The Comparison of Work Ethic between Madura’s and Chinese Presented to fulfill Cross Cultural Understanding Assignment

I. The meaning of Work Ethic
Ethic comes from Greek (Ethos) which means habit, behavior, personality, character, and faith in something. Ethic means a certain and based attitude which draw the relation pattern between human with their selves and their society. Work Ethic is ascribed to one’s personal moral tendencies to work. It is the reflection from the life‘s attitude, it is also the reflection of life’s vision which is oriented to the transcendent values. It involves the attitude, behavior, respect, passion, commitment, communication, and interaction how one person gets along with others, such as honesty, doing a job well, valuing what one does, having a sense of purpose and feeling or being a part of a greater vision, integrity, and humility. Work Ethics are intrinsic, they come from within, and everyone has their own pattern of work ethics. In fact, work ethic is experiencing of construction and reconstruction by society. It means that the internal factor of human’s work ethic is also influenced by the external factor of human life (social milieu).
The function and the purpose of Work Ethic is the certain impeller of action and individual’s activities, it also has some functions to;
• To impel an action
• To passionate an activity
• To move up the work’s action (it depends on the amounts of motivation)

II. Work Ethic of Madura’s
Almost all of Madura’s people are the trader, and some Madura’s people leave their hometown to risk their life in other area, based on resident census in 2000 that 52 % of Madura’s people leave their island to find job in other towns. Related to their vision of life that so close to the Islamic doctrine, Madura people apply their religion doctrine to their individual and social life, and also in the understanding of Work Ethic. Because of that, the Islamic identity is the prominent thing for most of Madura’s people. Appropriate to the Islamic doctrine that they embrace, they run their life to reach the happiness of world and hereafter. The activity of aekhteyar (to make effort) become the most important thing by Madura’s people, because this approach will give bigger opportunity to get succeed. In accordance to the explanation above, we can see that the work ethic of Madura people is interconnected to the Islamic doctrine.
The work ethic of Madura’s People is known so high, because they think that work is a part of their religious service. Here below are the characteristics of Madura’s people related to their work ethic:
1 Madura’s work ethic is indicated very high, because impulsively, they assume that work is part from their religion service according to Islam.
2 Madura’s people become more energetic when they feel free from their social environment.
3 A few of Madura’s Vocabulary which have typical meaning to work ethic are :
a. Bharenteng (very energetic),
b. Bhajeng (diligent),
c. Cakang (handy),
d. Parekas (full of initiative), tangginas (active),
e. Abhanteng tolang (work hard)
f. Abhabha’ (work by conscripting all of abilities)
g. Aceko (work energetically with their busy hands)
h. Acemeng (work diligently till cannot be calm)
i. Apokpak (do the two or more jobs at the same time)
j. Asepsap (work by wandering around)
4 Madura’s people believe that they have to work efficiently and effectively
5 Madura’s people are known as the most diligent and energetic mankind
6 Madura’s people convince that they are not allowed to waste their time in their valuable short life; they appreciate their time as good as possible.

III. Work Ethic of Chinese
In Indonesia for specifically, the most traders beside Madura’s people are the Chinese. They come in Indonesia in about 16th till 19th century. As the same with Madura people, Chinese who leave their hometown to go abroad have the ability to trade, they have some supporting characteristics which support their condition, and they are independent, thrift, hard worker, eager spirit to make effort, and they build strong ethnic connection. In their vision of life, they believe to the faith and stability, but at the same time they consider that faith can be change by doing thrift, good effort and work hard. Sometimes, Chinese live exclusively in their group; this attitude is not because they are solitary, but as the minority in foreign country, they feel more comfortable if they live together with their same ethnic.
Here are some characteristics of Chinese leading to their work ethic:
Based on the book written by Johanes Arifin Wijaya entitled Karakter Naga, he wrote that there are some characteristics internalizing to Chinese leading them to those wonderful succeed in trading world, that characters are came from the belief of their forefathers, to always learn the characteristics of dragon.
Dragon to the Chinese is a symbol of productivity and renewing, so it brings positive influences to all of creatures in the world.
They also believe that work is divided into three dispositions; there are hard work, smart work, and heart work. They believe that work harder is not the only way to get succeed, because human have limited resources, for especially time and power, for the reason that, Chinese people beside do the heart work and smart work beside hard work, human have to do smart work, we have to think smart way to do our job, find a smart strategy, tactic, and technology to ease our job and to rest our life efficiently and effectively to get the maximum result of it. Here are the eight characters of dragon that become the references by the Chinese:
1. Work Hard
2. Full of motivation
3. Confidence and Honesty
4. Family hood
5. Positive thinking
6. Affection
7. Handy to catch opportunity
8. Continuity in learning
Dragon is considered as the soul of change that reflects wisdom and power, the concept of change the dragon is called as Wu Chang. Wu Chang tells that everything is change for sure, as the change of butterfly from caterpillar to chrysalis then come up as beautiful butterfly, so do human, they born as baby then grow up to the child, teenage, adult and get old. This change concept is developing for every times, because of that the proverb that we hear for times about it that “Tomorrow must be better than today”.

IV. The Comparison of work ethic between Madura’s and Chinese
Discussing the work ethic of Madura’s people and Chinese is interesting, because as we see in the economy world, the two ethnic explained above dominate big part of business world in Indonesia. To compare two work ethics of Madura’s people and Chinese, we have to understand their similarities and differences.
The similarities are found in the characteristics that they have related to work ethic; some characteristics are written in the table below:

Madura’s People
• Energetic
• Full of motivation
• Work Hard
• Honesty
• Diligent, etc.
• Most both of them chose to trade as their job

Chinese



The difference is found in the belief that they embrace related to their work ethic:
Madura’s people Chinese
Their work ethic is influenced by Islamic doctrine, Appropriate to the Islamic doctrine that they embrace; they run their life to reach the happiness of world and hereafter. The activity of aekhteyar (to make effort) become the most important thing by Madura people, because this approach will give bigger opportunity to get succeed. The work ethic of Madura People is known so high, because they think that work is a part of their religious service. In their vision of life, they believe to the faith and stability, but at the same time they consider that faith can be change by doing thrift, good effort and work hard, they also make stretch ethnic connection, some characteristics internalizing to Chinese leading them to those wonderful succeed in trading world, that characters are came from the belief of their forefathers, to always learn the characteristics of dragon. They also believe that work is divided into three dispositions; there are hard work, smart work, and heart work.