In chapter five, a basic research model containing two operational questions and five propositions was developed. The purpose of these questions and propositions was to investigate the potential relationship between the personal value systems of executive managers, the type(s) of organisational culture in their organisations, and the degrees of person-organisation value congruency and affective commitment on the employee side.
The exploratory pilot study with two privately owned Chinese companies supported the chosen approach by demonstrating the validity of the newly developed research questionnaires in Chinese, by providing valuable preliminary data, and by delivering crucial clues for the fine-tuning of the research methodology.
Based on the evaluation of the pilot study, the decision was made to include complementary qualitative research in the main study.
The operational research tasks and the propositions of the basic research theory based on the literature synthesis were the following:
T1 & T2 – In order to be able to test for relationships between the value systems of executive managers/management teams, the type and strength of organisational culture in their organisations and employee value congruency and affective commitment, a hierarchy of personal values of the management sample both on the individual manager as well as on the management team levels needs to be established.
P1 – There is a relationship between the affiliation of an executive manager to the executive team in an organisation and his or her acceptance of the shared value system of this leadership team.
P2 – There is a relationship between the personal value systems of executive management teams and particular types of organisational culture systems.
P3 – The executive management team of a particular organisation can identify which type(s) of organisational culture is/are strongly influential in their organisation.
P4 – The employees of a particular organisation can identify which type(s) of organisational culture is/are strongly influential in their organisation.
P5 – There is a relationship between how similarly executive managers and employees characterise their organisation’s culture system and the levels of employee-organisation value congruency and affective employee commitment.
The initial research question remained unchanged:
What are the personal value systems of the members of executive management teams in private companies in China, and how do they influence the moulding of organisational culture, the levels of employee value congruency and affective employee commitment?
The next step in the research process was to develop the propositions introduced in chapter five into a formal research theory (Roberts and Wallace, 2003; De Vaus, 2014) containing operational hypotheses for further quantitative testing and a formal research model. Additionally, as a result of the pilot study, a set of semi-structured interviews was conducted and the results of both research procedures were triangulated.
The two operational research tasks remained, but were restated as operational research questions:
(Q1) What is the hierarchy of the personal values of executive managers in privately owned Chinese companies?
(Q2) What is the hierarchy of the personal values of executive management teams in privately owned Chinese companies?
Hypothesis 1
Managerial values affect both the perception of appropriate ends and of the means to achieve those ends (Bruno and Lay, 2007: 679). This relationship becomes visible in, for example, general strategic decisions or in the preference of one specific system of corporate culture over another (Hambrick and Mason, 1984; Hambrick, 2007; Bradley et al., 2013). In the process of establishing a new company, the founder’s or founding executives’ personal value systems are of crucial importance (Schneider, 1987, 2008).
However, when organisations grow, their value systems are altered as new experiences are incorporated (Gorenak and Ferjan, 2015). Executive managers, in particular, infuse their value systems into the culture of the organisations they are hired to lead. But does this finding, originally established by studies in mostly western contexts, hold true for private Chinese companies as well? The pilot study showed that the executive management teams of both company A and B shared a range of common values, but that the specific combination of values shared in firm A was different from the one shared in firm B, i.e., that each set of shared values was unique. Hence, it was hypothesised that:
H0: The members of executive management teams in privately owned Chinese companies share a set of personal values, which in its combination of values is not unique for each firm.
H1: The members of executive management teams in privately owned Chinese companies share a set of personal values, which in its combination of values is unique for each firm.
Hypothesis 2
Mitroff and Kilmann (1975, 1976) and Quinn (1984) argued that executive managers with certain personality preferences reinforce and share the values of certain types of organisations. Chin et al. (2013) suggested that executives’ value preferences are the reason for the heterogeneous performances of different firms. Büschgens et al. (2013) endorsed this idea, and suggested that Quinn and Rohrbaugh’s (1983) research approach
might serve as a yardstick for executive leaders by which to decide whether an existing culture does indeed fulfil expectations, or whether it needs to be changed. It is thus hypothesised that:
H0: The personal values of the members of the executive management teams in privately owned Chinese companies are not related to particular types of organisational culture.
H1: The personal values of the members of the executive management teams in privately owned Chinese companies are related to particular types of organisational culture.
