The leader–member relationship has been identified as a key determinant of successful working relationships and business outcomes in China. A high-quality leader–member relationship helps managers and employees to meet the demands they face and gives them the opportunity to develop socially, emotionally and morally. Such relationships form the basis of the overall well-being and success of the organisation. This article contributes to relationally oriented leadership theories and more specifically to the leader–member exchange theory by examining the theory in the context (...) of Western expatriate managers and Chinese employees in China. The first aim of the study is to analyse the similarities and differences between the LMX theory, which owes its origins to Western corporate experience, and the social and moral norms of guanxi, a crucial element in the Chinese value system. Since Westerners and Chinese people can give different interpretations to guanxi, the second aim of the article is to discuss the ethical challenges to the Western manager arising from guanxi. The findings of this study have implications not only for China, but also for other Chinese communities where guanxi is endorsed and practised. (shrink)

While business ethics has generated a great deal of research internationally over the last few decades, academic reviews of the business ethics literature remain limited. Moreover, there has been little attempt to date to analyze this literature specifically in the Greater China region, which has been experiencing rapid socioeconomic growth and dynamic evolution of business ethics in recent decades. This paper addresses this research gap by undertaking a comprehensive and critical appraisal of the business ethics literature on Greater China. In (...) particular, it maps out the existing research findings, identifies limitations in methodology, and suggests future directions for business ethics research in this region. The findings indicate that the scholarly interests cover 24 research themes, including corporate social responsibility and social performance; ethical beliefs, judgment, values, decision-making, and culture; workplace ethics and behavior; marketing ethics and consumer behavior; and sustainability. This review reveals a growing imbalance between empirical and conceptual/theoretical studies on business ethics. In addition, the published works covered in this review heavily rely on survey method and convenience sampling, with a predominant focus on a single individual level of analysis. Importantly, this study identifies four directions for future research: contextualized theoretical development, addressing multilevel research, developing research design tailored to the Chinese context, and ensuring more diversified and rigorous data collection. (shrink)

Background Ethical nurse leaders play a pivotal role in helping their nurse employees deliver high-quality healthcare services. However, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of the mediating and moderating mechanisms by which ethical leadership improves job performance. Purpose This study aims to investigate: (1) whether ethical leadership would enhance nurses’ job performance; (2) whether learning goal orientation acts as a mediator; and (3) whether co-worker support operates as a moderator. Participants and research context We collected two-wave data from 218 nurses (...) working in hospitals located in Jiangsu, China. Research design A time-lagged study based on an online survey design was utilized for data collection between September 2022 and January 2023. PROCESS Model 5 was employed to test the research hypotheses. Ethical considerations We obtained ethics approval from the University Ethics Committee. The nursing participants were assured that their survey responses were completely anonymous. Results and discussion Ethical leadership is not significantly correlated with job performance. However, ethical leadership has an indirect impact on nurses’ job performance through the mediator (learning goal orientation). Moreover, co-worker support moderates the relationship between ethical leadership and job performance. Conclusion The conceptual model provides us with a fine-grained understanding of the relationship between ethical leadership and nurses’ job performance. We highlight the mediating role of learning goal orientation and the moderating role of co-worker support. We suggest that healthcare organizations should devote more efforts to promoting ethical leadership, co-worker support, and learning goal orientation. (shrink)

Considering failure is a common result in project management, how to effectively learn from failure has becoming a more and more important topic for managers. Drawing on the goal orientation theory and grief recovery theory, the purpose of this paper is to clarify the impact of learning goal orientation on learning from failure. Furthermore, this paper examines the mediating effect of two negative emotion coping orientations and the moderating effect of positive grieving in this relationship. The results indicated that: A (...) learning goal orientation is positively related to learning from failure; As a dual-path mediation model, restoration orientation and loss orientation mediate the relationship between a learning goal orientation and learning from failure; and Positive grieving negatively moderates the relationship between a loss orientation and learning from failure. (shrink)

Research on guanxi is conducted principally within the disciplines of anthropology, business studies and sociology. It typically takes the form of empirical case studies, applications of extrinsic theory and literature reviews cum trend reports. The present paper, on the other hand, provides an analysis of guanxi in consideration of its elemental relations, components and properties. Discussion indicates the limitations of treatments of guanxi in terms of trust, guanxi bases, tie-strength and the conveyance of influence and information. Having established the characteristic (...) features of guanxi discussion then turns to how it may be an option or choice of commitment for persons and groups in contemporary China, its form and role in marketized exchanges, and how the efficiency of guanxi may be characterized. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Although scholars have long been interested in distinguishing gift giving from bribery, the impact of the degree of guanxi between a giver and a recipient on this distinction remains unclear. Drawing on a bystander perspective, this paper investigates how people distinguish between two types of giving behavior: gift giving and bribing. In three studies, we examined how guanxi, the price of a present, and the motivation for giving a present influence people’s perception of a present. The results largely supported (...) our expectation that presents were more likely to be considered a bribe when guanxi utility was high, if the present held high economic value, and if the giving motivation was instrumental-oriented. Implications of our findings for future research and business practitioners in Chinese culture are discussed. (shrink)

This paper examines dispositional sources of workplace guanxi and the mediating role of workplace guanxi on the affectivity and job satisfaction relationship. Data were collected from 808 respondents in multiple industries in a city in China’s northeast. The study found that both positive affectivity and negative affectivity have an effect on supervisor–subordinate guanxi and co-worker guanxi, which supports the proposition that workplace guanxi has a dispositional source. Supervisor–subordinate guanxi has a positive relationship with job satisfaction, although co-worker guanxi is not (...) significantly related to job satisfaction. The research also found a mediating role of supervisor–subordinate guanxi on the affectivity and job satisfaction relationship, which suggests that supervisor–subordinate guanxi can extend the influence of affectivity to job satisfaction. Taken together, these results suggest that in a high power distance country such as China, supervisor–subordinate guanxi plays a more important role than co-worker guanxi in influencing job satisfaction. Theoretically, this study suggests the as yet unexplored possibility of dispositional antecedents of workplace guanxi and the role of workplace guanxi on the relationship between dispositions and workplace attitudes such as job satisfaction. (shrink)