A comparative investigation of Chinese and Australian managers' ethical beliefs and attitudes and their mutual perceptions of bribery / Robert J. Tuck
Tuck, Robert J
Doctor of Business Administration This study is a cross-cultural examination of Chinese and Australian business managers that chiefly concerns their beliefs, attitudes, perceptions and values about business ethics, with a special focus on bribery. The findings show that the sweeping negative stereotyping of China’s business ethical practice as being corrupt, often proposed in the Western media, is unsubstantiated. The findings also indicate that many of the moral values of guanxi, face saving, trust, loyalty building, and family respect, especially for elders, have survived from Confucian times, and continue to resonate in the over 50s age group. There is also evidence that the same kind of ethical rationale that propelled Western business practice and institutions, such as the Golden Rule, when linked to the Confucian principle–the ‘Silver Rule’–‘Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself’, remain in China. Much needs to take place to recapture some of the younger generation of Chinese managers’ loyalty to the ethical principles of Neo- Confucianism, Mao Zedong Thought, or some other ethical principle to inculcate business confidence in Western managers. The practical implications from the study for Australian policy makers and agency executives doing business with the Chinese is that it can be complicated by bribery. Australian managers must respect differences in Chinese managers’ gender, age, regional location and other factors that link organisational culture to changing corporate governance and business practice. Nevertheless, the theoretical conclusions claim Chinese culture is comparable with other cultures and is capable of integration into a wider cross-cultural framework that, in turn, merits further psychological research. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The study contributes to scholarship, public and private sector policy and management practice, by filling an identified knowledge gap aboutare associated with work-related moral values of Chinese and Australian managers regarding bribery. To substantiate this claim, several scholars have found that the most serious international corrupt practice is large-scale bribery; yet past research on Chinese involvement in bribery has not addressed the mutual perceptions of Chinese managers and their Australian counterpart. As a result, both Western and Australian managers are left in a state of uncertainty regarding Chinese managers and their mindset about business ethics and bribery—a situation bolstered by a biased Australian media comment about doing business with the Chinese. Therefore, in an attempt to bridge this gap, an examination was conducted involving a sample of business managers selected from a relevant population of Chinese and Australian managers who trade in their counterpart’s nation-state—as well as others who trade with their opposite while still based within their home country. Against this background, the research problem examined from a principal researchable question and five supportive key subquestions is: Do Australian and Chinese managers’ beliefs, attitudes, perceptions, and work-related moral values about bribery as a corrupt practice significantly differ? Not surprisingly, answers transpire to be ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in different perceived contexts. From a review of the related literature, and within the discipline of cross-cultural psychological research, past cross-national researchers have used specific observable acts like beliefs, attitudes, or intentions to examine participant behaviour. This study differs in that it has bribery as its specific topic; it then explores each variable’s relationship to bribery and human behaviour values. In this respect Ajzen and Fishbein’s (1980) Reasoned Action Theory is used as the prime measurement vehicle, amplified by the identification of the participant managers’ personal normative belief as a recommendation argued by Vallerand et al. (1992). Moreover, by using a carefully structured email-circulated questionnaire with a Web page attachment, a returned email response saw a productive reply from a relevant sample of Chinese managers targeted in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Harbin and included a limited response from other Chinese provinces. Australian managers based in Australia and China likewise responded. Grounded in the relevant literature on business ethics, some survey questions refer to known Western and Eastern value stimulations and explore the causal attribution factors that guide a manager’s interpretation of their shared differences and their relevance to bribery. To explore and effectively understand a participant manager’s work-related moral values, by demonstrating a triangulated methodological strategy, the study explores, examines, and compares each manager’s perception and cross-perception of other’s ethical beliefs and attitude toward ethical conduct in relation to bribery. Aided by SPSS for Windows, qualitative and quantitative methods using parametric and non-parametric techniques are used. To contribute to corporate governance and from a government policy perspective, the study identified a number of factors that show similarities and differences within each nation’s corporate governance systems. Nonetheless, a major abuse by Chinese management and their interpretation of China’s corporate governance and legal system is exposed. For example, Chinese managers make serious allegations about the moral ethos of directors of Chinese Boards and their fostering of bribery through their belief that bribery brings about corporate success. This failure offers a reminder of the gulf between official pronouncement and reality. In this respect, and as a further contribution to policy and practice, a need is also identified for Chinese and Australian government authorities to bolster both their corporate governance and company law legislation to offset corporate corruption.
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