Skip to main content
Disciplines
Automotive Business IT + Informatics Construction + Real Estate Electrical Engineering + Electronics Energy + Sustainability Insurance + Risk Finance + Banking Management + Leadership Marketing + Sales Mechanical Engineering + Materials
Events
DE
EN
Books
Journals
Topic Page
Marketing
Start single access now
Access for companies
EXTENDED SEARCH
Log in
Top
Published in:
A Catalyst for Chinese Aerospace Innovation Read chapter Read first chapter

2017 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

3. Work Autonomy and Product Innovation

Author : Denise Tsang

Published in: Industrial Democracy in the Chinese Aerospace Industry

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK

Log in

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config
loading …

Abstract

Chinese aerospace conglomerates AVIC, CASC, CASIC and COMAC have drawn upon a human capital strategy that hinges upon a solid foundation of research and development. Most importantly, their R&D employees have a high degree of work autonomy on the basis that industry founders’ implemented western work procedure and practice that was acquired first-hand within leading institutions. Building on the relationship between autonomy and innovation at the individual, team and corporate level, we elaborate using an in-depth company case study investigating the implication on intrinsic motivation as well as the continuity and change driven by Chinese economic reform.

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

  • über 102.000 Bücher
  • über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

  • Automobil + Motoren
  • Bauwesen + Immobilien
  • Business IT + Informatik
  • Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
  • Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
  • Finance + Banking
  • Management + Führung
  • Marketing + Vertrieb
  • Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
  • Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

  • über 67.000 Bücher
  • über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

  • Bauwesen + Immobilien
  • Business IT + Informatik
  • Finance + Banking
  • Management + Führung
  • Marketing + Vertrieb
  • Versicherung + Risiko




Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

  • über 67.000 Bücher
  • über 390 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

  • Automobil + Motoren
  • Bauwesen + Immobilien
  • Business IT + Informatik
  • Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
  • Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
  • Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe




 

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now
previous chapter The Entrepreneurial State in Innovation
next chapter Employee Involvement in the Age of Marketization
Appendix
Available only for authorised users
Footnotes
1
Kasper (1982) provided a description of the autonomy among SOEs in Sichuan and Shanghai during the early reform period.
 
2
Herzberg (1966) explained that salary was one of the characteristics of work leading to job dissatisfaction.
 
3
The headquarters could coordinate various subsidiaries in the production of a system; in other words, different subsidiary units could be assigned to take responsibility for a specific sub-system within a complex project.
 
4
Vallerand et al. (2003) defined harmonious passion as “the autonomous internalization of an activity, making it part of one’s identity and thus creating a sense of personal enjoyment and free choice about pursuing the activity”. In other words, those who considered their jobs as harmonious passion have internalized work activities or have accepted them as important and without any contingencies attached.
 
5
The work method autonomy relates to the freedom in choosing the strategies to tackle the task while the work schedule autonomy relates to the choice of work timings and durations. The work criteria autonomy, on the other hand, allows employees to adopt the appropriate criteria used for evaluating their performance.
 
6
The most highly cited aerospace journals consisted of a set of 32 journals, including Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics. These high-impact journals were read by engineers in China via online database.
 
7
US publication, however, embodies research of the current technological frontier, while Chinese aerospace publication is high in terms of total number.
 
8
It should be pointed out that there was a tight monitoring system for new recruits, i.e. daily email reports to the technical and administrative project leaders.
 
9
As contrast to radical innovation, incremental innovation involves a lower degree of technical and market uncertainties since it aims to make small or relatively minor changes and improvement that do not alter in a substantial way the basic underlying design concepts.
 
10
China Spacesat reported that 30% of its employees involved in research and development in 2015 (see China Spacesat Annual Report 2015).
 
11
Other related parties include local and global suppliers as well as SOE investors e.g. AVIC, Shanghai Guosheng Group, China Aluminum, Baosteel Group and China Sinochem.
 
