The Effect of Paradoxical Tensions Between Confucian Culture and Organizational Culture on Fear and Knowledge Sharing Intention

Individuals often encounter challenges balancing collaboration and competition in organizational life. Although paradoxes exist in all organizations, there is minimal empirical research investigating paradoxical tensions at the micro level. Furthermore, previous organizational studies have overlooked employees emotionally driven acts. To fill these research gap, this study examined the paradoxical relationships between espoused cultural values, perceived organizational culture, negative emotions (fear of social exclusion), and knowledge sharing in South Korean organizations. The results show that paradoxical tensions between espoused Confucian culture and knowledge sharing supportive culture result in fear of social exclusion. Subsequently, fear of social exclusion has a negative association with knowledge sharing intention. This study contributes to micro-level research of paradoxes by examining the paradoxes of belonging and of performance at the individual level and their influence on employees’ knowledge-sharing behavior

The Root of Excellence: An Interpretive Approach to Understanding Elder Care within Transnational Chinese Families in Canada

Situated at the intersection between globalization and demographic aging, this dissertation seeks to add a critical and interdisciplinary voice to the vibrant conversation on the topic of elder care. It weaves the complex conceptual threads of aging, transnational migration, and the ethics of care into a phenomenological inquiry into the lived experiences of the elderly and their adult children in the intimate space of seven transnational Chinese families in Canada. The research conceptualizes old age as a matter out of place in a neoliberal system marked by growth and productivity, and formulates a theoretical framework of sticky ambiguity as a way to reveal the tensions inherent in the discourse on elder care as a social, cultural, and intercultural phenomenon. In order to resist essentialist narratives of Chinese Canadian families, I emphasize the importance of cultural translation as a responsibility and an important means to unsettle meanings and cultural differences. An interpretive and reflexive methodology is used to analyze qualitative data in an attempt to move beyond a surface reading of the texts. In contrast to typical narrative analysis that aims to code, characterize, and thematize qualitative data, this method treats narrative as the subjects attempt to reconcile the divided self as he or she searches for a good way of representing the problem. The analysis makes observable the subjects orientation to values and idealization, and reveals the hidden struggles and conflicts that are often concealed in speech. Through three case studies on the themes of ambivalence, death, and filial piety, I try to understand how the subject orients to each phenomenon as a problem-solving situation in order to produce a dialogue about the meaning and sticky ambiguity of aging and elder care. My analysis shows that the meaning of aging and elder care is far from stable and singular. It is constructed through an evolving process of moral reasoning that is entangled in a continuous struggle with cultural identities, selfhood, gender, class, heritage, intimacy, and morality

The Influence of Spiritual Traditions on the Interplay of Subjective and Normative Interpretations of Meaningful Work

This paper argues that the principles of spiritual traditions provide normative ‘standards of goodness’ within which practitioners evaluate meaningful work. Our comparative study of practitioners in the Buddhist and Quaker traditions provide a fine-grained analysis to illuminate, that meaningfulness is deeply connected to particular tradition-specific philosophical and theological ideas. In the Buddhist tradition, meaningfulness is temporal and rooted in Buddhist principles of non-attachment, impermanence and depending-arising, whereas in the Quaker tradition the Quaker testimonies and theological ideas frame meaningfulness as eternal. Surprisingly, we find that when faced with unethical choices and clashes between organizational normativity and spiritual normativity, Buddhist practitioners acknowledge the temporal character of meaningfulness and compromise their moral values, whereas in contrast Quaker practitioners morally disengage from meaningless work. Our study highlights how normative commitments in different spiritual traditions can influence different levels of adaptability in finding work meaningful and stresses the central importance of normative commitments in meaningful work. Our study concludes with practical implications and future pathways for inter-disciplinary research

Sometimes Sharks Appear in Lakes Too: Tridirectional Insights on Leader Humility and Its Influence on Employee Behavior

