The Influence of Relational Demography and Guanxi: The Chinese Case

Abstract

Two studies were conducted to investigate the indigenous concept of guanxi and its applications in the Chinese context. Guanxi refers to the existence of direct particularistic ties between an individual and others. We relate the concept to the idea of relational demography, which refers to similarities or differences between an individual and others on such factors as age, gender, race, religion, education, and occupation. The two studies focused on the importance of guanxi and relational demography in Chinese employment settings. In study 1, their importance was examined in a sample of 560 vertical dyads (i.e., between supervisor and subordinate) in Taiwan. In study 2, the effects were analyzed in a sample of 205 horizontal dyads, specifically between business executives and their important business connections (e.g., key customers, suppliers, bankers, government officials) in mainland China. Results support the importance of both guanxi and relational demography for subordinate trust in the supervisor, but only guanxi is found to be (extremely) important for business executives' trust in their connections. Implications for future cross-cultural research on the effect of common ties are discussed.

Trust, Trustworthiness, and Information Sharing in Supply Chains Bridging China and the United States

“…In his seminal paper, Granovetter (1985) establishes the "social embeddedness" argument and postulates that "continuing economic relations often become overlaid with social content that carries strong expectations of trust and abstention from opportunism" (p. 490). Recent studies also demonstrate that guanxi contributes to producing trust within and across Chinese business organizations (Farh et al 1998, Cai et al 2010. Thus, we conjecture that when supply chain partners interact with each other repeatedly, trust and trustworthiness will substantially increase and the country differences we observe earlier will diminish.…”

On the Intricacies of the Chinese Guanxi: A Process Model of Guanxi Development

“…Indeed, while it has long been theorized and studied by scholars of Chinese origin who were dedicated to indigenous Chinese social sciences (see Yang, 2001a and 2001b for a review in Chinese), guanxi has recently gained its status as a legitimate socio-cultural construct in Western mainstream literatures of cultural anthropology, sociology, social psychology, political science, and business and management (Farh et al, 1998;Hwang, 1987;Jacobs, 1982;King, 1991;Nee, 1992;Tsui and Farh, 1997;Tsang, 1998;Xin and Pearce, 1996;Yang, 1994).…”

“…The first difference is in what we called the categorical-dimensional conceptions of guanxi. The categorical conception views guanxi as a particular type of personal relationship (Tsang, 1998;Yeung and Tung, 1996), which is further differentiated into different subtypes (Farh et al, 1998;Tsui and Farh, 1997;Yang, 2001aYang, , 2001b. Here, guanxi has three types depending on the bases upon which guanxi is built (Jacobs, 1982): family ties (kinship), familiar persons (e.g.…”

“…First, previous literature has been primarily concerned with the pragmatic utility of guanxi but not on the construct building and operationalization (e.g, Farh et al, 1998;Xin and Pearce, 1996). Second, emphasis has been placed on the classification of guanxi types and on how guanxi types and various relational principles codetermine, but not on the measurement of these guanxi types or their different objectives or functions.…”

The Influence of Leader Prestige on Subordinates’ Job Attitude and Behavior: mediation and moderation effects

“…The questionnaire of subordinate's trust for leader prepared by Podsakoff et al (1990) quoted by Farh et al (1998) was used as the questionnaire of leader trust, where there are totally 4 items, such as "I am sure he (she) will treat me fairly" and "I firmly believe he (she) is honest".…”