I am trained as an experimental psychologist still excited about developing experimental designs. I also value studies involving surveys on a specific population or secondary data analysis such as data derived from newspapers or other interesting sources and panel data to complement the limited scope of observation.
As a working woman myself in Korea where gender inequality is high with a lack of family- supportive practices (e.g., the glass-ceiling index: Economist, 2018; Global Gender Gap Report 2018: World Economic Forum, 2018) and a largely overworking environment (e.g., hours worked indicator: OECD, 2018), I personally relate to the topic of work-family issues or women’s career break and the research questions regarding what makes women’s career suffer in Korea and what resources will ease the problem in the harsh environment.
In two studies, I had an opportunity to explore the interface between work and family domain and antecedents and consequences of work-family conflict and enrichment of female workers in Korea. Using the concept of work-family interference (Frone, Russell, & Cooper, 1992) and work-family enrichment (Greenhaus & Powell, 2006), these studies found that demands regarding work itself, i.e., total working hour, customer interaction, job stress regarding relationship, and organizational climate involving the expectation of high performance and adverse career consequences for using family-friendly practices, were found to be the factors increasing work-family interference; however resources such as supportive management was found to be positively associated with work-family enrichment (Kim & Cha, 2010) and work-family enrichment alone had a positive effect on organizational commitment (Kim & Cha, 2009). These studies have brought my attention to the issue of organizational climate and how it affects workers’ work-family balance.
In one study (Cha, 2019), I identified two types of organizational climate particularly relevant for women workers in Korea, i.e., diversity climate (McKay, Avery & Morris, 2008) and overwork climate (Mazzetti et al., 2016), and attempted to examine how these organizational climates affect married women workers’ work-family interaction and work/non-work satisfaction. Especially, I hypothesized that organizational climates would influence work-family interference through its effect on workers’ perceived power in their workplace.
The SEM analysis on the 6th wave of the Korean Women Managers Panel (KWMP) revealed that overall the overwork climate was the main factor decreasing work and non-work satisfaction through exacerbating work-family interference. The overwork climate was not found to affect workers’ perceived structural power whereas it increased perceived personal power; however, it was not enough to battle the adverse effect of overwork climate on work-family interference. On the other hand, diversity climate was a factor positively affecting work and non-work satisfaction through increased perceived structural and personal power. Increased structural power, however, had an ambivalent effect. Increased structural power seemed to affect work satisfaction positively; however, it also increased family-to-work interference, which led to decreased work and non-work satisfaction. In a subsequent analysis, I adopted multi-group analysis in SEM to compare the identical model with two groups, i.e., women workers with children under 3 and those without children under 3. The comparison revealed that for women with children under 3, the positive influence of diversity climate on workers’ structural and personal power significantly decreased and the adverse effect of family-to-work interference on non-work satisfaction was significantly exacerbated.
Using SEM and multi-group analysis, I was able to show the process of how different organizational climates affect married women’s work and life and how the process changes for women with children under 3. This study was presented at the 2017 Korean Women Manager Panel (KWMP) Symposium hosted by the Korean Women’s Development Institute (KWDI) and the manuscript is in preparation for submission.
Workaholism (Oates, 1971) is a rather well-known concept generally defined as “addiction to work, the compulsion or the uncontrollable need to work incessantly.” This concept caught my attention because, with the increased awareness of work-life balance and the government’s drive to reduce work hours, we all know there are times that we feel anxious to let go and get ourselves out of the work and it can be a factor that makes harder for the workers to get out of the overwork and burnout. By adopting the DUWAS framework (Schaufeli et al., 2008), which defined workaholism as working excessively and working compulsively, I attempted to show how individual tendencies to be workaholic affect their job satisfaction. Since Korean culture is typically characterized as a collectivist culture (Hofstede,1980; Triandis, Bontempo, Villareal, Asai, & Lucca, 1988) with interdependent self-construal (Markus & Kitayama, 1991) and it is more important to build and maintain relationships in this culture, I hypothesized that impaired personal relationship due to workaholism could negatively affect job satisfaction.
The SEM on Korean Labor and Income Panel Study (KLIPS) by Korean Labor Institute was able to reveal that as hypothesized, being workaholic was associated with increased level of personal relationship impairment, and the adverse effect of personal relationship impairment in the personal life domain was sufficient enough to cross over to the work domain and undermine the job satisfaction one year later. This study was published at the Korean Journal of Management (Kim & Cha, 2018), the main journal of the Korean Academy of Management. This study raises a question whether this relationship would hold for other cultures too. I am planning to investigate these research questions through a survey possibly using MTurk to get access to broader population across different cultures.
