Enhancing employee's work ethics and social responsibility awareness in Chinese organisations: the roles of Confucian diligence tradition, western values and participative leadership

Work ethics and social responsibility (WESR) as corporate's ethical decisions do not only highlight organisational values and commitments, but also portrait business relationships with all stakeholders. As a primary internal stakeholder, employee's WESR awareness appears to be worthwhile in facilitating organisation's ultimate success for employee's job performance and well-beings. This paper engenders significant contributions with attempts to explore crucial enablers driving employee to perceive the importance of WESR policies embedded in modern Chinese business, where both traditional Confucianism and innovative Western values are co-exhibited. These organisational values integrated in a hybrid culture model, together with different typical management leaderships (participative vs. power-distant) were examined as main antecedences. Furthermore, to demonstrate the promising benefits of WESR in human resource, the positive link between WESR awareness and work performance efficacy was firstly evidenced, extended by its mediating effects in the research model. An empirical study was conducted from 213 Taiwanese employees, CB-SEM results supported all proposed hypotheses.