Work-Life in China

Featured Guest Blogger August 14th, 2009

Meredith Ross is the Member Relations Specialist at the Center for Work & Family at Boston College. She manages corporate partnerships within the National Work & Family Roundtable and the Global Workforce Roundtable. Please note that the views of our guest bloggers do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sloan Work and Family Research Network.

The Center for Work & Family recently released a new issue of our Executive Briefing Series called Work-Life in China. With China a major focus of the global economy and with increasing numbers of companies doing significant business there, we wanted to provide an easily digestable look at the economic, social, and cultural contexts of China, and how they inform approaches to work-life for organizations operating there.

We look at the radical change in employment in China in recent years, as state-owned enterprises have given way to the emergence of the private sector, and as work-life support has shifted from a government provision for all to a corporate asset in the recruitment of talent. The briefing also reviews some of the dominant cultural values in China, including Confucianism and Daoism, guanxi (a focus on social connections), filial piety (love and responsibility for one’s elders), hukou (the household registration system, which controls access to socioeconomic benefits including education and medical care), and gender equity. 91% of businesses in China have a woman in senior management, much higher than the global average of 59% and the U.S. at 69%.

The Center for Work & Family continually strives to bridge academic research with corporate practice. To that end we’ve included corporate best practices in China around flexibility, parenthood and child care, health & wellness (with a focus on stress), talent management, and relocation/separation issues – the latter becoming an increasing concern as workers become more mobile and retain significant responsibility for immediate family and elders.

We hope this briefing is helpful for the business community and anyone else interested in the varying dimensions of work-life across cultures. It’s available free on the Center for Work & Family website (www.bc.edu/cwf) and is the first in a series we’re doing on the emerging markets, sponsored by Johnson & Johnson. The next briefing will be on India (this summer), and then Brazil and Russia (fall). Look for posts on those to come!