Harmony Enhancement Research Articles

An island in the stream: how and why seven relocated foreign experts in Chinese universities attempted/failed to learn L2 Chinese

ABSTRACT The present study looked at what factors influenced the L2 Chinese identity and investment of relocated non-L1-English foreign experts working in Chinese universities and how. Seven professors/researchers participated in the study. This study aimed mainly to complement the literature on the enhancement of intercultural understanding and harmony by examining the engagement with learning the non-L1-English host country language on the part of international scholarly experts imported from non-L1 English countries. Despite the enlightening results and helpful suggestions that studies exploring such engagement could provide, very little (if any) research attention has been paid to it. The instrument for the current study was in-depth, semi-structured, autobiographical interviews. The major findings of the study included that there were negative changes in the trajectories of the experts’ L2 identity and investment: their initial efforts to learn Chinese lost momentum and declined. The changes were caused by factors including the perceived cross-cultural/cross-linguistic differences, the host universities’ categorical focus on work performance delivered in English, and survival using very basic Chinese words. Based on these findings, implications are discussed.

Who Am I and Where Do I Belong? The Impact of Heritage Cultural Identity Salience on Immigrant Workers Acculturation Strategies.

There has been growing interest among organizational researchers in the relationship between acculturation strategies and organizational outcomes of immigrant employees. However, what is noticeably missing from the literature on acculturation strategies is how cultural values such as heritage cultural identity salience affect an immigrant employee’s acculturation strategy and subsequent work attitude and behaviors. Drawing on Berry’s (1997) acculturation strategy and framework, we examined heritage cultural identity salience, harmony enhancement, integration and marginalization acculturation strategy, turnover intention, and affective commitment among immigrant employees in the USA. In this time-lagged study, we found that heritage cultural identity salience was negatively related to marginalization and positively related to integration. Harmony enhancement significantly buffered the relationship between heritage cultural identity salience and marginalization and integration, respectively. Heritage cultural identity salience had significant indirect effects on affective commitment via marginalization and both affective commitment and turnover intention via integration. Lastly, results from the moderated mediated analysis showed that the indirect effect of heritage identity salience on affective commitment and turnover intention via integration was significantly different at varying levels of harmony enhancement. Our study affirms existing research on acculturation strategy and extends the literature by introducing harmony enhancement as a moderator. The use of Berry’s (1997) framework and the results of this study provide useful insights into the inclusion and retention of immigrant employees in the US workforce. Practical implications, as well as theoretical contributions, are discussed.

Supervisor–employee task conflict and supervisor ostracism: The moderating effect of interpersonal harmony values

AbstractWe examined the relationship among supervisor–employee task conflict, supervisor ostracism, and employee depression and job performance, as well as the moderating effect of supervisors' and employees' interpersonal harmony values. Data were collected from supervisors and employees at three timewaves. We found that supervisor–employee task conflict positively predicted supervisor ostracism, which in turn predicted higher employee depression and poorer job performance. The dualistic model of interpersonal harmony proposes that people show two motives in responding to conflicts while trying to maintain interpersonal harmony: an approach motive to promote high‐quality relationships (i.e. harmony enhancement) or an avoidance motive to prevent relationship disintegration (i.e. disintegration avoidance). From the supervisors' perspective, we found that supervisors' harmony enhancement values buffered the positive relationship between supervisor–employee task conflict and supervisor ostracism. From the employees' perspective, we found that employees' harmony enhancement values buffered whereas employees' disintegration avoidance value exacerbated the detrimental effect of supervisor ostracism on employee depression and job performance. Practical suggestions were offered to help both supervisors and employees manage workplace ostracism.

Perceived organizational politics, knowledge hiding and diminished promotability: how do harmony motives matter?

