This study investigated the business ethics experiences of Australian managers in China, using qualitative methodology to identify themes. Thirty-one Australian managers who had spent on average 8.7 years working in business connected to China participated in in-depth interviews regarding their business ethics experiences in China. Commonly, managers identified issues relating to a broad spectrum which could be labelled "bribery and facilitation". Other repeated themes included requests for visa assistance, employee theft, nepotism and non-adherence to contractual obligations. This study has important (...) implications for helping Australian managers improve the way they approach potential ethical situations in China. Four key coping strategies can be identified from the data: managers spoke of not compromising their own morals, of attempting to understand the motivation of Chinese colleagues, of talking to others and of adhering to company policy. These strategies suggest practical steps may be taken by organisations when training managers for business activities in China. In particular, structuring of mentoring relationships between experienced and less experienced practitioners may be of assistance. Cultural training for managers and clear company policy on contentious issues such as bribery may also be of benefit. The themes identified in the study also have implications for academics researching expatriate business peoples' experiences in China. (shrink)

This paper argues that the personal interview method is particularly appropriate for the kind of exploratory and complicated theory-building research that ethical decision-making, as a topic, represents at present. In doing so, it examines the key tasks of the ethics researcher, the suitability of interviews for obtaining the kind of data needed to accomplish these tasks, and the ensuing problems faced by the interview methodologist. It concludes with suggestions for enhancing the validity and reliability of interview-based ethics research.

These are carefully placed in the context of Chinese society, demonstrating how Confucius responded to the conflicts and pressures of his time and offered ...

This study examines the impact of a social desirability response bias as a personality characteristic (self-deception and impression management) and as an item characteristic (perceived desirability of the behavior) on self-reported ethical conduct. Findings from a sample of college students revealed that self-reported ethical conduct is associated with both personality and item characteristics, with perceived desirability of behavior having the greatest influence on self-reported conduct. Implications for research in business ethics are drawn, and suggestions are offered for reducing the effects (...) of a socially desirable response bias. (shrink)

The deep structure of Confucianism is identified through structuralist analysis in order to provide a conceptual framework for conducting social psychological research in Chinese society. Through understanding and imitating the Way of Heaven (tiendao), Confucians constructed the Way of Humanity (rendao), which consists of two aspects; ethics for ordinary people and ethics for scholars. Ethics for ordinary people adopts the principle of Respecting the Superior for procedural justice and the principle of Favouring the Intimate for distributive justice; the person who (...) occupies the superior position should play the role of decision-maker and should allocate resources by favouring intimate relationships. Because Confucian cosmology suggests that the Way of Humanity corresponds to the Way of Heaven, Confucians required individuals to cultivate themselves with the Way of Humanity. Ethics for scholars further endows Confucian disciples with the mission of benefiting the whole society with the Way of Humanity. (shrink)

"Guanxi" involves interpersonal obligations, which may conflict with other obligations people have that are based on general or abstract moral considerations. In the West, the latter have been widely accepted as the general source of obligations, which is perhaps tied to social changes associated with the rise of capitalism. Recently, Western ethicists have started to reconsider the extent to which personal relationships may form a distinct basis for obligation. In administration and management, salient bases for decision-Making include deontological, consequentialist and (...) personalist ethics. The first may be reflected in a bureaucratic approach, the second in a price system, and the third in arrangements like "guanxi". Each has positive and negative aspects, but problems arise when they lead to conflicting obligations, as may occur for an office holder who has some obligations based in deontological considerations and others based in personal relationships. This is a type of conflict of interest. Such conflicts have been considered in the West, and remedies proposed. Problems arise especially in cases where it is not clear how to prioritise different obligations, and this has been noted as a difficulty in the Chinese legal system. Questions that need to be answered include not only questions about how to deal with conflicting obligations, but also questions about what institutions to accept as giving rise to obligations. Institutions themselves may be problematic not only because of their consequences for economic productivity, but because they are internally incoherent, and this may be manifested in frequent conflicts faced by office holders. (shrink)

The goal of this article is attempting to establish a research tradition of Chinese relationalism on the methodological grounds of constructive realism. Two of Ho’s key concepts, person-in-relations and persons-in-relation, are carefully examined and reinterpreted. Three of my theoretical models, namely, my Face and Favor model , Confucian ethics for ordinary people , and a conflict resolution model , are conceived of as microworlds for illustrating an account of person-in relations in Chinese culture. The manifestation of Confucian ethics for ordinary (...) people in one’s lifeworld results in the phenomenology of persons-in-relations as depicted by Fei’s differential order or Hsu’s psychosociogram. Applying constructive realism to my models and using the result as a framework for studying Chinese social behavior constitutes Chinese relationalism. (shrink)

This paper examines the impact of Chinese business managers’ moral philosophies on the perception of corrupt payments such as bribery, kickbacks and gift giving. Business managers from Mainland China were selected as target respondents. As hypothesized the survey results generally indicate that moral relativism is a significant predictor of Chinese business managers’ favorable perception of bribery and kickbacks. In examining the attitude toward gift giving, the survey showed that an individual’s attitude toward gift giving was neither affected by their moral (...) relativism nor by their moral idealism, which implies that gift giving is widely accepted as legal practice in business in Chinese cultural society. (shrink)