Literature
Bendoly, E., Bharadwaj, A., & Bharadwaj, S. (2012). Complementary drivers of new product development performance: Cross functional coordination, information system capability, and intelligence quality. Production and Operations Management, 21(4), 653–667.CrossRef
Bendoly, E., & Hur, D. (2007). Bipolarity in reactions to operational constraints: OM bugs under an OB lens. Journal of Operations Management, 25(1), 1–13.CrossRef
Bendoly, E., & Prietula, M. (2008). In the zone: The role of evolving skill and transitional workload on motivation and realized performance in operational tasks. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 28(12), 1130–1152.CrossRef
Braverman, H. (1974/1998). Labour and monopoly capital: The degradation of work in the twentieth century. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Breaugh, J. A. (1985). The measurement of work autonomy. Human Relations, 38, 551–570.CrossRef
Burns, T., & Stalker, G. (1961/1994). The management of innovation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chen, J., Neubaum, D. O., & Reilly, R. R. (2015). The relationship between team autonomy and new product development performance under different levels of technological turbulence. Journal of Operations Management, 33(1), 83–96.CrossRef
Chirkov, V. I., Ryan, R. M., & Sheldon, K. M. (2011). Human autonomy in cross-cultural context: Perspectives on the psychology of agency, freedom and well-being. London: Springer.CrossRef
Christensen, C. (1997). The innovator’s dilemma: When new technologies cause great firms to fail. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Dill, W. R. (1958). Environment as an influence on managerial autonomy. Administrative Science Quarterly, 2(4), 409–433.CrossRef
Du, W., & Song, S. (2013). Information needs analysis of the aerospace discipline. Aslib Proceedings, 65(4), 376–387.CrossRef
Erickson, A. S. (2014). ‘China’s space development history. A comparison of the rocket and satellite sectors. Acta Astronautica, 103, 142–167.CrossRef
Feldman, S. P. (1989). The broken wheel: The inseparability of autonomy and control in innovation within organizations. Journal of Management Studies, 26(2), 83–102.CrossRef
Fernández, J. A., & Fernández–Stembridge, L. (2007). China’s state owned enterprise reforms: An industrial and CEO approach. London: Routledge.
Gerwin, D. (1999). Team empowerment in new product development. Business Horizons, 42(2), 29–36.
Haas, M. (2010). The double-edged swords of autonomy and external knowledge: Team effectiveness in a multinational organization. Academy of Management Journal, 53(5), 989–1008.CrossRef
Hackman, J. R., & Oldham, G. R. (1975). Development of the job diagnostic survey. Journal of Applied Psychology, 60(2), 159–170.CrossRef
Hackman, R., & Oldham, G. R. (1980). Work redesign. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Herzberg, F. (1966). Work and the nature of man. Cleveland: World Publishing Company.
Huang, Y. (2008). Capitalism with Chinese characteristics. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef
Karasek, R. A. (1979). Job demands, job decision latitude, and mental strain. Implications for job redesign. Administrative Science Quarterly, 24, 285–308.CrossRef
Kasper, W. (1982). Note on the Sichuan experiment. The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, 7(1), 163–172.CrossRef
Koys, D. J., & DeCotiis, T. A. (1991). Inductive measures of psychological climate. Human Relations, 44(3), 265–285.CrossRef
Langfred, C. W. (2000). The paradox of self-management: individual and group autonomy in work groups. Journal of Organizational Behaviour, 21(5), 563–585.CrossRef
Langfred, C. W. (2004). Too much of a good thing? Negative effects of high trust and individual autonomy in self-managing teams. Academy of Management Journal, 47(3), 385–399.CrossRef
Langfred, C. W. (2005). Autonomy and performance in teams: The multilevel moderating effect of task interdependence. Journal of Management, 31(4), 513–529.CrossRef
Legault, L., & Inzlicht, M. (2013). Self-determination, self-regulation, and the brain: Autonomy improves performance by enhancing neuro affective responsiveness to self-regulation failure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105(1), 123–138.CrossRef
Liu, D., Chen, X. P., & Yao, X. (2011). From autonomy to creativity: A multilevel investigation of the mediating role of harmonious passion. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96(2), 294–309.CrossRef
