Exploration Of Chinese Employees’ Perceived Organizational Family Support

The concept of family is important for Chinese society. Organizational and managerial practices in relation to employees? family care have become more important for Chinese organizations in China due to Confucian beliefs embedded in Chinese society. Perceived Organizational Support(POS)research is based on Social Exchange Theory, which takes a social psychological perspective to explain the nature of relationships between employers and employees. Two notable studies of Western employees perceived organizational family support(POFS) are Allen?s study(2001) that examined the whole work environment in relation to the organizational family support and Jahn, Thompson and Kopelman?s study(2003) that examined employee?s perceptions of organizational family support rather than the work environment. However, none of these studies conducted under Chinese context.Our study aims at developing the scale of Chinese employees? perceived organizational family support(CPOFS). Study 1 is a qualitative exploration of Chinese employee perceptions of organizational family support to establish the CPOFS measurement items. We investigated 132 Chinese employees who work at State-Owned compant,private compant and institutions. Study 2 is to validate CPOFS items. We selected two samples which consist of 139 and 149 repondents respectively. Among the quantitative study, we first conducted exploratory factor analysis and then we conduct confirmatory factor analysis.Within the POS literature, our findings have enriched the POS concept by incorporating a family-centric culture of Chinese society and offered a more comprehensive Chinese employees? POS, highlighting the importance of developing POS scales within the national culture. These findings demonstrate unique characteristics of CPOFS featured by managers’ personal care for family members and organizational activities that involve family members.