Most research on leader humility to date has focused on positive outcomes, portraying humble behaviors as unequivocally beneficial to followers and leaders. However, scant research has examined the detrimental aspects of leader humility. This thesis challenges the consensus that leader humility is largely beneficial for followers and leaders. Using a relationship-cognition research lens, the overall objective of this thesis is to explore the seemingly contradictory (paradoxical), detrimental, and pseudo-beneficial outcomes of leader humility on followers and leaders in an organizational context. The thesis consists of three studies. Adopting a follower-centric approach, Study 1 examines the consequences of follower behavior when followers positively perceive leader humility. This study reveals that leader humility has seemingly contradictory effects on followers' voice behavior. Study 2 examines the consequences of follower behavior when followers positively perceive leader humility but attribute it negatively. The results of this field study reveal that leader humility is ineffective when followers attribute the humility to impression management. Adopting a leader-centric approach, Study 3 examines the consequences of leader behavior when leaders positively perceive their own humility. The results of this study demonstrate that leaders' humble behavior is positively associated with increases in unethical behavior. Thus, this thesis provides novel theoretical contributions and insight into the literature on leader humility. Practically, the thesis offers suggestions to organizations to encourage humility in leaders while simultaneously taking steps to mitigate any negative consequences of humble leader behavior

A semiotic and emergent theory of religious communities

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston UniversityTwo influential twentieth-century theorists of religion, Émile Durkheim and Roy Rappaport, analyzed religious communities in terms of distinctive features that emerge under special circumstances from the complex dynamics of ordinary human sociality. Durkheim was deeply impressed by the emergent features of religious sociality, to the point that he interpreted a religious community as expressing the way society - thought of as a system of active forces arising from and operating on the constituent individuals - can become self-aware, thinking and feeling through individuals. The status of Durkheim's strong language about religious communities having states of consciousness is a matter of debate but, however his usage is construed, he does make a strong claim on behalf of the emergent properties of complex social systems. Rappaport proposed that a religious community is an adaptive system maintaining itself in an environment, in a manner formally similar to biological organisms. In both cases, emergence is a central theme, yet it is insufficiently explained and theorized. This dissertation argues that emergence theory as it has been developed in the years since Durkheim and Rappaport published, most notably by Terrence Deacon, illuminates the arguments of Durkheim and Rappaport and can render their claims about emergent properties and adaptive social dynamics more precisely and more fruitfully. In general terms, emergence theory analyzes the way relational and organizational features of an aggregate play a causal role in system dynamics, resulting in new system capabilities and qualities. Deacon's achievement is to characterize different kinds of emergent systems in terms of the different ways meaning and reference (semiotics) function in system dynamics. This conceptual linkage between emergence and semiotics is extremely promising for interpreting the emergent features of forms of sociality in which religious meanings and beliefs play vital roles. In applying Deacon's account of emergence to the theories of religious community presented by Durkheim and Rappaport, this dissertation characterizes religious communities as semiotic-emergent systems, and from this perspective analyzes the organizational form of religious community dynamics

Influence of Guanxi HRM practices on turnover intention of Chinese millennials in state own ed banks: the roles of leader member exchange, organizational identification and traditionality

