factors associated with these ambivalent attitudes.

The uniqueness of Korean worker attitudes is most discernible in comparison with

those of other countries. We compare the attitudes of Korean workers with those of
the United States and Japan. Through the industrialization period, Korean industry
was greatly influenced by industries in the United States and Japan in terms of
management and industrial relations, as well as technology and organization. Korean
industry, however, did not copy that of the United States and Japan (Bae & Form,
1986). By comparing Korean, U.S., and Japanese workers, we may identify unique
characteristics of Korean management style and worker attitudes.

This article, following the strategy of much research on Japanese worker productivity,
examines the effect of cultural values on the work attitudes of Korean workers. We
analyze social characteristics, work values, job attributes, organizational
commitment, and job satisfaction of Korean workers to describe empirically their
attitudinal profile. In addition, we will offer tentatively a cultural and political-
economic explanation of Korean attitudinal uniqueness, exploring the theoretical
implications of this comparative study to suggest directions for future research. The
results yield insights about the roles of culture and political economy in shaping
worker attitudes.

THEORETICAL ISSUES ON WORK ATTITUDES

Much theoretical discussion about work attitude formation has been ignited by the
comparative study of Japanese and Western workers. The pivotal point is whether
national differences in worker attitudes result from societal or cultural differences or
from other factors. The literature on work attitudes consists of four conceptual
frameworks. The first centers around the effect of cultural values on work attitudes.
The culturalist argument, which Abegglen (1958) proposed systematically to explain
Japanese workers, is that job and organizational commitment of workers reflect
widely shared and deeply rooted societal or cultural values and beliefs. The high
commitment level of Japanese workers is due to a strong sense of job security, which
originates from Japanese employment arrangements, such as lifetime employment
and the seniority system. In addition, Vogel (1963) argued that the diligence and
selfless devotion of Japanese employees are derived from Japanese cultural values,
such as the emphasis on the collectivity and paternalistic bonds.

Second, the theory of societal convergence (Kerr, Dunlop, Harbison, & Myers, 1960)
holds that technology is an important factor in determining worker attitudes (Form,
1972; Yoo, Lee, & Lee, 1995), and industrial workers everywhere adjust rapidly to
factory discipline and evolve similar patterns of social participation (Bae & Form,
1988). The theory suggests that Korean work attitudes resemble those of the United
States and Japan because Korea has used the same technology as that in the United
States and Japan throughout the whole period of industrialization.

Third, Dore (1973) contends that as a late developer, Japan adopted Western
employment arrangements, such as internal labor markets, welfare service, and job
guarantees. Starting late, Japan learned from Western experiences that job security is
a key factor for high productivity.
The fourth explanation attributes Japanese employment styles, which generated
huge worker commitment, to labor market conditions. Taira (1962) argued that
Japanese employment arrangements, such as the seniority system, lifetime
employment, and the high commitment of the workers, have been instituted to
stabilize employment, beginning in the aftermath of World War I.(2)

From a culturalist perspective, we would expect that Korean traditional culture helped
shape worker attitudes. Korea's long and unique cultural heritage of Confucianism(3)
could have had a distinct impact on its industrial workers. According to Confucian
social ethics, the universe is constituted of Li (abstract form) and Ch'i (matter). Li,
however, does not consist of individual souls but is a set of group archetypes, one for
each form of existence (Han, 1980). Confucian teachings in Korea emphasized that
an individual should adapt himself or herself to the Li of nature. Thus Korean culture
emphasizes that an individual must be loyal to and harmonious with the group.

In contrast to the culturalist perspective, and given that Korea's march toward
industrialization began only 30 years ago, Korean employment arrangements may
have been influenced by economic conditions and U.S. and Japanese management
practices. The market situation of Korea was very turbulent throughout the
industrialization period, and Korean government and the entrepreneurs struggled to
overcome it. Korean employees have gone through a lot of overtime work, low wages,
and a strong grip of the government since the 1970s (Bae, 1993). They might have
created their own alternative innovation to adapt the market situation. Considering
both the culturalist and the convergence hypotheses, the degree of commitment and
attitudes of Korean workers may fall somewhere in between those of Japan and the
United States (Bae & Form, 1986).

