The relationship between individual values and ethical judgements of Guanxi practices amongst Hong Kong managers

“Guanxi” has been regarded as an integral part of Chinese culture and a source of corruption in daily life, especially in the workplace and business ethos. This paper used 160 Hong Kong managers working in an international bank to examine the relationship between individual values, as measured by the Chinese Value Survey (CCC, 1987) and their ethical judgements on incidents underpinned by the guanxi principals in the workplace. The results found that they scored, on average, lower on value dimensions relating to the more conventional and conservative aspects of Confucianism. In addition, among the different dimensions of Chinese values, only the more traditional conservative value dimensions were found to have some association with judgements that were influenced by guanxi principles.