Organizational culture: association with commitment, job satisfaction, propensity to remain, and information sharing in Taiwan

Abstract

This study explores the association between cultural values and employee responses in a major diversified manufacturing company in Taiwan. Strong positive associations are found between cultural values of respect for people, innovation, stability and aggressiveness, and employee responses of commitment, job satisfaction, propensity to remain with the organization, and information sharing behaviour. Some associations appear to be universal, cross-cultural tendencies, while others appear to reflect the specific national cultural context of Taiwan. The results also suggest that the cultural values themselves may be more important influences on employee responses than the fit between culture and employee preferences for culture. Keywords: Organizational culture, National culture, Employee attitudes in Taiwan, Job related attitudes, Information sharing I. INTRODUCTION Organizational culture has been an important theme in the business and literature for some two decades. One reason for this is that culture has consistently been seen as having the potential to affect a range of organizationally and individually desired outcomes. Ritchie (2000, p. 1) notes that, from the time of the earliest writers on culture (including, for example, Deal and Kennedy, 1982, and Ouchi, 1981), it has been suggested that culture affects such outcomes as productivity, performance, commitment, self confidence, and ethical behavior. Similarly, more recent writers have repeated the assumption that organizational culture impacts significantly on an organization, its employees' behaviour and motivations and, ultimately, that organization's financial (Holmes and Marsden, 1996, p. 26). Despite these claims, Detert et al. (2000) and Schein (1996) note that little empirical research has been conducted to provide evidential support. In particular, little empirical research has examined the impact of culture on outcomes that have otherwise attracted considerable and consistent attention in the literature, including commitment, job satisfaction, and propensity to remain with (or leave) the organization. These affective outcomes have been extensively studied both because of their intrinsic desirability to the individual employee (in the case of job satisfaction, for example) and because of their linkage to behavioural consequences desirable at an level. (See, for example, Shore et al. (1995) and Lee and Mathur (1998) with respect to links between commitment and outcomes including work effort and productivity; Brief (1998) with respect to links between job satisfaction and multiple behavioural, attitudinal and job performance consequences; and Shaw et al. (1998) and Tsui et al. (1997) with respect to the benefits and costs of employee retention and turnover.) Two studies which have examined culture and outcomes are Sheridan (1992), who found an association between cultural values and the rates at which new recruits voluntarily terminated their employment, and O'Reilly et al. (1991), who found an association between the fit of culture with employee preferences for culture (the person-organization fit) and commitment, job satisfaction, and turnover. However, both these studies were conducted in the U.S. and, hence, within the particular national cultural context of that country. Chow (2000, p. 24), Agarwal et al. (1999, p. 728) and Lee and Mathur (1998) all point out the potential of national culture to influence relations between characteristics (here, culture) and employee outcomes. Because of this potential, and because of the ever-increasing globalization of business, Lee and Mathur (1998, p. 46) caution the extrapolation of management experiences in the U. …