A Comparative Survey of Attitudes toward work

Abstract

For Chinese-Japanese joint undertakings, the key elements of achieving success are not only capital and technology, but also the establishment of principles and patterns of management.It will be of very significance for economic cooperation between China and Japan to undertake practical investigations and theoretical work on the above task. This paper presents results of a study aimed at this task. A survey was done at enterprises in China and Japan in 1990 and 1991. A Darphy's method developed by the Rand Institute, U.S.A. and other psychological research methods were used to explore young employees' attitudes toward work and occupation.The results suggested that: Employees of Japanese enterprises considered that the lifetime employment would be weakened gradually, and they did not hope it would be completely abolished, while those of Chinese enterprises considered it would be weakened gradually and should be completely abolished in future. Nearly half subjects of Japanese enterprises considered that the seniority system would be weakened gradually while most of Chineses employees considered it would be considerably weakened in future. Chinese employees showed much stronger e pectations for weakening seniority and lifetime employment systems. As for which is more important between educational background and capabilities both Chinese and Japanese employees hoped unanimously that more attention should be paid to the practical abilities and the wage system based on capabilities. Also both of them hoped that further attention be paid to employees' speciality, qualification, knowledge, accomplishment, personality development, sparetime interests and individual lives.These results were interpreted as indicating the important personnel managememt aspectes for the successful Japanese joint ventur operations in China.