Images of the virtuous employee in China's transitional economy

Robin Stanley SNELL, Choo Sin TSENG

Research output: Journal PublicationsJournal Article (refereed)peer-review

27 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We examine contemporary images of employee virtue and managers' perceptions of actual employee conduct in Wuhan, Beijing and Xi'an, drawing on document analysis and structured interviews with 112 respondents in ten case study companies. The image promulgation strategies of the one joint venture enterprise and the two private enterprises in our sample entailed active avowal of tradition linked employee virtue, drawing on a mixture of Communist and Confucian moral imagery. In contrast, most of the seven state-owned or predominantly state invested enterprises had abandoned or marginalized traditional Communist imagery, none promoted Confucian imagery, and two emphasized alternative images of one-sided servility toward the customer. We infer, from managers' accounts, that the abandonment of tradition linked images by the state-owned sector was a tacit acknowledgment of prior covenant violation, and that outside the state-owned sector, tradition linked moral propaganda contributed to moral atmosphere only when part of a consistent high-commitment HRM strategy. In drawing out implications for theory and further research, we note the different socio-political contexts of organizations in China and the West, discuss the relationship between bonds or covenants and psychological contracts, and compare tradition linked employee virtues with dimensions of organizational citizenship.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)307-331
Number of pages25
JournalAsia Pacific Journal of Management
Volume20
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2003

Bibliographical note

We thank Professor Gan Biqun, Cheng Kai, Huang Pei, and Huang Jin from Wuhan University; Professor Chen Jinxian, Liu Dafu, Gang Meng and Dang Jianzhong from Xi’an Jiaotong University; and Professor Zeng Daoxian and Michael Yun from Tsinghua University, Beijing, for their help in arranging, conducting and transcribing interviews. We also thank Raymond Lo and Jess Chu at City University of Hong Kong and Li Jiaoyang at Lingnan University, Hong Kong, for their translation work, Peter Baehr at Lingnan University for citizenly encouragement, and two anonymous referees for critical commentary.

Funding

The research was supported by competitive earmarked grant no. LU1125/98H, from the Research Grants Council, Hong Kong.

Keywords

  • China
  • Ethics
  • Morality
  • Propaganda
  • Tradition

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