PurposeThis study aims to investigate an underexplored behavioral factor, knowledge hiding, that connects employees’ perceptions of organizational politics (POP) with their diminished promotability, while also considering the moderating role of employees’ harmony motives in this process.Design/methodology/approachThe research hypotheses are tested with multisource, three-round data collected among employees and their supervisors.FindingsEmployees’ beliefs about self-serving organizational decision-making increase their propensity to hide knowledge, which, in turn, diminishes their promotability. This intermediate role of knowledge hiding is more prominent when their disintegration avoidance motive is strong but less prominent when their harmony enhancement motive is strong.Practical implicationsA refusal to share knowledge with organizational colleagues, as a covert response to POP, can create a negative cycle for employees. They are frustrated with decision-making practices that are predicated on favoritism, but by choosing seemingly subtle ways to respond, they compromise their own promotion prospects. To avoid this escalation, employees should adopt an active instead of passive approach toward maintaining harmony in their work relationships.Originality/valueThis research contributes to extant research by detailing a hitherto overlooked reason that employees’ frustrations with dysfunctional politics may escalate into an enhanced probability to miss out on promotion opportunities. They respond to this situation by engaging in knowledge hiding. As an additional contribution, this study details how the likelihood of this response depends on employees’ harmony motives.

Seeking harmony in Chinese families: A dyadic analysis on Chinese parent‒child relations

Based on Leung, Koch, and Lu’s (2002) dualistic harmony model, we examined the relations of two harmony‐seeking behaviors—harmony enhancement and disintegration avoidance—to family functioning among 177 Hong Kong Chinese adolescent‒parent dyads. Structural equation modeling results showed that adolescent‐rated harmony enhancement was positively related to adolescent‐rated family functioning whereas parent‐rated harmony enhancement was positively related to parent‐rated family functioning. Disintegration avoidance, however, was not related to family functioning in the two samples. Furthermore, no significant cross‐path association between harmony‐seeking behaviors and family functioning was identified, meaning that the harmony‐seeking behaviors of adolescents and their parents did not relate to each other’s perception of family functioning. Implications of these findings to our understanding of family in Chinese culture are discussed.

Voicing out or switching away? A psychological climate perspective on customers’ intentional responses to service failure

This research explores why customers who experience service failure are willing to complain directly to service providers but unlikely to switch to other service providers. We bring in the concept of psychological climate for communication safety (PCCS) to the service failure context and explore how customers’ perception of the social environment as open and supportive for communication affects their complaint and service switching intentions and behaviors. We further identify customer harmony enhancement as an important personality trait predictor of PCCS. Based on two field studies and one scenario-based experimental study, our findings consistently show that PCCS mediates the positive effect of customer harmony enhancement on customer complaint intentions. Customer harmony enhancement exerts a positive indirect effect on customer complaint behavior serially through PCCS and customer complaint intentions. However, our findings relating to customer service switching intentions are inconsistent across the three studies. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Religious Theoryan Implications in Classroom Teaching

Religion is an elusive phenomenon, with agreed definitions hard to find. A theory of religion as a cultural artefact with historical significance that lies beyond historical facticity or the lack of it. An individual or group’s religion connotes above all a belief system that constitutes an option among a myriad of options, rather than a single inherent truth based on historical fact. While challenging to institutional religion and its many adherents, it is contended that such an appreciation of religion is not necessarily a threat to either but in fact has potential to be a source of enrichment to both, as well as to religion’s enhancement of global harmony. It is when such an appreciation is not present that an exclusivist ‘trigger’, lying hidden in any religion, can be released and become the cause of immeasurable conflict. Since respect for human life and dignity is fundamental to all religious tradition, it follows that respect for the freedom of through and expression must likewise be recognized as a fundamental principle of religions. The defense of civil liberties is a religious as well as a civic obligation. There are many conflict is growing up due to diversity of religious theory. Religious principle compels to obey involuntary work individual, collective and society too. Many people are depriving from education, humankind because of racism. World are conflict due to religious proudness. Indigenous people all over the world are in discrimination due to religious classify. Religious theory is not valuable every time. Religious theory must flexible where same religious can adjust. Religious theory should be correction if necessary. Different religious people should respect each other.

