Faculty of Business Administration

MMI Brown Bag Seminar

Doing Creative Jobs Increases Life Satisfaction: A Self-Learning Perspective”

Prof. Zhijun CHEN

Academic Director of MBA program

Head of the Department of Human Resources Management

Shanghai University of Finance & Economics

Abstract

Ever since Taylor proposed the idea of science management, theories and studies about how to design jobs have proliferated in the field of organizational behavior. Within this body of literature, classical perspectives are predominantly rooted in a motivational paradigm and focus on issues like how to balance job demands with available resources. A recent example is the relational work design perspective, which also emerges from this motivational paradigm. Meanwhile, findings across a number of research streams have suggested that job characteristics can have implications beyond individual motivation, which pertain to a self-learning perspective of work design effects. We build upon this self-learning perspective to study how one job characteristics, required creativity at work, determines individual well-being such as life satisfaction. Findings from two field studies and one scenario manipulation largely supported the self-learning perspective.

Date: 03 December, 2019 (Tuesday)

Time: 11:00~12:00

Venue: E22-2010

A Short Biography

Zhijun Chen is the Academic Director of the MBA program and Head of the Department of Human Resources Management at College of Business at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (SUFE) and a professor of the department. He is also an honorary research fellow of the University of Western Australia. Currently, Zhijun is an Associate Editor of the Human Relations and the Rep-at-large for International Association of Chinese Management Research. He sits in the editorial review board of internationally leading journals such as Asian Pacific Journal of Management and Journal of Business Research. Zhijun is interested in studying employee proactive behavior, coworker influence, and different forms of leadership styles. His work has been published at the Journal of Applied Psychology, Organization Science, Personnel Psychology, Journal of Management, and Journal of Organizational Behavior. He teaches courses such as organizational behavior, strategic human resources management and social psychology for different levels of students.