"Guanxi" involves interpersonal obligations, which may conflict with other obligations people have that are based on general or abstract moral considerations. In the West, the latter have been widely accepted as the general source of obligations, which is perhaps tied to social changes associated with the rise of capitalism. Recently, Western ethicists have started to reconsider the extent to which personal relationships may form a distinct basis for obligation. In administration and management, salient bases for decision-Making include deontological, consequentialist and (...) personalist ethics. The first may be reflected in a bureaucratic approach, the second in a price system, and the third in arrangements like "guanxi". Each has positive and negative aspects, but problems arise when they lead to conflicting obligations, as may occur for an office holder who has some obligations based in deontological considerations and others based in personal relationships. This is a type of conflict of interest. Such conflicts have been considered in the West, and remedies proposed. Problems arise especially in cases where it is not clear how to prioritise different obligations, and this has been noted as a difficulty in the Chinese legal system. Questions that need to be answered include not only questions about how to deal with conflicting obligations, but also questions about what institutions to accept as giving rise to obligations. Institutions themselves may be problematic not only because of their consequences for economic productivity, but because they are internally incoherent, and this may be manifested in frequent conflicts faced by office holders. (shrink)

In China, guanxi is the basis on which Chinese exchange a lifetime of favors, resources, and business leverage. Guanxi is considered a unique construct and a product of Confucian values and the contemporary political and socioeconomic system in Chinese society. With its cultural embeddings guanxi , as the social norm of conduct, functions as complex adaptive systems that expand and interconnect to become well-knit social networks; meanwhile the functions of well-fixing and self-reinforcement of the guanxi networks ( chuens ) are (...) synergetically activated internally, externally, and interactively, which shows their extreme flexibility of adaptation. Taking as a case study an outside direct investment (ODI) Taiwanese firm in China, we address and conduct a survey to examine the effect of guanxi on management. Results of the research suggest that guanxi is not limited to interpersonal links; it is also the switch that activates social networks and that reconciles interpersonal and internetwork mismatches to influence management efficacy. (shrink)

Using a sample of Chinese to-be-listed firms during the period of 2006–2012, this study examines the influence of CEO-auditor dialect sharing (CADS) on pre-IPO audit quality and further investigates the moderating effects of auditor reputation and audit firm industry specialization. On the basis of information in personal identification cards, this study hand-collects data about CADS, and then provides strong and consistent evidence to show that CADS is significantly positively related with discretionary accruals (the inverse proxy for audit quality), suggesting that (...) CADS leads to the collusion between the CEO and the signing auditors, elicits pre-IPO earnings management, and eventually impairs pre-IPO audit quality. Moreover, both auditor reputation and audit firm industry specialization attenuate the positive effect of CADS on discretionary accruals. Furthermore, sensitivity tests suggest that above findings are robust to different measures of CADS and discretionary accruals, and above conclusions still stand after controlling for the endogeneity. Lastly, the findings using the post-IPO sample further validate the negative association between CADS and pre-IPO audit quality. (shrink)

This study examines the influence of auditor-CEO surname sharing on financial misstatement and further investigates whether the above effect depends on hometown relationship and the rarity of surnames, respectively. Using hand-collected data from China, the findings show that ACSS is significantly positively related to financial misstatement, suggesting that the auditor-CEO ancestry membership elicits the collusion and increases the likelihood of financial misstatement. Moreover, ACSS based upon hometown relationship leads to significantly higher likelihood of financial misstatement, compared with ACSS without hometown (...) relationship. Furthermore, the positive relation between ACSS and financial misstatement is more pronounced for rare surnames than for common surnames. The above findings are robust to sensitivity tests on the basis of different measures of ACSS and financial misstatement, and my conclusions are still valid after using the propensity score matching approach to address the endogeneity concerns. (shrink)

우리는 이 논문에서 앙리 베르그손의 작품 『창조적 진화』의 두 원천을 조명해 보고자 한다. 저자가 이 책에서 전개하는 견해는 당대의 과학적 소여들에 대한 분석에 기초하고 있을 뿐 아니라 멘 드 비랑으로부터 라베쏭으로 이어지는 프랑스의 유심론적 흐름에 그 기원을 둔다. 프랑스 유심론이 의식의 고유한 체험을 강조한다면 과학적 인식은 외부 세계에 대한 관찰과 이에 대해 과학자들이 제시하는 설명으로 이루어진다. 이러한 근대과학에 대한 반성과 유심론적 전통의 대조가 『창조적 진화』의 어려움의 원인인 동시에 독창성을 제공한다. 오늘날 우리는 생물학과 물리학의 발달에서 새로운 경향들의 출현으로 인해 베르그손이 논박하고자 (...) 노력했던 기계론적 사유로부터 어느 정도 자유로울 수 있다. 따라서 우리는 이 책의 주된 두 가지 원천을 분석하면서 이를 토대로 베르그손이 거기서 구체화하는 독창적인 사유를 조명해 보고자 한다. (shrink)