Working conditions mainly refer to the working climate and working states subjectively perceived by workers in their organizations. An organization or a unit for work, as an important carrier of social institutions, influences and regulates employees’ behaviors mainly through the unique social environment or organizational culture it creates. In Europe, a number of studies on working conditions have been conducted, making it an important interdisciplinary area. In China, this field of research has been gradually built on the basis of the participation of Chinese employees, and currently working conditions are mainly examined from four aspects: working time, workers’ compensation, workplaces, and employee participation.

As we know, organizations for work are the dominant form of various organizations in society, and are places in which the majority of social members spend their time. People have both social life and working life. Work constitutes the most important part of people’s life as it brings us complete satisfaction and sufficient meaning, and in the meantime, work by itself also plays a role in incentivizing people. It may be beyond their ability to elaborate on all the principles relating to their workplaces, but they can acutely perceive satisfaction or dissatisfaction from their daily working life. Only when employees regard their organizations as “homes” would they be more willing to integrate themselves into these units. In other words, they are more willing to devote their efforts to units with good working conditions. It is also in this sense that the working climate and working states perceived by people at their workplaces can exert significant impacts on their behaviors in the organizations.

Theoretically, the quality and efficiency of economic growth depend on the quality of laborers carrying out economic activities, as well as upon the quality of working conditions created by organizers of these economic activities. Good working conditions create high-quality performance, and are a prerequisite and condition for high-quality development of a society. Fulfilling high-quality development in China requires not only innovations in working conditions but also improvement in their performance, which lay an important foundation for the current development of China.

A huge number of studies have shown that at the microscopic and individual level, good working conditions provide people with necessary material support and a precondition to attain a sense of well-being and satisfaction. In a good working environment for self-growth and satisfaction, workers obtain necessary social belongingness to satisfy their emotional needs, better fulfill their self-worth and unleash their potential in an organization. At the mesoscopic and organizational level, good working conditions facilitate the construction of a fine organizational culture, and improve members’ recognition and satisfaction towards organizations, thus improving efficiency, and accelerating innovation advances and development in organizations. At the macroscopic level, a good working environment promotes the sound and steady socio-economic development in the context of a “New Normal” stage in China, and in the meantime, provides reasonable expectations of high-quality development.

By disciplinary standards, working conditions are an important area in sociological research, and particularly, relevant studies conducted from the perspective of sociology have distinct disciplinary strengths. It is also a promising research route to incorporate sociological theories, methodologies, and views into working condition studies. Such a route contributes to deeper understanding of structural characteristics of changes in working environments and mechanisms behind from an academic point of view. In addition, “working conditions” are more relevant to real life and connect social members with various organizations for work, and therefore creating a good working environment has become an important aspect of social governance at both macroscopic and microscopic levels.  

Furthermore, in-depth research on working conditions lays a good academic and methodological foundation for organizational assessment. Indeed, adopting scientific approaches to evaluate the conditions of organizations plays a significant role in improving organizational efficiency, and employees’ satisfaction, fulfilment, and recognition of organizations, as well as their sense of belongingness.

In the meantime, we learnt during the research process that any analysis of Chinese organizational structures should take into account of other unprofessional, structural factors of organizations. Overlooking the factors is ignoring some of the most essential and decisive structures and factors in Chinese organizations. Despite the unprecedented changes in today’s China, “units”, either as a “historical fact” or an “objective existence” in the current social structure, are exerting subtle yet vital impacts on employees’ behavioral structures, even the behavior structures of the entire organizations. Only by looking into the area can we understand Chinese organizations and working conditions at a deeper level.

In fact, when observing and assessing working conditions in Chinese organizations from the perspectives of working time, workers’ compensation, workplaces, and employee participation, we should also carefully consider and analyze whether the institutional design and arrangements are conducive to solidarity and integration, protection and tolerance, as well as structural and functional optimization within the organizations. Only by adopting a systemic thinking can we make in-depth observations of working conditions and support our analyses with a solid theoretical and practical foundation.

It is worth noting that when we apply scientific sampling methods to “generalize” the subjective feelings of individual employees as those of employees from different groups as a whole, then the observed subjective perceptions are characterized by “aggregated” social sentiments; in other words, they have become an observable “social fact” that reflects the subjective perceptions of the entire group. Based on the aggregated subjective feelings, we can analyze, discern and evaluate working conditions in an organization.

Given the academic significance and application value of working conditions research, our research team has paid attention to the research in this field ever since its early days and made adequate preparations for analyzing and exploring the working conditions in China. Since 2014, we have actively organized six nationwide questionnaire-based surveys, and on that basis, built a database on China’s working conditions research. We have carried out extensive field studies and obtained real cases of organizations suitable for in-depth qualitative analyses. These efforts have enriched the data for qualitative research on China’s working conditions and made us feel we were actually engaged in the study. On this basis, we published a monograph and an array of research papers, and created and produced a documentary titled Working Conditions in China: Conditions for High-Quality Development, which was rolled out in Chinese and English versions. Built on data derived from our field research, this website presents an in-depth observation and analysis of working conditions in China from various angles, in hope of promoting the research in the field by putting theories into practice. We sincerely hope that this goal and our academic mission could be fulfilled through our constant efforts.