Liu, J. Y. (2013). Zhongguo Hangtian Shiye Fazhan de Zhexue Sixiang. Beijing: Peking University Press.
Loher, B. T., Noe, R. A., Moeller, N. L., & Fitzgerald, M. P. (1985). A meta-analysis of the relation of job characteristics to job satisfaction. Journal of Applied Psychology, 70(2), 280–289.CrossRef
Luo, W. S. (2015). Public employees get salary increase. China Daily, 20 January 2015.
Maslow, A. (1954). Motivation and personality. New York: Harper and Brothers.
Mazzucato, M. (2014). The entrepreneurial state: Debunking public vs private sectors myths. London: Anthem Press.
McCelland, D. C. (1960). The achieving society. Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand.
McGregor, D. (1957/1960). The human side of enterprise. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Mills, P. K., & Ungson, G. R. (2003). Reassessing the limits of structural empowerment: Organizational constitution and trust as controls. Academy of Management Review, 28(1), 143–153.
Morgeson, F. P., & Humphrey, S. E. (2006). The Work Design Questionnaire (WDQ): Developing and validating a comprehensive measure for assessing job design and the nature of work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91(6), 1321–1339CrossRef
Mortimer, J. T., & Finch, M. D. (1983). Autonomy as a source of self esteem in adolescence. Paper presented at the 1983 American Sociological Association Meeting, Detriot.
Nicholson, N. (1984). A theory of work role transitions. Administrative Science Quarterly, 29(2), 172–191.CrossRef
Oldham, G. R., & Cummings, A. (1996). Employee creativity: Personal and contextual factors at work. Academy of Management Journal, 39(3), 607–655.CrossRef
Patanakul, P., Chen, J., & Lynn, G. S. (2012). Autonomous teams and new product development. Journal of Productivity and Innovation Management, 29(5), 734–750.CrossRef
Spector, P.E. (1986). Perceived control by employees: A meta-analysis of studies concerning autonomy and participation at work. Human Relations, 39(11), 1005–1016.CrossRef
Stewart, G. L., & Barrick, M. R. (2000). Team structure and performance: Assessing the mediating role of intrateam process and the moderating role of task type. The Academy of Management Journal, 43(2), 135–148.CrossRef
Tam, O. K. (2002). Ethical issues in the evolution of corporate governance in China. Journal of Business Ethics, 37(3), 303–320.CrossRef
Thompson, V. (1965). Bureaucracy and innovation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 10(1), 1–20.CrossRef
Tsang, D. (2015). Entrepreneurial creativity in a virtual world. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.CrossRef
Tsang, D. (2016). Unpublished telephone interview with a Chinese aerospace professional based in Beijing. Transcript prepared by Amanda Lu.
Väänänen, A., Pahkin, K., Huuhtanen, P., Kivimäki, M., Vahtera, J., Theorell, T., & Kalimo, R. (2005). Are intrinsic motivational factors of work associated with functional incapacity similarly regardless of the country? Epidemiol Community Health, 59(10), 858–863.CrossRef
Vallerand, R. J., Blanchard, C. M., Mageau, G. A., Koestner, R., Ratelle, C. F., Léonard M., Gagné, M., & Marsolais, J. (2003). Les passions de l’âme: On obsessive and harmonious passion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(4), 756–767.CrossRef
Vallerand, R. J. (2012). The role of passion in sustainable psychological well-being. Psychology of Well-Being: Theory, Research and Practice, 2(1), 1–21.CrossRef
Van Mierlo, H., Rutte, C. G., Kompier, M. A. J., & Seinen, B. (2001). Autonomous teamwork and psychological well-being. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 10(3), 291–301.CrossRef
Van Mierlo, H., Rutte, C. G., Kompier, M. A. J., & Doorewaard, J. A. M. C. (2005). Self-managing teamwork and psychological well-being: Review of a multilevel research domain. Group and Organization Management, 30(2), 211–235.CrossRef
Warr, P. B. (1994). A conceptual framework for the study of work and mental health. Work and Stress’, 8(2), 84–97.CrossRef
Zhou, J. (1998). Feedback valence, feedback style, task autonomy, and achievement orientation: Interactive effects on creative performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83(2), 261–276.CrossRef
Metadata
Title
Work Autonomy and Product Innovation
Author
Denise Tsang
Copyright Year
2017
Book
Industrial Democracy in the Chinese Aerospace Industry

Print ISBN: 978-1-137-58022-1

Electronic ISBN: 978-1-137-58023-8

Copyright Year: 2017

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58023-8_3