Social Indicators Research
Volume 139, Issue 1, 2018, Pages 293-307

Supervisor–Subordinate Guanxi and Job Satisfaction Among Migrant Workers in China (Article)

Li J. , Wang W. , Sun G.* , Jiang Z. , Cheng Z.
  • a School of Management, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China
  • b Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
  • c Department of Marketing, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing, China
  • d Department of Employment Relations and Human Resources, Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
  • e Centre for the Health Economy, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Abstract

In urban China, improving rural–urban migrant workers’ subjective wellbeing has become an important goal for workplaces and local governments. Drawing from the social capital theory and using original survey data, we examine the relationship between migrant workers’ guanxi (‘personal relations’ in the Chinese context) with their supervisors and their job satisfaction. Our results show that supervisor–subordinate guanxi is positively related to migrant workers’ job satisfaction. This relationship is mediated by network resources and personal power, which serve as their social resources in workplaces. Our study contributes to the positive psychology literature by understanding the role of guanxi in shaping Chinese migrant workers’ job satisfaction. Implications and future research directions are discussed. © 2016, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.

Author Keywords

China Job satisfaction Personal power Supervisor–subordinate guanxi Network resources Rural–urban migrants

Index Keywords

network analysis China social capital job search rural-urban migration migrant worker life satisfaction
Link
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84991769715&doi=10.1007%2fs11205-016-1471-6&partnerID=40&md5=e222a0d70bb6dc4fb2c4c70584594e18
DOI: 10.1007/s11205-016-1471-6
ISSN: 03038300
Cited by: 4
Original Language: English