Hypotheses 3 & 4
In general, researchers agree that it is difficult to assess the culture of an organisation objectively because shared assumptions and understandings about its characteristics are frequently situated on the subconscious level of an individual’s psyche (Cameron and Freeman, 1991: 25). Nonetheless, Quinn and Rohrbaugh’s (1983) proposal to define organisational culture via the four categories of Clan, Hierarchy, Adhocracy and Market has found strong approval in the literature (e.g. Ralston et al., 2006; Meyer et al., 2010;
Gardner et al., 2012; Heritage et al., 2014; Engelen et al., 2014). The pilot study revealed that the executive managers as well as the employees of the sample companies identified the culture systems of their organisations as multi-layered, i.e., as consisting of more than one strongly influential type of culture. This confirmed the findings of previous studies (Cameron and Freeman, 1991; Deshpandé and Farley, 2000; Schneider et al., 2012). Hence, it was hypothesised that:
H0: The executive management teams of privately owned Chinese companies characterise their firm’s organisational culture as a system where one or no type of culture is strongly influential.
H1: The executive management teams of privately owned Chinese companies characterise their firm’s organisational culture as a system where more than one type of culture is strongly influential.
H0: The employees of privately owned Chinese companies characterise their firms’
organisational culture as a system where one or no type of culture is strongly influential.
H1: The employees of privately owned Chinese companies characterise their firms’
organisational culture as a system where more than one type of culture is strongly influential.
Hypothesis 5
Strong corporate cultures are crucial for improving a firm’s performance because they create behavioural consistency (Chuang et al., 2012). The company provides its members with a system of values that “constitute the culture of this organisation, guide the organisation’s members by providing goal congruency and by helping […] to determine what is in the best interest of the collective” (Büschgens et al., 2013: 764).
The literature confirms that executive managers in particular tend to share the value systems of their organisations, since they are ultimately promoted to higher organisational levels due to their excellent match with their respective company’s culture (Van Vianen et al., 2011: 909). Schneider et al. (1995) proposed that organisational culture systems are shaped first and foremost by the shared characteristics of executive leadership teams. Employees, on the other hand, search for signs of the organisational value preferences of prospective employers through all communication channels available to them before deciding to join (Gardner et al., 2012). The better an organisation can define the characteristics of its culture system, the clearer it can communicate the associated corporate values, and the more efficiently candidates (both managers and employees) can decide on whether and how well they would fit into the organisation (Kristof-Brown et al., 2005; Hon and Leung, 2011).
Once they have joined the new organisation, successful candidates undergo an identification and internalisation process that will result in a higher level of value congruency. If this process fails, the manager or employee is very likely to leave the organisation sooner or later. The degree to which executive managers and employees identify with the corporate value environment of their company defines the strength of its culture system, and thus the competitiveness of the whole organisation (Collins and Porras, 2002).
The literature on organisational culture and employee fit strongly supports the idea that employees perceive higher levels of fit with organisations representing cultural preferences that are consistent with their own personal values (Judge and Cable, 1997;
Kristof-Brown and Jansen, 2007; Van Vianen et al., 2008). Meyer et al. (2010) spoke of an equilibrium between employees’ needs and their preferences for a particular culture that satisfies these needs through its policies, practices and values. Employees were reported to be highly adept at judging the degree of match between an organisation’s culture, its policies, practices and level of employee care on the one hand, and their own expectations on the other (Cooper-Hakim and Viswesvaran, 2005; Ostroff et al., 2005;
Meyer et al., 2010). In the pilot study, the majority of participating employees identified positively with their organisations. The level of employees’ satisfaction with their work environment is strongly related to the perceived strength of fit to their organisations (Schwepker, 2001; Mulki et al., 2008; Fu and Deshpande, 2012). The higher the level of value congruency between organisation and employees, the greater the benefits for the organisation (e.g. better job performance, higher creativity and lower inclination to leave), and the higher the level of commitment (Verquer et al., 2003; Kristof-Brown et al., 2005; Hon and Leung, 2011; Gardner et al., 2012).
Affective commitment (AC) is the most widely studied type of employee commitment (Meyer et al., 2010; Askew et al., 2013). The literature review has made abundantly clear why private companies in China have a particularly urgent need to boost the degree of commitment among their workforce (Gardner et al., 2012; Chin, 2014; Wang, Shi and Barnes, 2015). Given their direct influence on the culture system of their organisation, executive managers play a crucial role in commitment-stimulating processes (Huang et al., 2011; Miao et al., 2013; Chan and Mak, 2014).
The pilot study indicated a positive relationship between a high level of similarity between executive managers and employees in the evaluation of the culture system of their organisations, a strong organisational culture, a high degree of perceived value congruency between employees and their firms, and affective employee commitment. It was therefore hypothesised that:
H0: The level of similarity between how executive managers and employees of privately owned Chinese companies characterise their organisations’ culture are not
positively related to the levels of value congruency between the employees and their organisation and of affective employee commitment.
H1: The level of similarity between how executive managers and employees of privately owned Chinese companies characterise their organisations’ culture are positively related to the levels of value congruency between the employees and their organisation and of affective employee commitment.