Abstract:
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 investigates 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) 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 six, concerned with universal moral principles, was utilized considerably less
than other stages. This finding supports the literature on ethical ideology across countries and
cultures whereby Eastern cultures are generally found to be more relativistic or less universal than
their Western counterparts.
