A Study On The Relationship Between Culture Shock And Working Pressure Of Expatriate Managers In China International Engineering Industry

There is an increasing tendency of working pressure in the workplace nowadays.Excessive working pressure of employees can produce indispensable impacts on thedevelopment of individuals, organizations, and even the whole society, as a result ofwhich managing employees’ working pressure effectively is of critical importance.With the rapid development of Chinese international engineering industry, more andmore employees are being expatriated, suffering from high levels of working pressureand high rates of turnover. Meanwhile, these expatriated staffs stay in different culturalfor a long term and thus face the phenomenon of cultural shock. The development ofmoderators is one of the important research field for Job Demand-Control-Support(JDCS) model. Based on JDCS model, this article takes the cultural shock intoconsideration. We proposed and tested three main hypotheses related to job demand,job control, social support, cultural shock, and working pressure of the expatriated staffsin Chinese engineering industry.Samples of this research are mainly expatriated managers from the internationalengineering enterprises in China. We first confirmed specific items which are used tomeasure the related variables, namely job demand, job control, social support, culturalshock, and working pressure. There are in total116data collected by distributingquestionnaires. Then, we applied correction analyses to test the applicability of JDCSmodel and the correction between cultural shock and working pressure of employees.Multivariate regression analyses were used to build a regression equation, in which thethree variables (job demand, job control, and social support) are independent variables,and working pressure refers to the dependent variable, cultural shock is regarded as themoderating variable.The results indicate:1) JDCS model can also be applied to employees in theChinese international engineering industry, namely the job demand, job control andsocial support all have significant influence on the employees’ working pressure;2)cultural shock is related positively to working pressure and it plays moderating role onthe relationship between job demand and working pressure, job control and workingpressure, as well as social support and working pressure. Therefore, Chinese international engineering enterprises should pay enough attention to the culturaladjustment of expatriated staffs, try to manage cultural shock effectively and reducetheir working pressure.