High turnover among millennials is a challenge in Chinese business organization. It is even more so in Chinese state-owned banks where the Guanxi Human Resource Management (HRM) practices have been prominent. This study investigates the pathways and boundary conditions through which guanxi HRM practices affect the turnover intention of millennials. Based on social exchange theory, this study establishes the theoretical model about how guanxi HRM practices affect the turnover intention of millennial employees. Organizational identification and leader-member exchange (LMX) are introduced as mediators and traditionality as a moderator to examine the different rules by which guanxi HRM practices affect millennials’ turnover intention. Using a sample of 467 participants, hypotheses were tested through multiple regression analysis. The results indicate that: (1) Guanxi HRM practices significantly and positively predict millennials’ turnover intention; (2) organizational identification and LMX both partially mediate the positive impact of guanxi HRM practices on employee turnover intention; (3) and traditionality positively moderates the negative association between guanxi HRM practices and organizational identification as well as the negative association between guanxi HRM practices and LMX. This study enriches the literature of guanxi HRM practices by identifying the boundary conditions of traditionality. The findings have a number of managerial implications for retention of Chinese millennials in the banking industry.A saída voluntária das organizações entre os millennials é um desafio para as empresas chinesas que é ainda maior na banca estatal chinesa onde as práticas de Gestão de Recursos Humanos Guanxi têm sido predominantes. Este estudo investiga os processos e as condições de fronteira através dos quais as práticas de GRH Guanxi afetam a intenção de saída voluntária nos millenials. Com base na teoria de troca social, este estudo estabelece um modelo teórico sobre a forma como a GRH Guanxi afeta a intenção de saída por parte de empregados millennials. A identificação organizacional e a troca líder-membro (LMX) são introduzidas como mediadores e a tradicionalidade como moderadora para examinar as diferentes regras através das quais as práticas GRH Guanxi afetam a intenção de saída dos millennials. Com base numa amostra de 467 indivíduos, as hipóteses foram testadas através de regressão linear múltipla. Os resultados indicam que: as práticas GRH Guanxi predizem de forma significativa e positiva a intenção de saída; a identificação organizacional e a LMX medeiam ambas, de forma parcial, o impacto positiva das práticas GRH Guanxi, sobre a intenção de saída; e a tradicionalidade modera positivamente a relação negativa entre as práticas GRH Guanxi e a LMX. Este estudo enriquece a literatura sobre as práticas GRH Guanxi identificando o papel de condição de fronteira que a tradicionalidade assume. Os resultados incluem um número de implicações gestionárias para a retenção de millennials chineses

Software Copyright and Piracy in China

This study is to explore how Chinese software users perceive the issues of software copyright and piracy. Tianya Community, the largest online public forum in China, was selected as a site to study users' online communication about software copyright and piracy. Data were collected over five discussion boards in which software copyright and piracy were discussed extensively to retrieve 561 posting threads with 6,150 messages ranging from March 1, 1999 to June 30, 2007. Lindlof and Taylor's (2002) qualitative communication research methods were used to locate and analyze the recurring dominant themes within the online discussion by Chinese Internet users. The study revealed two opposing discourses existing in software users? perceptions, which represent globalization and anti-globalization processes surrounding software copyright and piracy. Mittleman and Chin's (2005) theoretical framework was adopted to interpret material and spiritual tensions between human/material factors, such as software owners, software users, China, and foreign developed countries. Meanwhile, the actor-network theory was applied to map out the roles of non-human/non-material factors, such as new technology, patriotism, and Chinese culture, which function to moderate the existing confrontations between globalization and anti-globalization by preventing software users from totally falling down into either direction of supporting or opposing software piracy. As a result, both forces of conformity and resistance were found to coexist within software users' perceptions and fragment their identities. To deal with fragmented identities, Chinese software users generally adopted a flexible, discriminative position composed by a series of distinctions, between offline purchasing of pirated discs and software download, between enterprise users and individual users, between foreign and local software companies, between freeware/open-source software and copyright/pirated software, between software companies and independent software developers, and between conceptual recognition and behavioral practice. Meanwhile, traditional resistance movements of Polanyi's (1957) counter-movements and Gramsci's (1971) counter-hegemony were reduced from collective contestations with openly declared call for resistance to Scott's (1990) notion of infra-politics that was communicated among software users and expressed in their everyday practice of piracy use but not in public and government discourse

The Problem Of Authority In Conservative Evangelical Christianity: A Critique Of American And South Korean Expressions

This thesis explores and compares the ways in which the Bible is read, interpreted, and held as an authority by conservative Evangelicals in the United States and South Korea. By examining the history, literary practices, and social systems in each country, I reveal authorities other than the Bible that emerge from Evangelical culture. Discourse theory, reader-response theory, and rhetorical criticism provide the theoretical lenses through which each expression is viewed. My research strategies included: (1) a six month ethnographic project held in two Korean Evangelical communities; and (2) a survey of Korean laity. Data were collected from direct observations, Evangelical media, sermon notes, and the survey conducted in Korea. This study also critiques arguments that position biblical literalism and perspicuity as broad Evangelical identifiers. This critique reinforces the need for non-Western based studies on Evangelicalism. By revealing the range of historical, social and ideological influences that affect conservative Evangelical power structures, the claim of ultimate biblical authority is shown to be a mask for the diverse forms of authority that actually exist in the American and Korean expressions of conservative Evangelicalism

