Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Measure
Dauw-Song Zhu
Chen-Huan Hong
Abstract
Guanxi is a special mechanism for interpersonal relationship of Chinese society. The cognition of relationship in Chinese
society is quite different from that of the Western society. Guanxi means treating relational objectives in different ways.
Westerners use transaction cost theory, social exchange theory and interaction theory to analyze the relationship, whereas
Chinese guide their values of collectivism and order by Confucism and guanxi (Buttery & Wong, 1999).
Past research suggested that guanxi is beneficial for doing business in Chinese area or individual career progress. However,
even though we can improve our understanding of Chinese business practices through realizing guanxi, the conceptual
definition of guanxi is not clearly defined yet, and different academic fields have different approaches to this concept.
Besides, there are not only very few studies providing the measurement of guanxi (only 15 from 1989~2007) but the
contents and means of measuring guanxi constructs also fail to reach consensus, for this reasons, the study tries to develop the
guanxi scale by based on integrating past researches to construct a more complete scale for measuring the perceived guanxi of
specific individuals.
This study relies on both the society and management fields to interpret the meanings of guanxi, and take it as a base for the
scale development. We hope to provide the proof that the concept of guanxi could be measured by operating the guanxi
construct and the process of empirical test. Finally this study validates seven guanxi dimensions and demonstrates its
usefulness in predicting interpersonal relationship quality of trust and commitment. By doing so, we can improve the
theoretical construction and development of the guanxi research.
perspective (Farh, Tsui, Xin, & Cheng, 1998; Fock & Woo, 1998; Luo, 2003; Park & Luo, 2001; Standifird & Marshall, 2000;
Vanhonacker, 2004; Yeung & Tung, 1996). In short, no matter for society or business fields, guanxi is being respected and
worth for further research.
The study review guanxi literatures and think though guanxi is a critical factor for Chinese societal and business operation,
the definition of guanxi aren
t quite clear. According to literatures, we find that (1) there is in some need to integrate the critical
factors about guanxi; (2) there
re rare empirical studies about guanxi due to the lack of a more complete guanxi scale1. For
these reasons, we hope to integrate the past researches to construct a more appropriate scale in order to measure perceived
guanxi intensity between to person.
favors
,
face
,
mutual benefits
,
harmonyetc. And this study refers to these contents as basis for scale development.
Besides, the latter way of measuring guanxi is concern with intensity. We category it into three kind of measuring style: (1)
guanxi ties; (2) uni-dimension; (3) multiple-dimension.
Guanxi ties is a very common way to measuring guanxi. Guanxi ties means that if there exists some kind of relationship ties
between two person, then they have guanxi. Past researchers had already point out there are some defects in this kind of
measurement. Guanxi ties based on Blood or common experiences are not necessary for further interpersonal relationship
development (Kiong & Kee, 1998). Law, Wong, Wang, & Wang (2000) have criticized Farh et al. (1998) that guanxi ties could
not tell supervisors how guanxi are built and how to improve their guanxi with employees; Yang[](1999) hold the same
viewpoint that having guanxi ties doesn
t mean that there must exist real affections; Dunfee and Warren (2001) also think that
guanxi ties is not sufficient for building strong guanxi, they must work together for a while, frequently interacting and
exchanging favors, and then they could build and maintain guanxi. In this line, we can realize that it
s insufficient to measuring
guanxi purely by guanxi ties.
The second kind of measuring guanxi, unidimension, view guanxi as one dimension construct (such as Abramson & Ai,
1999; Ambler, Styles, & Wang, 1999; Law et al., 2000; Cheng, Farh, & Chang, 2002; Chen & Tjosvold, 2006; Wong, Ngo, &
Chen[] (2000) point out that although we can realize the importance of guanxi for Chinese, most relative studies mostly focus on conceptual analysis
or general investigation. There are very rare systemic empirical studies about guanxi topic. The reason is guanxi accompany with various and complex
meanings, so it
s no easy for researchers to operating and measuring it.
Wong, 2003; Leung, Lai, Chan, & Wong, 2005; Cheung & Gui, 2006). From the definition and contents of most guanxi
literature, guanxi is basically a multiple concept. Besides these researches don
t research consensus on how many dimension
should be included to describe the guanxi. Thus, we think it
s better to view guanxi as a multidimensional construct.
The third kind of guanxi measurement sees guanxi as composed with various dimensions (such as Abramson & Ai, 1999;
Lee & Dawes, 2005). These studies had already point out some critical facets about guanxi but actual we think they still lack of
a more integrated systemic structure to construct guanxi and some measuring items also need to be refined.
As a result of the insufficiencies of guanxi measurement, we plan to integrate past guanxi researches and refined their guanxi
scales. We propose three critical viewpoints of this study: (1) we theoretically assume guanxi is included with instrumental and
affective ingredients but the distinction between them are not our point, so we just sum up these ingredients to present whole
guanxi intensity; (2) it
s more adequate to measuring guanxi based on multi-dimension perspective due to guanxi itself is with
multiple facets; (3) guanxi intensity can be presented by active or passive ways. Active means the inclinations or behaviors of
someone who has ever done in their relations with somebody, and passive means the beliefs or expectations of someone hold
about how others will treat them. We think both the two ways could present the perceived guanxi intensity.
. Finally, there are total 7 guanxi dimension and the corresponding conceptual definitions and reference are listed in
table 1.
Definition
Someone bases on accumulated
favors and relationship intensity to
Reference
Lee & Dawes (2005); Park
& Luo (2001)
Reciprocity
Yang (1994)
other.
Harmony
the other.
Face
2. Delphi Method
The study executed Delphi method to confirm the adequacy of guanxi dimension and corresponding indicators for the
stability of factor structure and content validity of items.
First, we invited experts who are familiar with this topic to form Delphi panel. The results are built on the experience and
knowledge of these experts, and through this process we can refine the preliminary guanxi scale. The Delphi panel composes 4
professors from business administration field and 6 supervisors from various industries.
The study designed structural questionnaire and sent it by mail or Email to Delphi panel members. The first round processed
about one month, and after one week we execute the second round. The second round processed about one week.
Basically, there
re two criteria of Delphi method: (1) consistence, (2) importance. First, according to Faherty (1979) we
judge the consistence is achieved when quartile deviation is less than 0.7. Holden and Wedman (1993) suggest that when
quartile deviation is beyond 1 means that the opinions of Delphi members aren
t reached consistence. Besides, the criterion of
importance is judged by average, and when average is less than 5.0 we
ll eliminate the factor or indicator.
After the two round of Delphi method, we found that guanxi dimensions all reach the criteria of importance and consistence.
Besides, as to indicators, the results from the first round show that there
re 14 items which is not converging, thus we
process the second round to exchange the expertsopinions. After the second round there
re still 10 items not reaching
consistent. So we eliminate 10 items and confirm adequate 32 item scale for guanxi measurement.
2. Suggestions
The study couldn
t separate voluntary relationship with restricted one. And we also don
t discriminate the weights of three
big important ingredients (affective, instrumental, and obligated) of guanxi. We only sum up these critical dimensions to
present guanxi intensity. Thus, we suggest further researches could make more effort on this part.
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