The Efficient Heritage of the Craftsmanship Spirit in China: A Configuration Effect of Family Motivation and Organizational Learning

Abstract

In China, cultivation of the craftsmanship spirit is strongly advocated, but little attention is devoted to whether and how “working for the family” promotes heritage of this spirit. A configuration model of family motivation and organizational learning is proposed and expounded. Fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) was used to further explore the conditional configuration. The results show that the fitting family motivation to organizational learning is important for promoting heritage of the craftsmanship spirit. There are two paths that promote efficient heritage of this spirit: the institution-led path and the motivation-driven interpretation-led path. For the institution-led path, when apprentices have strong institution learning ability, the anterior-cause condition involves low family motivation, but this factor plays a weak role in promoting efficient heritage of the craftsmanship spirit. In a configuration consisting of intuition, interpretation, integration and institution, family motivation becomes irrelevant, which explains the phenomenon that organizational learning behavior reinforcement leads to a lack of family motivation. For the motivation-driven interpretation-led path, even without regular and institutionalized learning behaviors in the organization, the core conditions of high family motivation and high explanation learning, together with low intuition learning and low integration learning, will promote efficient heritage of the craftsmanship spirit.