Associations between psychosocial work environments and social capital: a multilevel analysis study in a Chinese context

Junling Gao,Hua Fu,Denglai Yu,Junming Dai,Jing Wang,Yongkai Zhu

doi:10.1186/s12889-018-5916-5

Abstract

BackgroundUnderstanding the determinants of social capital is the prerequisite to building social capital. However there was few studies to explore factors related to workplace social capital. We aim to examine associations between psychosocial work environments and social capital in a Chinese context through a cross-sectional study.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted in Shanghai, China from December 2016 through March 2017. In total, 2380 workers from 32 workplaces were randomly sampled by a two-stage sampling procedure. Workplace social capital (WSC), psychosocial work environments (PWEs), and workplace Chinese Confucian values (CCVs), were assessed using validated and psychometrically tested measures. Multilevel ordinal regression models were used to examine the associations of WSC with individual- and workplace-level PWEs and workplace CCVs after controlling for individual socioeconomic characteristics.ResultsAfter controlling for individual socioeconomic characteristics, all individual-level PWEs (unstandardized coefficients [B] ranging from 0.280 to 2.467) were positively associated with WSC. Individual-level workplace CCVs had mixed associations with WSC—high individual levels of respect for authorities (B: 0.325; 95%CI: 0.134, 0.516) and altruism (B: 0.347; 95%CI: 0.155, 0.539) were associated with high WSC, while high individual levels of acceptance of authorities (B: − 0.214; 95%CI: − 0.381, − 0.046) and the mianzi rule (B: − 0.258; 95%CI: − 0.435, − 0.080) were associatecd with low WSC. No workplace-level variable was associated with WSC.ConclusionThese findings suggest that workplace social capital associates with multiple factors. Psychosocial work environments and cultural context are important in understanding variations in workplace social capital between individuals.

Highlights

Understanding the determinants of social capital is the prerequisite to building social capital
This study found that higher education, favorable psychosocial work environments were positively associated with Workplace social capital (WSC), working years in the company was negatively associated with WSC, while workplace Chinese Confucian values had mixed relationships with WSC
Despite some limitations, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the associations between psychosocial work environments and workplace social capital in a Chinese context

Summary

Introduction

Understanding the determinants of social capital is the prerequisite to building social capital. There have been relatively few public health interventions that have targeted the social capital of individuals or populations to improve health [3], partly due to a lack of understanding of factors determining the levels of social capital. Focus the interesting of current study, limited evidence has indicated that after controlling for individual characteristics, WSC was associated with work environment factors [33] such as, workplace demographics, employment patterns, work-unit size, psychosocial work environments [34,35,36,37], such as leadership, organizational justice, including job strain and effort/reward imbalance. Et al found that smaller work-unit size and higher turnover were associated with higher WSC [33]

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