Korean Fatherhood in Policy and Practice

Korean fathers gained their first entitlement to take one-year paid parental leave in 2001. The policy has since continuously advanced, but as of 2020, fathers’ take-up rates remain low at 3.4%. This dissertation raises the question of why Korean fathers do not take parental leave, and what the nature of the underlying sociocultural contexts is that precipitates this discrepancy. To seek answers to this question, the dissertation examines tensions between the de jure entitlement and the de facto entitlement of fatherhood via four different contexts: policymaking, relational ethics, workplace norms, and paternal identities.Applying these four contexts, four sub-studies address the following research questions: (1) How have Korean parental leave policies evolved since 1995 and what were the motives and challenges that emerged in the course of their development? (2) How have relational ethics and workplace norms influenced individual fathers’ decisions and sense of entitlement for taking time off for childcare? (3) How do Korean fathers perceive good fathering and how do they negotiate and practise fathering ideals in everyday life?The analysis draws on two types of empirical data: semi-structured interviews and public documents. The interview data contain four different sets of interviews with six policy actors, 47 fathers, and 15 of their female partners. Official policy documents contain various sources, such as newspaper articles, Acts, Bills, Master Plans, press kits, campaign posters, and parliamentary meeting minutes demonstrating policy changes from 1990 to 2021.The findings show that Korean parental leave policies have evolved in a way of emphasising the value of gender equality and men’s roles in childcare as a practical tool for increasing fertility rates. In everyday life, couples, influenced by Confucian relational ethics, considered fathers as last-resort caregivers within families and as forefront workers in workplaces; they showed reluctance to renege such social expectations despite the detriment to women’s careers. Furthermore, Korean workplaces featured presence-oriented, hierarchical, and work-prioritised norms and practices. These features (in)directly lowered fathers’ sense of entitlement to take time off for childcare. Indeed, those pursuing to be an involved father, tended to struggle with gaps between fathering ideals and practices. With lack of time, information, network, and role models, fathers tried to make the most of the time given to them by engaging in playful activities with their children, with the belief in fathers’ distinctive role in childcare.Based on these findings, this dissertation contributes to theoretical discussions in the policy-practice literature by bridging the two perspectives. It suggests a distinction within the policy context: policymaking context and policy context for practice. The latter matters because the de jure entitlement granted by policies does not necessarily transition to the corresponding sense of entitlement in practice. To explore this gap, this dissertation explores the policy context for practice (as opposed to theory) by proposing the concept of fatherhood practices (people’s routine behaviours). Fatherhood practices highlight people’s everyday aspects that consist of doings, sayings, and reasonings, which shape and construct the meaning of fatherhood. The integration of the policy contexts and fatherhood practices particularly reveals the nuanced differences between voluntary opt-out and resigned acceptance of policy use behaviours.In conclusion, this dissertation argues that policymaking contexts of Korean parental leave policies have been insufficient for promoting sociocultural grounds that directly encourage fathers to feel equally entitled as a parent as mothers; Korean fatherhood is undergoing piecemeal transitions, which can be interpreted as conditional, exclusive, and silent

What a feeling: An empirical study of the nexus of emotion and cultural friction in the context of intra-MNC knowledge transfer

This thesis examines the interactions between emotion and cultural friction in the context of intra-MNC knowledge transfer. The research is based on 60 interviews, 9 month fieldwork and documents collected from one largest Chinese I.T. service company. A qualitative single case study framed with an interpretive lens was used as research design. The thesis has examined the source, process and consequence of discrete emotions in cross-culture knowledge transfer. It shows that emotion is a crucial link to explain why some managers perceive cultural friction as stressful, other frame it as an opportunity to learn. And a cultural pre-disposition towards certain emotional experiences is also revealed This study is the first empirical investigation on discrete emotions in knowledge transfer within MNC. It provides a unique but complementary approach to understand culture friction and cross-cultural behavior