Value-based work motivation: the East Asian experience

Abstract

The article examines the experience of value-based work motivation in modernized East Asian societies and economies of the Confucian tradition. The author considers the ontological, anthropological, civilization-cultural, socio-psychological, political-economic and applied (on the cases of Japan and China) aspects of the above mentioned problem. Performed an interdisciplinary analysis of the worldview and value-based foundations of work motivation, and various characteristic features of the labor and corporate ethics of the Confucian-tradition countries, which contributed to the phenomenal success of their post-war reconstruction, and economic and social modernization. Applied the fractal-synergistic method developed by the author, along with various tools of social philosophy, political economy, psychology, and modernization theory. The author shows that the present mode of thinking (and the corresponding value-based motivation) of a typical Western person, based on the dichotomy of the individual “I” and the outside world, turns out to be significantly more conservative and resistant to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, associated with the widespread introduction of artificial intelligence and the blurring of boundaries between inorganic, living and digital realities, than the traditionally holistic consciousness of China and the “Confucian tigers”, which perceives nature, society and human in an organic unity. This phenomenon is in sharp contrast to the eras of the first three industrial revolutions, when the West, primarily the Protestant West was the undisputed global leader in technological progress, the introduction of innovations, and the intensive growth of labor productivity. It is proved that in the newly industrialized countries of East Asia, the reformed and modernized Confucianism actually acts as a consolidating positive civil religion and a value-motivational driver of dynamic socio-economic development. The author evaluates the relevance of the East Asian experience of the value-based work motivation in the context of the transformation of societal values in Ukraine and the imperatives of the post-war reconstruction of this country’s economy. It is concluded that the communitarian-solidarist system of labor ethics inherent in East Asian countries has a significant potential for its implementation in Ukraine.