Confucianism components relevant for contemporary businesses emphasize building a strong relationship with trustworthy partners based on mutual benefit. Confucius pointed out the importance of personal qualities, such as benevolence and honesty, in their relation to proper ethical behavior. In frames of a business organization, Confucianism declares that moral principles should take precedence over benefit.
The authors of the article briefly analyze contemporary Chinese business trends to find out whether Confucianism provided the basis for the country’s economic success. From one perspective, it is hard to declare that every Chinese organization shows exceptional ethical behavior or unique corporate social responsibility policies. The authors state that the understanding of Chinese management as a system built only on Confucianism is biased because “guanxi” (relationship) is not the crucial factor of Chinese achievements. However, researchers should not undermine Confucianism ideas: they impact Chinese paternalistic leadership and interpersonal relations.
Paternalism with an emphasis on benevolence and authority was one of the aspects that contributed to the quick growth of businesses. In addition, Rowley and Oh refer to the work of Lau et al., “An examination of three-way interactions of paternalistic leadership in China.” The study shows that high authoritarianism management (authoritarianism with moral and benevolent leadership) usually provides better results than leadership based only on authoritarianism. Rowley and Oh go further in the investigation of Confucian paternalism in Chinese management and find out that business ethics could use the Confucian idea of “love.” That idea implicates a warm relationship between equals and unequal people, such as the love of father and son or brotherly love. Therefore, managers could be encouraged to use more emotion than logic in their practice.
Initially, Confucius’ ideas had an aim to restore the powerful government, but nowadays, Confucianism also is one of the business ethics perspectives. Confucius emphasized the key role of strict hierarchy and high-toned leaders. Discussion of the article by Rowley and Oh gives the understanding that principles of Confucianism as business ethics manifested in paternalism with benevolence, authority, and “love” were successfully utilized by some modern Chinese companies.
References
Rowley, C., & Oh, I. (2020). Trends in Chinese management and business: Change, Confucianism, leadership, knowledge & innovation. Asia Pacific Business Review, 26(1), 1-8. Web.