Changes in work values across the regions of China

Abstract

This study examines changes in values of Chinese professionals across high, moderate, and low development regions between 1993/94 and 2004/05 and as such explores values in China’s recent past. The 1993/94 to 2004/05 period was crucial during China’s evolution from a socialist state to one more open to capitalism. The foundation of our investigation is crossvergence theory, which we extend by developing a multilevel-crossvergence perspective of national and regional influences on work values/behaviors. We test hypotheses specific to national-level and to regional-level changes in the importance of individualism, collectivism, and Confucianism values. Our study demonstrates that differences in hypothesized predictions result from the level on which a study is focused. This, in turn, results in differing support for study findings, which is a significant limitation of single-level studies. In sum, this study reveals the importance of delving beneath the national-level to gain a more fine-grained, regional-level understanding of values evolution in China. This is a finding that we believe may generalize to other countries, in particular, developing countries.