RESEARCH METHOD AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE KOREAN SAMPLE

To develop empirically a unique attitudinal profile of Korean industrial workers, this

article analyzes interview data of 1,288 respondents (815 blue-collar and 473 white-
collar workers). They were sampled randomly from each of the 10 largest Korean
conglomerate business firms (Chaebul).(4) Unfortunately, the researchers could not
interview the workers directly. Instead, we asked the plant managers to distribute and
collect the questionnaires to the randomly selected respondents. Self-administered
questionnaires on employee work attitudes, job satisfaction, and backgrounds were
distributed to …

Commitment, quits, and work organization in Japanese

and U.S. plants

Ronald Dore's classic British Factory, Japanese Factory (1973) remains the most
complete model of how styles of work organization produced a "commitment gap"
between the Japanese and Anglo-American employment systems. Dore depicted
welfare corporatism as a bundle of workplace structures whose core logic is control
achieved through enterprise community and employee commitment. The theory of
welfare corporatism as a commitment-maximizing form holds that, for reasons of late
development and a drive to catch up with the West, Japanese firms assembled in a
coherent management regime the most effective available methods for organizing a
disciplined industrial work force. The commitment and diligence of Japanese labor
thus stems from wide deployment of such methods of labor management in Japan.
Our earlier analysis of survey data on 8,302 employees at 106 Japanese and
American manufacturing plants was highly supportive of this general framework
(Lincoln and Kalleberg 1990). Not only were the trappings of the welfare corporatist
form more prevalent in the sample of Kanagawa Prefecture firms than in the
American firms, but in both countries practices identified as welfare corporatist were
associated with higher employee commitment to and satisfaction with the firm.

However, our analysis of the welfare corporatist organizational form and its
commitment consequences was limited in two key respects. First, it relied exclusively
on employee-reported attitudes to index work force commitment. In passing, we
reported moderate negative correlations between factory quit rates and the
commitment and satisfaction batteries, but we gave no systematic attention to
turnover or quits as a negative behavioral manifestation of commitment. Second, we
failed to consider subdimensions of the organizational commitment scale. It is now
widely acknowledged that the commitment construct has distinct components that
require separate investigation (Kalleberg and Marsden 1993). In particular, attitudes
registering simple intent to stay are distinct from those indicating real psychological
identification with the firm and acceptance of its values.

In this paper we seek to remedy these shortcomings in our earlier analysis by

expanding the concept and measurement of commitment in two directions. First, we
use the annual quit rate as reported by the factory personnel office as an "objective,"
behavioral expression of commitment. (The incidence of actual quits has its own
problems, of course, as an index of work force commitment. In particular, it is more
sensitive than attitudes to external labor market opportunities and constraints. We
interpret a number of our results with this in mind.) Second, we decompose the
Porter commitment items into attachment and identification components (Mowday,
Porter, and Steers 1982). With these three outcome variables, then, we replicate the
core of the previous analysis, examining a set of causes of their between-plant
variation: work force demographics, plant size and technology, internal labor market
factors, organizational structures, and unionization.

Our analysis is based on survey data from managers and employees, as well as on
personnel records, in 41 Japanese plants and 45 U.S. plants. We present what is, to
the best of our knowledge, the first comparative statistical analysis at the plant level
of work force commitment and turnover rates in the United States and Japan.

Organizational Commitment: Attitudinal and Behavioral Dimensions

Unlike, for example, job satisfaction, organizational commitment is a work attitude

complex having an obvious bearing on employee participation and performance.(1)
Recent work, however, divides the commitment construct into two distinct
components: identification, or affective commitment, and attachment, or continuance
commitment (also called behavioral or calculative commitment; see Mathieu and
Zajac 1990). Mere preference to remain with a firm need not imply internalization of
its goals or strong feelings of loyalty and devotion. Such positive identification,
however, is what motivates individuals to strive for organizational ends, and is thus
the component with the clearest link to job performance (see, for example, Mowday
et al. 1982; Meyer et al. 1989; O'Reilly and Chatman 1986).

On the other hand, attachment is the dimension most relevant to turnover. Indeed,
the idea that persons act on their intentions to leave or stay is sufficiently taken for
granted that some scholars view survey research reports of attachment attitudes as
presumptive evidence of an objective or "structural" employment bond as distinct
from the complex psychology of the identification process. Intent to stay as reported
in employee surveys has proven a strong predictor of individual propensity to leave,
and hence is widely used to proxy turnover behavior (Halaby 1986).

Welfare Corporatism and Commitment: Hypotheses

We argue that welfare corporatist structures affect both attitudinal and behavioral
(turnover) dimensions of commitment. In this section, we present the specifics of that
argument along with hypotheses for the empirical outcomes of our analysis.

Economic Sector

Welfare corporatist theory assumes that commitment-maximizing practices are

unevenly distributed, not only across but within national economies: they are a "core"
sector phenomenon. Three indicators of sectoral position are employment size, status
as an independent firm or a branch of a national corporation, and the use of mass or
process production versus custom and small batch technologies (Averitt 1968; Baron
and Bielby 1984). Small, local "job-shops" occupy "peripheral" positions in the dual
economy, and among them the elements of the welfare corporatist form - internal
labor markets (ILMs), welfare services, and complex structure - are scarce. By
contrast, commitment and retention are high in large, integrated plants of national
corporations, for there lie the elaborate vertical job structures required for true ILMs
and the stability and resources necessary for employment security, welfare services,
and "strong" corporate culture (Edwards 1979). Moreover, the reputation of the large
firm fosters pride and identification not matched in the local job-shop.