Collectivism-oriented human resource management on team creativity: effects of interpersonal harmony and human resource management strength

This study examines the mechanism through which collectivism-oriented human resource management (CHRM) promotes team creativity and how this relationship differs across interpersonal harmony. Drawing on social exchange theory, we investigate 177 research and development teams across China. The findings indicate, as expected, that CHRM, which in China relates to guanxi, has a positive effect on radical creativity. Harmony enhancement partially mediates the relationship between CHRM and radical creativity. Meanwhile, disintegration avoidance fully mediates the relationship between CHRM and incremental creativity. In addition, HRM strength positively moderates the relationship between CHRM and harmony enhancement. Finally, HRM strength moderates the mediating effect between CHRM and radical creativity. This study helps unpack the ‘black box’ between culture-specific HRM and team outcomes, providing important implications for human resource managers.

Peace in South Tyrol and the Limits of Consociationalism

This article discusses the capacity of corporate consociationalism in bringing positive peace, understood as the enhancement of societal harmony, cooperation and integration, by analyzing South Tyrol, considered a model-case to diffuse ethnic tensions. Using data on attitudes of the South Tyrolean population concerning various aspects of the relationships between South Tyrolean linguistic groups, the analysis shows that South Tyrolean consociational mechanisms have brought peaceful coexistence and mutual acceptance among the groups, but some problematic elements remain in the success story of South Tyrol. Thereby the article highlights the limits of corporate consociationalism in fostering positive peace in divided societies.

How national culture influences individuals’ subjective experience with paradoxical tensions

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how national culture influences individuals’ subjective experience of tension when confronting paradoxical demands that arise during their day-to-day organizational experience. The paper further explores two types of paradoxical demands (task oriented and relational oriented) and two mediating mechanisms (tolerance for contradictions and harmony enhancement concerns) that exhibit contrary cultural effects. Design/methodology/approach Drawing from a sample of white-collar workers in China and the USA, the authors first inductively generated scenarios with task-oriented and relational-oriented paradoxical demands and then conducted three studies where participants rated the perceived tension from the scenarios. In Study 1, they examined cross-cultural differences in perceived tension and the mediating role of tolerance for contradictions. In Study 2, they primed Americans with proverbs that promoted tolerance for contradictions. In Study 3, they examined the indirect effects of harmony enhancement concerns in China in relational-oriented paradoxical demands. Findings The results found that for task-oriented paradoxical demands, Chinese participants were less likely than American participants to experience tension and the effects were mediated by a higher tolerance for contradictions. Americans exposed to proverbs that promoted tolerance for contradictions also experienced less tension. For relational-oriented paradoxical demands, on the other hand, the authors found no cross-cultural differences, as the indirect effects of a tolerance for contradictions were mitigated by negative indirect effects of greater harmony enhancement concerns. Originality/value This paper demonstrates that culture can influence the tension that individuals subjectively experience when they confront paradoxical conditions, suggesting that individuals learn implicitly how to cope with tensions associated with paradoxes from their broader cultural environment. However, the authors also found different cultural effects within different paradoxical conditions, suggesting that the knowledge that individuals acquire from their broader cultural environment is multifaceted.

A review of research on professional learning communities in mainland China (2006–2015)

In the last decade, there has been growing interest in professional learning communities (PLCs) outside mainstream Western contexts. In this paper, we provide a narrative synthesis of empirical studies of PLCs in kindergarten to 12th grade educational systems in mainland China published between 2006 and 2015. The review reveals five major emerging themes in the published literature: PLC characteristics; PLC practices in different regions; teacher collaboration in PLCs; the roles of university researchers; and educational leadership in PLCs. Significant progress has been identified in the enhancement of social harmony in teaching research groups, structural teacher collaboration, the construction of transregional PLCs and the complex roles of university researchers and school leaders. However, compared with the literature on PLCs in Western contexts, research on these communities in mainland China is still far from mature. The authors highlight the need for more empirically solid research on the development of sustainable PLCs in mainland China.