Korea is notorious for long working hours and shares the problem of Karoshi (e.g., Nishiyama & Johnson, 1997) which refers to death by overwork. Deepening my understanding in the concept of organizational climate and workaholism will help to understand the working conditions in Korea and it will also enrich the discussion of factors and working conditions affecting workers’ life in the management literature. In addition,“Me Too” movement and the “nut rage” incident by executives of Korean Air Lines Co. has bring the issue of hostile work environment based on gender and power inequality to the surface. What happens in Korea recently provides an interesting window to observe and discuss gender and power issues in the workplace. As an acute observer and participant, I would like to conduct research investigating the social and cultural context of these problems in the workplace, and I hope it will also help extend the discussion of workplace aggression, harassment and incivility and other types of counterproductive work behaviors.
In Hwang & Cha (2018), I also took an opportunity to investigate potential factors that undermine information security compliance intention in organizations. Using the concept of technostress and role stress, this study was able to show that overload, complexity, and uncertainty involved in security-related technology undermine information security compliance intention in workers of all levels through exacerbated role stress and reduced organizational commitment. This study demonstrated that a stress-inducing environment due to security technology has the potential to negatively affect the everyday lives of employees through role stress, and suggests a rather ironic effect of information security technology where it creates a work environment susceptible to technostress, which in turn inhibits workers’ intention for security compliance. This study was published in Computers in Human Behavior. I am interested in extending the research to investigate the further impact of technology development in the workplace through the concept of technostress.
With the use of a Japanese dataset provided by major business newspaper providers, I had an interesting opportunity to investigate whether various board characteristics, i.e., size or diversity in terms of age and academic background, affect firms’ financial performance or directors’ promotion. By combining “Director Data” by Toyokeizai and “NEEDS database” by Nihonkeizai containing information on the composition of board directors and financial performance of Japanese manufacturing companies, and using an equivalent dataset from Korea and the US, this line of studies was able to examine whether different types of diversity in the boardroom affected firms’ performance and promotion of directors in a different culture.
Although diversity in the organization and in the boardroom has been considered desirable (e.g., Hafsi & Target, 2013), there still seems to exist considerable pressure for and adherence to a similarity in Asian culture, which emphasizes similarity and harmony among members. I have looked into academic/alumni ties, a form of cronyism, or a tendency to prefer people based on the same academic background such as undergraduate alumni in a series of studies. A series of analyses revealed the following: (1) there was a general tendency to promote directors who are from the same elite university or same academic majors as Shacho (Japanese CEO) in Japanese companies; however, this effect disappeared after controlling for the characteristics of the firm (i.e., firm fixed effects) (Cha, 2014; Jung & Cha, 2011); (2) diversity in terms of age and university positively affected firm performance in Japanese manufacturing companies (Cha & Jung, 2009) but not in Korean manufacturing companies (Cha & Jung, 2014); (3) When diversity in terms of directors’ undergraduate majors was considered, this type of diversity had a positive effect on firm performance in the US but not in Japan (Cha, 2013).
Although the academic/alumni tie is generally considered important in companies in Japan and Korea, the results seem to suggest that the effect of diversity in the boardroom on firm performance depends on countries. So far, the evidence is mainly limited to the manufacturing industry in Japan and I intend to expand this study by comparing equivalent data from other countries and in other industries to investigate the underlying factors behind the mixed results.
Envy, along with a similar concept like Schadenfreude, has long been considered an emotion with a potentially destructive effect on social relationships. However, it seems that there are separate words describing benign envy and malicious envy in certain countries including Korea (Cha, 2009) and Germany (van de Ven, Zeelenberg, & Pieters, 2009), and I highlighted the existence of benign envy concept, i.e., Buroum, in Korea and to introduce the concept of envy in psychology literature in Korea as a topic of research. I provided some evidence demonstrating distinguishable characteristics separating benign envy from malicious envy and admiration (Cha, 2009; 2010). I found that participants perceived the target person with whom they felt benign envy to be superior in terms of ability, sociability, and morality and to be close and likable, compared to the target person with whom they felt malicious envy. Thus, I theorized that benign envy is an emotion strategically communicating association and approach motives to the envied to achieve interpersonal harmony in a culture where upward social comparison is prevalent (Cha, 2010). It resonates with other studies which suggest that benign envy is associated with approaching the envied or leveling oneself up, instead of distancing oneself from the envied or leveling the other down (van de Ven, Zeelenberg, & Pieters, 2009). However, it also found that although expressing or experiencing benign envy was considered socially desirable as compared to malicious envy, it was still strongly associated with experiencing more negative emotions, more regrets, a lesser degree of personal belief in a just world, and lower life satisfaction (Cha, 2009).
Prevalence and preference of management to build a competitive environment with a comparative approach to performance measurement force workers to constantly be involved in social comparison and it will be interesting to see how these two types of emotion play out in the workplace. With the use of experimental design, I am developing studies looking into what triggers the emotional experience of envy, when it differentiates into two types of envy, and how they affect others in the workplace.
