A Study on the Relationship between LMX and Career-Related Attitudes in Chinese Employees
Authors:   Asia-Europe Perspective Association, Yan Wei Yan Wei , Lee Kieun 
Published: June 2018

When the researches on Chines employees are conducted, one of the main topics is guanxi which is called the representative Chinese cultural characteristic. Guanxi can be defined the connection between two parties through a system of links. Most of scholars who have been interested in Chinese employees have discussed the effects of guanxi on employee outcomes such as organization, job, performance and career. However, the negative effects of guanxi has been referred for long time. Some scholars have said that guanxi and corruption become intertwined (Luo, 2008), that La guanxi (literally, to enter and develop relationships) in today's China is synonymous with bureaucratic corruption or bribery that stems from China's socialist market economy (Su and Littlefield, 2001), that guanxi practices are more likely to be viewed as problematic (Chen, Chen, and Xin, 2004) if they occur in public domains of life (such as in organizational settings) where there in high potential for conflicts of interest and if they are examined through justice lenses, particularly those of procedural justice (Lind and Tyler, 1988), and that guanxi's consequences are personal gains at social cost (Fan, 2002). Therefore, some researches on LMX (leader-member exchange) based on western views, not on guanxi based on Chinese cultural view, are being conducted. The purpose of this research is to examine the influences of leader-member exchange (LMX) on career-related attitudes among Chinese employees, instead of guanxi. The reasons are two. The one is that because until now industralization of China has been in progress for more than 30 years and many foreign western companies have made direct investments in China, Chinese employees have had many opportunities to access and experience the western management style. The other is that many researches conducted in Korea have showed that the effects of LMX are significant in Korean employees who live in same Confucian culture. The total 325 questionnaires were distributed in Chinese employees who were working in Yangzhou, China. After screening out the questionnaires in which the answers were not serious or strongly showed central tendency, 192 questionnaires were finally analyzed. The result of reliability test on variables showed that all alpha values of variables were over 0.6, which meaned that all variables used in this study were reliable. In order to test validity of variables, factor analyses with independent variable and dependent variables were performed respectively. The result reported that the items were grouped into variables as expected. In order to test hypotheses, hierarchical regression analysis was used and the demographic variables such as sex, marital status, age, education level, tenure, and position were controlled in regression equations. The results were as follows;The hypothesis 1 that LMX in Chinese employees would positively be related to continuance organizational commitment was not supported. The hypothesis 2 that LMX in Chinese employees would positively be related to career satisfaction was supported. The hypothesis 3 that LMX in Chinese employees would positively be related to organization-based self-esteem was not supported. The hypothesis 4 that LMX in Chinese employees would positively be related to skill development efforts was not supported.
The hypothesis 5 that LMX in Chinese employees would positively be related to job assignment was supported. In conclusion part, the results of this study were summarized, implications of those results were discussed in academic and practical aspects. Limitation of this study in terms of methodology and the difficulty in questionnaire collection were checked. And finally, future directions of study on LMX among Chinese employees were suggested.