Parental ethnic-racial socialization and social attitudes among ethnic-racial minority and White American emerging adults.

This article utilizes moderated mediation analyses to explore whether the relations between parental ethnic-racial socialization (PERS) dimensions and social attitudes differ across ethnic-racial minority (n = 128) and White (n = 131) college-going emerging adults. We examined social dominance orientation (SDO) as an index of antiegalitarian intergroup attitudes and attitudes toward interpersonal harmony as an index of interpersonal attitudes. We tested whether there were ethnic-racial variations in mediation models in which each type of PERS dimension was expected to be linked to greater antiegalitarian attitudes (greater SDO), which, in turn, was predicted to be associated with less prosocial attitudes (lower harmony enhancement). Results indicated that more frequent cultural socialization and preparation for bias were linked to greater SDO for the White sample, but not for the ethnic-minority sample. Moderation results were nonsignificant for promotion of mistrust, with results indicating a positive link to SDO, regardless of racial-ethnic status. Moderated mediation analyses further revealed indirect effects of cultural socialization and preparation for bias on interpersonal attitudes through SDO for the White sample, but not for the ethnic-minority sample. Specifically, greater cultural socialization and preparation for bias each were linked to greater SDO, which, in turn, was associated with less positive perceptions of the value of maintaining interpersonal harmony for White respondents. Practical applications, including social justice implications, of the results and possibilities for future research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Creativity and social alienation: the costs of being creative

Although creativity is a widely praised merit, the psychological costs that an employee may pay for being creative are less examined. The present study advances the research paradigm on the dark side of creativity by focusing on the negative psychological state (social alienation) of creative employees. By building on the studies on the homophily principle and on the cultural perspective of creativity, we investigated why creative employees are more likely to experience social alienation. Drawing on the social capital theory, we point out that social alienation of creative employees depends on their networking ability and harmony enhancement motive. A two-wave survey among 311 employees from 59 Chinese organizations supported the hypotheses. Implications of the findings are discussed for creativity and alienation literature as well as management practice.

Interpersonal harmony and creativity in China

SummaryThis research examined the influence of interpersonal harmony on employee creativity in China. The dualistic model of harmony differentiates harmony enhancement, a genuine desire for a harmonious and mutually beneficial interpersonal relationship, from disintegration avoidance, a tendency to avoid the disruption of an interpersonal relationship to protect self‐interest. A survey in China showed that the harmony enhancement motive had a positive relationship, and the disintegration avoidance motive had a negative relationship, with creativity mediated by creative effort. Reward for creativity showed different moderating effects on the two mediated relationships, such that it mitigated the positive relationship between harmony enhancement and creativity mediated by creative effort, and buffered the negative relationship between disintegration avoidance and creativity mediated by creative effort. We replicated some major findings with a multi‐wave survey study and provided direct evidence for the underlying mechanisms that account for the opposite relationships between the two harmony motives and creative effort. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Beyond Risk-Taking

In addition to risk-taking behavior, we propose that psychological safety also promotes prosocial behavior through cooperative goal interdependence. To differentiate these two types of effects, we contrasted the moderating effects of two interpersonal harmony motives. A survey in China supported the indirect effect of psychological safety on helping behavior through cooperative goal interdependence. This mediated relationship was moderated by harmony enhancement such that the mediated effect of psychological safety was weaker when harmony enhancement was high. Psychological safety was positively related to innovative behavior, and this relationship was moderated by disintegration avoidance such that it was weaker when disintegration avoidance was high. These results shed light on the different effects of psychological safety and their underlying mechanisms.

