The relative importance of Glaser, Zamanou and Hacker's six cultural dimensions in engendering employee identification: a survey of Chinese employees

Abstract

Organizational identification has been regarded as a new control strategy for modem organizations. High levels of organizational members' identification result in various benefits to organizational performance. Among organizational theorists there exists a strong school of thought, which sees organizational culture as the antecedent to organizational identification. Culture, and therefore also organizational culture, is a complex and integrative phenomenon which encompasses the values, assumptions, interactions and behaviours within a particular group. As point of departure, this research adopted Martin's (2000:26) argument that culture is best studied through the cultural artefacts, being the most visible manifestations also of deep-seated values and assumptions. Previous studies on organizational culture-related organizational behaviours have been conducted mostly in a Western-cultural context. It was hoped, by this research, to fill the theoretical gap by establishing a link between organizational culture and organizational identification in Chinese organizations. The relationship between organizational culture and organizational identification was investigated through a survey conducted in three Chinese organizations representing a cross section of industry. The six organizational cultural dimensions, as identified by Glaser, Zamanou, and Hacker (1987: 192-193), formed the basis for the survey instrument, the purpose of which was to establish if, and to what extent, organizational culture, IV as reflected in these dimensions in their positive manifestation, were seen as contributors to organizational identification on the part of employees. The data analysis and interpretation showed that Chinese employees viewed all six cultural dimensions as having a positive influential power on organizational identification. This could be accepted as proof that the theories that organizational culture enhances organizational identification (Kunda, 1992; Ray, 1994; Tompkins and Cheney, 1985; Trice and Beryer, 1993) can be applied both in the Westem-cultural context and Chinese-cultural context. By applying the Friedman and Wilcoxon signed-ranks tests it was established that, among the six cultural dimensions, 'Morale' and 'Supervision' were the most influential dimensions of culture according to the responses of Chinese employees; 'Information Flow', 'Teamwork' and 'Meetings' were the least influential dimensions. As indicated, the study was limited to a survey of employees as regards the six dimensions of organizational culture. Further research would be required in order to provide more concrete and extensive proof of the role played by organizational culture in nurturing employee identification and concomitant commitment.