The Impact Of Cultural Differences On Employee Turnover: A Sino-U.S. Comparison

According to modern management philosophy, human capital has become more andmore important for organizations to acquire competitive advantage. The essence ofcompetition in the 21st century is the competition for talents. How to retain those employeeswho are indispensable for organizational development and avoid key employee turnover is ofgreat significance to human resource department as well as the organization as a whole.Beside such elements as human nature, personal disposition, career expectation that canbe categorized as innate to employees, turnover is mainly affected by employee satisfactiontoward their work. Dissatisfaction in any aspects of the work can lead to employee turnover.Employee job satisfaction, or in other words, overall job satisfaction depends on satisfactiontoward the following aspects: pay, promotion, work itself, co-workers, supervisor, workingcondition, and etc.When borrowing ideas from western human resource management theories and practicesand apply them in China, there is one nonnegligible factor—cultural difference, which hassignificant impact on management. This thesis aims at analyzing the weight Chinese and U.S.employees put on their satisfaction toward all these aspects of job in an imaginary exitdecision, thus compare the impact of cultural difference between China and U.S. on employeeturnover. After reviewing relevant literature, the author brings the above-mentioned aspects ofwork together with flexibility in work under the three dimensions of Masculinity versusFemininity, Individualism versus Collectivism and Universalism versus Particularism. Threehypotheses are made and a quantitative analysis is made through a comparative surveyresearch done in the sports and public relations industry in China and U.S. In the end, theauthor puts forward some recommendation and points out the limitations in the research anddirection for future study.