A dispositional approach to psychological climate: Relationships between interpersonal harmony motives and psychological climate for communication safety

This study examined the dispositional antecedents of a climate at the individual level, psychological climate for communication safety. The impact of two interpersonal harmony motives, harmony enhancement and disintegration avoidance, on psychological climate for communication safety, innovative performance and the moderated mediated processes associated with job autonomy were examined in a survey study in China. Results showed that harmony enhancement was positively related to innovative performance through psychological climate for communication safety. Moreover, job autonomy moderated the relationship between harmony motives and psychological climate for communication safety. Harmony enhancement was more strongly associated with psychological climate for communication safety when job autonomy was low. The relationship between disintegration avoidance and psychological climate for communication safety was positive when job autonomy was high, but negative when job autonomy was low. Conditional indirect effects consistent with these interaction effects were also found.

Cultural Analysis of Harmony and Conflict: Towards an Integrated Model of Conflict Styles

This paper tries to analyze some harmony and conflict styles already proposed by some authors as each appears within some cultures. The models discussed include western conflict frameworks that include the interest perspectives on conflict; the dual-concern model in Asia, harmony frameworks based on Chinese & Igbo cultures. A harmony framework has to do with balancing, disintegrating, aligning and smoothing. The paper discussed theoretical integration of harmony and conflict among cultures, taking Chinese and Igbo as stand point. It therefore took the study to “a yin-yang” model of conflict styles, an integrated conflict model, constructive diplomacy, accommodating, constructive controversy, obliging, superficial compliance (obeys publicly & disobeys privately), avoiding and destructive confrontation, ignoring comparison of the integrated model and previous models, empirical relationships between harmony and conflict. The paper also discussed items defining harmony enhancement and disintegration avoidance and gave advice on future research on the integrated conflict model. In conclusion, several directions for future research were discussed, with the aim of stimulating future research that integrates harmony and conflict constructs for a complete understanding of disagreements and clashes.

Psychosocial Processes that Facilitate Unity and Interdependency: Contemplation for Research Development

The need for us, as educators, to cultivate and encourage a climate of unity, harmony, and prosperity in educational and non-educational settings is pertinent. Conflict resolution in teaching and learning in educational settings, for example, is a feat that may be achieved via different methodological means. In this article, we provide an account of our teaching and research experiences in the Republic of Fiji Islands. Fiji is a developing country that is located in the South Pacific region, consisting of two major ethnic groups: Indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians. It is a unique country, but yet marred by financial insecurities, political instability, and ethnic and racial tension. Many Indo-Fijians often face and experience prejudiced and discriminatory views and actions by Indigenous Fijians and other Pacific Islanders. This reflective discourse, differing from our previous published work (Phan, 2007; Phan & Deo, 2007, 2008), is a personal methodological narrative that detailed the effectiveness of our pedagogical strategies in the promotion and enhancement of harmony and unity between people. We discussed, specifically, the inclusion of Bandura’s (1997) personal self-efficacy theory, and how this qualitative examination and reporting of “evidence” may, in fact, provide a premise and scoping for additional research into unsettled sociocultural settings.

Harmony: A Chinese Construct for Extending the Social Exchange Framework

Two Chinese indigenous constructs describing people's motives for maintaining interpersonal harmony, i.e., harmony enhancement (interpersonal harmony as an ideal) and disintegration avoidance (avoi...

Harmony and Conflict: A Cross-Cultural Investigation in China and Australia

Study 1 identified three distinct harmony factors in Hong Kong: disintegration avoidance, harmony enhancement, and harmony as hindrance. Furthermore, disintegration avoidance was found to relate positively to conflict avoidance and negatively to negotiation in a conflict situation. Study 2 examined how the harmony factors were related to various conflict styles in China and Australia. The three harmony factors were identifiable in Australia, but the Chinese scored higher in both disintegration avoidance and harmony enhancement. For the two groups, disintegration avoidance was related positively to avoiding and dominating and negatively to integrating, whereas harmony enhancement was related positively to compromising and integrating. Compromising was related more strongly to harmony enhancement than to disintegration avoidance. Finally, disintegration avoidance was positively related to compromising and obliging for Chinese but not for Australians. The study extends the current conflict management research by incorporating the Chinese notion of harmony.