Chinese Undergraduate Students’ Work Values: The Role of Parental Work Experience and Part-Time Work Quality
The article concerns an investigation between any relations that may exist between perceived parental job insecurity and students’ part-time work values, with a focus on the Chinese culture and its overtones. Careful attention was paid to the defining work values and subsequently the study focus on a definition provided by Ravlin and Meglino (1987), whom state that work values are general orientations that can be displayed in all work settings. Regardless of the employment, employees should display empathy, honesty, fairness, and sense of achievement.
The study was realized in various Hong Kong universities with about 600 Chinese participants of which 493 returned completed questionnaires. The demographics of those employed part-time encased approximately twice the number of females than males with a mean age of about 20 years old. Two-thirds were engaged in private tutoring, 10 percent in clerical work, and 7.5 percent in customer-related jobs. The average hourly wage was $7.43 with a monthly average of $314.66. The instruments used focused on history of parental layoff, part-time work quality, job conflicts with school, part-time work satisfaction, and lastly work values.
The results correlated with the competence model which states young workers can acquire positive job attitudes and knowledge since the study found that compared to non-workers, part-time workers reported more positive outlooks on work and less cynicism. Also, another vital finding was the fact that the part-time work quality was more important than perceived parental job insecurity. No correlations with parental layoffs were found.
The study itself used a very well defined procedure and documentation, but the results have some limitations, most of which have to do with the sample population. The authors clearly define several limitations, but the most pressing