The divergent and winding paths of my research are a trajectory of responses to what is expected of me as a researcher in organization studies to investigate urgent issues in Korea. In the process, I try to discover unique aspects of Korean society and East Asian culture and place them into the mainstream management literature. I would be more than excited to expand these lines of research to contribute to the management literature.
Reference
Cha, O. (2009). Buroum: An analysis of benign envy in Korea. Korean Journal of Social and Personality Psychology, 23, 171-189. (Korean)
Cha, O., & Jung, T. (2009). The effect of board characteristics on firm performance in Japan. Journal of International Economic Studies, 13, 135-158. (Korean)
Cha, O. (2010). Buroum: An emotion strategically communicating association and approach motives. Korean Journal of Social and Personality Psychology, 24, 51-72. (Korean)
Cha, O. (2013). Board size, board diversity, and firm performance: A comparison of Japan and the United States. Journal of Economics Studies, 31, 157-178. (English)
Cha, O. (2014). Examining the relationship between elite university alumni tie and board directors’ promotion. The Review of Social & Economics Studies, 43, 1-30. (Korean)
Cha, O., & Jung, T. (2014). Board diversity and firm performance. Journal of Regulation Studies, 23. 131-163. (Korean)
Cha, O. (2019). How organizational climate affects work and life of married women workers in Korea: Mediating role of perceived power in the workplace. Paper presented at 2017 Korean Women Manger Panel (KWMP) Symposium hosted by Korean Women’s Development Institute (KWDI). Manuscript in preparation.
Jung, T., & Cha, O. (2011). Do academic cliques matter in director's promotion?: A Japanese case. Kukje Kyungje Yongu, 17, 129-154. (Korean)
Kim, H., & Cha, O. (2009). The effect of work-family interaction and family-friendly organizational support on organizational commitment and turnover intention. Korean Journal of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 22, 515-540. (Korean)
Kim, H., & Cha, O. (2010). Work-family spillover in female workers: How their personal and workplace situations affect the work-family relationship. Journal of Organization and Management, 34, 64-109. (Korean)
Kim, J., & Cha, O. (2018). The effects of workaholism on job satisfaction and turnover intention: Mediating effect of personal relationship impairment. Korean Journal of Management, 26(4), 59-92. http://dx.doi.org/10.26856/kjom.2018.26.4.59 (Korean)
Economist (2018). The glass-ceiling index: Progress has been slow but steady. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/02/15/the-glass-ceiling-index. (Accessed on 10 February 2018).
Frone, M. R., Russell, M., & Cooper, M. L. (1992). Antecedents and outcomes of work-family conflict: testing a model of the work-family interface. Journal of Applied Psychology, 77(1), 65.
Greenhaus, J. H., & Powell, G. N. (2006). When work and family are allies: A theory of work-family enrichment. Academy of Management Review, 31(1), 72-92.
Hafsi, T. & Turgut, G.(2013). Boardroom diversity and its effect on social performance: Conceptualization and empirical evidence. Journal of Business Ethics, 112, 463-479.
Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture and organizations. International Studies of Management & Organization, 10(4), 15-41.
Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98(2), 224.
Mazzetti, G., Schaufeli, W. B., Guglielmi, D., & Depolo, M. (2016). Overwork climate scale: psychometric properties and relationships with working hard. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 31(4), 880-896.
McKay, P. F., Avery, D. R., & Morris, M. A. (2008). Mean racial‐ethnic differences in employee sales performance: The moderating role of diversity climate. Personnel psychology, 61(2), 349-374.
Nishiyama, K., & Johnson, J. V. (1997). Karoshi—death from overwork: occupational health consequences of Japanese production management. International Journal of Health Services, 27(4), 625-641.
Oates, W. E. (1971). Confessions of a workaholic: The facts about work addiction. World Publishing Company.
OECD (2018). Hours worked (indicator). https://doi.org/10.1787/47be1c78-en (Accessed on 10 February 2018).
Schaufeli, W. B., Taris, T. W., & Bakker, A. B. (2008). It takes two to tango. Workaholism is working excessively and working compulsively. In R.J. Burke, & C. L. Copper (Eds.), The long work hours culture: Causes, consequences and choices (pp. 203-226). Emerald Group Pushing Limited.
Triandis, H. C., Bontempo, R., Villareal, M. J., Asai, M., & Lucca, N. (1988). Individualism and collectivism: Cross-cultural perspectives on self-ingroup relationships. Journal of personality and Social Psychology, 54(2), 323-338.
Van de Ven, N., Zeelenberg, M., & Pieters, R. (2009). Leveling up and down: the experiences of benign and malicious envy. Emotion, 9(3), 419-429.
World Economic Forum (2018). Global Gender Gap Report 2018. http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2018/measuring-the-global-gender-gap/(Accessed on 10 February 2018).