The Empirical Research Of Job Satisfaction And Employee’s Union Commitment:the Moderating Effect Of Horizontal Collectivism

The research of employee unionization is relatively mature in the academic circle. According to the frustration-aggression theory, when employees are unhappy at work or treated unfairly, they will join in the union, many researchers have pay attention to the relationship between job satisfaction and unionization. But few scholars study this issue in Southeast Asia, especially in China, which is determined by the nature of the Chinese trade unions. In the period of planned economy in China,there is nearly no gap between the managers and workers in state-owned enterprises in terms of their wage pays and there is no outstanding the contradiction of labor relations in the state-owned enterprises, with the role of union in the adjustment of the labor relations being not obvious.Therefore it is not meaningful to study the problem about job satisfaction and union commitment in state-owned enterprises.But with the development of market economy and the establishment of modern enterprise system, state-owned enterprises have become the main body of market competition and private enterprises, foreign-owned and joint ventures are also developing rapidly, which is followed by the continuously aggravated competition among enterprises and increasing work pressure making the employees dissatisfacted with the job and the growing labor conflicts as a result. At the same time,trade unions in the new situation have become an important force in adjusting labor relations and stabling society from the traditional model and image through reconstruction, consolidation,restructuring and other means. So in this context, the study about the relationship between employee job satisfaction and union commitment become meaningful. While China is a country of collectivism,with the mixure of Chinese and western culture, Chinese staff is absorbing the essence of western individualism culture and no longer give authority, advocating democracy, equality and horizontal collectivism. Horizontal collectivism is the key predictive variable to the union commitment from the perspective of culture, with an impact on job satisfaction. When encountered in the work, employees with higher level of collectivism are more inclined to seek the aid of the union and join in trade unions.Based on this, the research investigates the relationship between employee job satisfaction and union commitment and the effect of the horizontal collectivism on the relationship. The empirical results show that different from the overseas findings that reveals the relationship between external job satisfaction and union commitment is stronger than the relationship between internal job satisfaction and union commitment, it is found that the effect of internal job satisfaction on the decision of employees to join in the union and the that of external job satisfaction is equally important. In addition, the results also suggest that horizontal collectivism, as a cultural factor, moderates therelationship between employee job satisfaction and union commitment. Specially, the findings indicate that with the new generation of Chinese employees expressing high horizontal collectivism,the relationship between job satisfaction and union commitment is stronger among individuals with higher horizontal collectivism. Implications of the study and the future research directions are also discussed. These results fully demonstrated Chinese unions through continuous exploration and innovation to make enterprise staff to investigate the effects of the new cognition and affirmation,employee commitment to the union.