中国情境的工作强化研究:结构探索与量表开发

Research on the Structure Exploration and Scale Development of Work Intensification in Chinese Context

作为一种劳动力利用模式,工作强化对员工的工作满意度、幸福感、身心健康和组织承诺产生了诸多负面影响,对工作强化的准确测量是有效防范其负面效应的前提。然而,关于工作强化的结构和度量国外学术界还存在较大争议,国内也尚未展开对这一问题的探讨,更缺乏适合中国情境的测量工具。鉴于此,本文采用归纳和演绎相结合的方法,参考国外关于工作强化的结构维度和测量方面的研究成果,开发并检验了中国情境的工作强化量表。一系列多角度验证结果表明,中国情境的工作强化是包含工作强度增加和工作时间延长的二维构念,其具体结构与西方存在一定差异,所开发的量表具有良好的信度和效度。

Work intensification means the intensity of employees'work efforts under high work demands and task pressure,which has caused many negative influences on employee's well-being,job satisfaction,work-family balance and organizational commitment.The precise measure of work intensification is a prerequisite for preventing these negative consequences.However,there are still many controversies about its structure,and effective questionnaires have not been developed.Moreover,work intensification has become a social problem that fatefully jeopardizes the benign operation of society in Chinese,but theoretical research is extremely scarce.Since there are numerous differences in management situations between China and the West,the differences in the composition of work intensification greatly reduced the effectiveness of scales in China.Therefore,structural exploration and scale development in Chinese context has become a premise to the research.In view of this,based on systematic literature reviews,this paper firstly aggregate 17 items from western scales and compiled into a questionnaire.Secondly,questionnaire surveys and in-depth semi-structured interviews with 21 respondents from multiple industries were conducted.Then,according to the process of content analysis,two main categories include increased work intensity and work extension and 14 categories are precipitated.Based on this,we designed a preliminary scale with 16 initial items,all of which are using comparative rhetoric to amend the defects of western scales.Thirdly,using the data obtained from three nationwide questionnaires,the study carries out exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis and examines the validity by selecting working-family conflict as criterion.Results of empirical tests show that work intensification in Chinese context has two dimensions,includes increased work intensity and work extension.The former contains 7 items includes shorter deadlines,more frequent work interruption,less downtime,multi-tasks,greater task pressure,work speed acceleration and more missions;the latter contains 3 items includes overtime on workday and holiday and work interference in idle time.The test of criterion validity proves that both dimensions are positively correlated with work-family conflict.In summary,empirical data shows that the scale has good reliability and validity.Furthermore,this research also found many differences between native and western work intensification.In west,especially in the last decade,it has been gradually inclined to single-dimensional with work intensity increase,but in native,it has obvious two-dimensional characteristics and work extension is more prominent.In addition,the specific compositions of each dimension are also different:both dimensions are relatively single in west,but more diverse and abundant in China,and these differences may be closely related to the differences of economic development levels and stages,cultural values,management practices maturities and legal environments.In general,this paper provides a good empirical tool for the measurement of work intensification and builds a bridge for theoretical and empirical research in Chinese situation.However,although has good reliability and validity,it doesn t mean that this scale is perfect.Therefore,future research needs to further improve the measurement tools.Moreover,it can be prospected from other two aspects:in terms of methods,dynamic data can be used to make up for the shortcomings of existing cross-sectional research;in the theory perspective,the formations and impact mechanisms and boundaries of work intensification are also need to be supplemented in Chinese context.