H1: Indicators of "core" position in the dual economy are associated with greater
work force commitment (higher identification and attachment attitudes and lower
quit rates).

Enterprise Unions and the Welfare Corporatist Form

The presence of a collective bargaining contract is another factory attribute shaping

work structures, relations, and attitudes (Pugh et al. 1968). Japanese enterprise
unions - the "third pillar" of the Japanese employment system (after permanent
employment and seniority grading) - are a central element in the welfare corporatist
makeup of Japanese work organization. Their dependence on and integration in the
firm are widely credited for the cooperative industrial relations enjoyed by Japanese
employers in the late postwar era. Though enterprise unions have brought their
members real gains, they serve company interests as well: union office holding is a
stepping stone to a management career, and the union assists the company in
running employee welfare programs. Consequently, Dore (1973:400) argued,
Japanese enterprise unions, "by their very existence, reinforc(e) enterprise
consciousness."

Though U.S. unions, under the pressures of concession bargaining and plant closings,
have moved haltingly toward the cooperative enterprise union model (Fucini and
Fucini 1990), a frequently replicated U.S. survey finding is that unions foster negative
job attitudes (Freeman and Medoff 1984; Lincoln and Booth 1993). Yet unionized
plants have lower quit rates. Freeman and Medoff's interpretation is that the
adversarial climate of the union shop "politicizes" the employment relationship such
that workers view the firm negatively despite general satisfaction with their jobs.
Moreover, the unionized worker "voices" grievances through collective bargaining
channels, whereas the nonunion worker expresses discontent by "exiting" the firm. In
addition, because unions press for higher pay, greater security, and other benefits,
the disincentives to turnover in the unionized workplace are strong.

H2: The presence of a union raises attachment and lowers the quit rate in both
countries. Unions also raise identification in Japan but lower it in the United States.

Adversarial unionists with a stake in the firm may claim little pride of membership or
acceptance of company values but still be reluctant to leave. In Japan, however,
unions promote not only attachment, but identification as well.

Internal Labor Markets: Experience, Training, and Promotion

Internal labor market structures also figure centrally in the welfare corporatist form.
They are better developed in Japan than in the United States yet foster employee
attachment and identification in both countries (Cole 1979; Hashimoto 1990;
Edwards 1979). Although ILMs may be analyzed in different ways (Pfeffer and Cohen
1984), in Japanese firms their most distinctive attributes include long employment
tenure, with wages and promotions tied to age, experience, and family needs (the
nenko system); intensive on-the-job training (OJT); and regular promotions (Kalleberg
and Lincoln 1988). Japanese ILMs are also noted for their exclusion of certain classes
of employees: part-timers and temporaries. These are chiefly women and post-
retirement men, who are easily dismissed in a downturn and are denied the wage
adjustments and promotions available to regular full-timers.

Long tenure with a firm fosters commitment through multiple paths. It implies
accumulated investments in the organization. Via "cognitive dissonance" (for
example, feelings of commitment engendered by the sunk costs of foregone
opportunities), such investments stimulate identification with the firm. Tenure is also
associated with firm-specific socialization, which ties the employee to a single
organization and instills in him or her its core values.

These processes of socialization are also tapped by our measure of on-the-job

training. The role of OJT in commitment contrasts with that of general schooling. Net
of job quality, schooling reduces commitment, for it raises expectations for job
rewards and outside opportunities (Lincoln and Kalleberg 1990). The Japanese
corporate preference for in-house on-the-job training over off-the-shelf specialist
skills supplied by formal schooling thus has a commitment-maximizing logic.

Finally, steady promotion with seniority and experience is an ILM process typical of
Japanese organizational careers. A continuous flow of promotions forestalls the
alienation associated with dead-end jobs and plateaued careers and facilitates
"anticipatory socialization" in management …

Cognitive Style and Attitudes to Work

1. Adrian Furnham
1. Department of Psychology, University College London, Gower Street,
London WC1E 6BT, U.K.; Department of Psychology, University College
London, 26 Bedford Way, London WC1.
1. Chris R. Brewin
1. Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London.
 1. Harriet O'Kelly
1. Department of Psychology, University College London, Gower Street,
London WC1E 6BT, U.K.

Abstract
This study examined the relationship between work-specific cognitive style, and
measures of organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and involvement. One hundred
working adults completed the revised Occupational Attributional Style Questioinaire and
three validated measures of work attitudes. In general, cognitive style showed few
associations with demographic variables, occupational status, and salary. Internality and
perception of personal control over positive outcomes were positively correlated with job
commitment, involvement, and satisfaction, a finding that appears to generalize across
different occupational groups. The discussion considers the relative merits of attributional
style vs. locus of control methodology in assessing work-related cognitions.