Labor Issues: Taiwan

The Institute of East Asian Studies at UC Berkeley presents a series of papers on labor in Taiwan

Ying-Jung Yeh:
A Diary Study of Smart Phone’s Usage, Work Stress and Job Satisfaction

A diary study method was used to investigate whether the daily usage of smart phone at work to deal with personal matters may blur the boundary between work and life, and the consequences caused by this pattern of usage. Data were collected from 43 full-time workers. They were asked to report the degree of smart phone usage in 15 consecutive days excluding the weekends. 388 valid data points were included in the hierarchical linear modeling analysis. The preliminary results showed that the degree of smart phone’s usage at work is negatively related with work stress. However, only when the work stress is low, can the higher degree of usage is related with high job satisfaction. Cyberloafing behaviors and boundary of work and life roles were discussed.

Chun-Hsi Vivian Chen:
Leadership, Positive Organizational Behavior, and Job Performance

Employees’ spontaneous undertaking of organizationally desired behaviors enhances organizations’ gaining the edge in the fiercely competitive business environment. Work engagement, one of the emerging topics, is argued to account for the difference of employees’ job performance, e.g., task performance and extra-role behavior. Drawing on the job demand-resources model (JD-R model), prior research on work engagement mainly adopts the individual level of analysis to explore the effect of work resource or personal resource on employees’ work engagement. In fact, the way leaders allocate resources and interact with subordinates would affect subordinates’ engagement and performance. Scholars confirm the positive effect of transformational leadership on employees’ performance. Transformational leaders strengthen employees’ work engagement by giving constructive feedback and providing learning opportunities to enhance their potential.

Transformational leadership is also conducive to cultivating the organizational setting (the level of work unit), and has an effect on employees’ affective state and incentives (the individual level). In terms of the level of work unit, transformational leaders support employees’ self-development and provide them with opportunities to learn and express. Based on social information process theory, transformational leaders would infuse organizations with their personal values and beliefs and contribute to a supportive organizational climate, which is regarded as an important resource for organizations. On the other hand, transformational leaders are good at envisioning and communicating their positive, optimistic viewpoints. According to the emotional contagion theory, transformational leaders would influence employees’ awareness of positive affect through positive emotions. Drawing on the broaden-and-build theory, emotional resource is viewed one of the keys to employees’ work engagement. Transformational leaders play a crucial role in organizations for their effects on organization’s supportive climate (organizational resource- the work unit level) and employees’ positive mood (emotional resource- the individual level). To fill the void of prior research, this study investigates a multilevel analysis by incorporating leadership theory and job demand-resources model to verify the effect of transformational leadership on employees’ work engagement and performance with the mediation of an organization’s supportive climate and employees’ positive mood.