Consideration of the Role of Guanxi in the Ethical Judgments of Chinese Managers

The importance of personal connections and relationships, or guanxi when doing business with the Chinese is widely acknowledged amongst Western academics and business managers alike. However, aspects of guanxi-related behaviours in the workplace are often misunderstood by Westerners with some going so far as to equate guanxi with forms of corruption. This study extends earlier study of Tan and Snell: 2002, Journal of Business Ethics 41(December), 361–384) in its investigation of the underlying modes of moral reasoning in ethical decisions relating to aspects of guanxi, amongst Hong Kong managers. Managers’ ethical judgements and underlying moral reasoning relating to a series of guanxi-related behaviours were recorded. Content analysis yielded categories that correspond with categories of moral reasoning described in Kohlberg’s (1969, Handbook of Socialization Theory and Research, Rand McNally, Chicago, pp. 347–480) model. As hypothesised, it was found that harsher ethical evaluations of guanxi-related behaviours were positively correlated with the stage of moral reasoning. The most common types of reasoning were those corresponding to Kohlberg’s stages four and five which relate to moral reasoning based on law and order, and on reason rather than emotion. Stage 6, concerned with more universalistic approaches to moral reasoning, was utilised considerably less, consistent with popularly held beliefs of the relativistic nature of Chinese ethics.     

Sentiment effects on Chinese share prices and savings deposits: The post-2003 experience

This paper examines the importance of sentiment effects on asset allocation decisions in mainland China and beyond. Rising stock market sentiment appears to have negatively and significantly impacted Chinese savings account growth over the 2003–2007 period. Investor sentiment also exerted consistently significant effects on the discounts attached to Chinese B-shares, H-shares and ADRs by foreign investors. Although the sample period is limited by availability of the sentiment data, the indicated effects remain most robust when controlling for relative stock market performance, liquidity levels, expected exchange rate movements, and such ‘indirect’ sentiment measures as market and firm-specific price-earnings ratios.     

A Bayesian Model for Estimating Census Undercount,Taking Emigration Data from Foreign Censuses*

The new method of measuring net undercount in a census of population is a variant of demographic analysis and is founded in the belief that the most reliable counts of people are the counts of births and deaths. It has been applied to the 1991 census of England and Wales (E&W). The method has two distinctive features. The first is that it bases its estimates of numbers of emigrants on figures of persons born here and recorded as residents in the 1990–91 censuses of other countries. The corresponding data on immigrants are taken from our own census. The method does not therefore require the data on migratory flows that are an essential component of conventional demographic analysis. The second feature is the Bayesian approach in which (1) each of 30 uncertain elements in the calculations is given an a priori error distribution and (2) three empirical constraints are imposed on the sex-age profile of percentage net undercount. This, in conjunction with a Monte Carlo process, generates an error distribution for net undercount. These merits of the method are offset by the demerit that the calculations must await results from the censuses of the other countries in which substantial numbers of our emigrants reside.     

An Empirical Investigation of the Ethics Position Questionnaire in the People's Republic of China

While many studies have investigated the ethical perceptions, ideologies and value systems of the Chinese, few studies have focused on mainland China, and even fewer have examined regional differences within China. This study examines the factor structure of Forsyth's (1980) Ethics Position Questionnaire in a sample of managers from the PRC. According to Forsyth, individual differences in Relativism and Idealism influence judgements of moral issues (Forsyth, 1980). In a sample of 115 managers, results show that two similar constructs to those described by Forsyth do exist in the Chinese sample. However the precise interpretation of the item groupings through a Chinese perspective, may reveal some discrete areas of difference in the labelling of these constructs. The study also finds that managers in the South of China scored significantly higher in Idealism than managers in the North. Results are presented and implications for future research are discussed.     

Regional differences in business ethics in the People’s Republic of China: A multi-dimensional approach to the effects of modernisation

This paper investigates the influence of modernisation on the moral judgements of 211 managers in the People’s Republic of China, based on their responses to a series of vignettes depicting potentially unethical behaviour in organisations. Since modernisation can take many forms, this paper takes a multi dimensional approach to examining levels of modernisation in different provinces in China. Three different measures are used, believed to represent different aspects of the modernisation process. These include the level of industrialisation of various provinces, the level of marketisation, or progress toward a market-based economy, and a new measure of Westernisation, or the extent to which individuals adopt aspects of Western lifestyle and materialism. This latter measure is developed and tested in the present study. Statistically significant associations between these three measures of modernisation and managers’ moral judgements were observed and the implications of these findings are discussed.