(How) business context matters: understanding tech workers’ occupational culture in China’s Internet industry

Purpose: This study aims to investigate tech workers’ occupational culture in China’s Internet industry and explain how the business context shapes the occupational culture. Design/methodology/approach: This case study of tech workers’ occupational culture in China’s Internet industry uses focused interviews with 101 workers for data collection and qualitative coding for data analysis. Findings: This research reveals two shared values, “optimising user experience” and “reliable delivering”, among Chinese tech workers and explains how the two values perpetuate their overwork norm and practices. It shows how the dominant user-oriented, go-big-or-go-home business model in China’s Internet industry urges management to bring pressure from the product market inside the work organisations to reconfigure tech workers’ occupational culture. Originality/value: Extant studies on IT occupational culture (ITOC) have paid inadequate attention to how its cross-cultural variations are developed from specific social contexts. This research contributes to the literature by illustrating how ITOC in China’s Internet companies is configured in the business context of China’s Internet industry. Contrasting with existing studies that mainly emphasise ITOC as intrinsic values among information technology personnel, this article reveals how ITOC is shaped by extrinsic values from the product market.