外文资料原文及译文南通大学法政与管理学院2009年06月HOW DO THE CHINESE PERCEIVE HARMONIOUSCORPORATE CULTURE:An Empirical Study on Dimensions of Harmonious Corporate CultureLianke SONG，Hao YANG，Lan YANGABSTRACT The Sixth Plenary Session of the 16th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China points out creating harmonious culture is an important task for building socialist harmonious society. Building harmonious culture needs all companies to create harmonious culture, because a company is a basic social unit. Henceforth, many Chinese companies advocate building harmonious corporate culture. Scholars must study basic theories for harmonious corporate culture. This study tried to answer two questions: What is harmonious corporate culture in Chinese mind and how do different Chinese perceive harmonious corporate culture? Firstly, this paper analyzed background of harmonious corporate culture from Chinese traditional culture and era needs. Secondly, authors designed an open-ended questionnaire and sent them to employees in Jiangsu and Shanghai. 329 questionnaires were collected and 291 questionnaires were valid, representing a response rate of 88.45%. Thirdly, this study explored dimensions of harmonious corporate culture and identified different viewpoints from different group. Finally, this paper discussed the results and pointed out limitations of this study and future research. The results of this paper were on basis of defining, measuring, analyzing, and creating harmonious corporate culture.1. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND QUESTIONSThe Fourth Plenary Session of the 16th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China puts forward building socialist harmonious societies and the sixth plenary session of the 16th central committee of the communist party of China points out creating harmonious culture is an important task for building socialist harmonious society. Building harmonious culture needs all companies to create harmonious culture, because a company is a basic social unit[1].Why do Chinese corporations advocate harmonious corporate culture? Maybe Chinese traditional culture and era needs are responsible.Chinese philosophy has a history of several thousand years. Its origins are often traced back to the Book of Changs (yi jing), which introduced some of the most fundamental terms of Chinese philosophy. Its first flowering is generally considered to have been in about the 6th century BC, but it draws on an oral tradition that goes back to Neolithic times.The Tao Te Ching (dao de jing) of Lao Tzu (lao zi) and the Analects (lun yu)of Confucius (kong zi) both appeared around the 6th century BC, around the time of early Buddhist philosophy.Confucianism focuses on the fields of ethics and politics, emphasizing personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice, traditionalism, and sincerity. Confucianism and legalism are responsible for creating the world’s first meritocracy. Confucianism was and continues to be a major influence on Chinese culture. Harmonious culture is meant to respect the tradition of established virtue under Confucius upon "harmony with differences" while exploring extensively our cultural resources and cultural ideas or beliefs.The Chinese schools of philosophy, except during the Qin Dynasty, can be both critical and tolerant of one another. Despite the debates and competition, they generally have cooperated and shared ideas, which they would usually incorporate with their own.Harmony was a central concept in Chinese ancient philosophy. Confucian, Taoist, Buddhist and Legalist that are the major Chinese traditions all prize “harmony” as an ultimate value, but they disagree on how to achieve it. Confucians in particular emphasize the single-character term for “harmony” (he), which appears in all of Confucianism’s “Four Books and Five Classics” (si shu wu jing). The most forceful articulation of identification of personal and communal harmony comes from the Doctrine of the Mean (zhong yong), which defines harmony as a state of equilibriumw here pleasure, anger, sorrow and joy are moderated and restrained, claiming “all things in the universe to attain the way”.During the Industrial and Modern Ages, Chinese philosophy began to integrate the concepts of Western philosophy. Chinese philosophy attempted to incorporate democracy, republicanism and industrialism. Mao Zedong added Marxism, Stalinism and other communist thoughts. The government of the People’s Republic of China initiates Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.The theoretical bases of harmonious socialist society are Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thoughts, Deng Xiaoping Theory, and the important thought of "Three Represents" (That is, the CPC must always represent the development trend of China's advanced productive forces, the orientation of China's advanced culture, and the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the people in China.).Six main characteristics of a harmonious society are democracy and the rule of law, fairness and justice, integrity and fraternity, vitality, stability and order, and harmony between man and nature. The principles observed in building a harmonious socialist society are as the following: people oriented; development in a scientific way; in-depth reform and opening up; democracy and the rule of law; properly handling the relationships between reform, development and stability; and the participation of the whole society under the leadership of the Party.The authors tried to define harmonious corporate culture: harmonious corporate culture is the corporate culture that adheres to people-oriented principle and considers harmony as a core concept, by managing in good faith and scientific administration to achieve harmony among enterprises, society and nature, and eventually make enterprises develop harmoniously and healthily.Chinese traditional culture is the basis of harmonious corporate culture. Era need is the direction of harmonious corporate culture. “Harmonious Corporate Culture” is a new identification and is different from any existent conceptions. What is harmonious corporate culture? This study wants to answer this question by analyzing Chinese viewpoints from open-ended questionnaires.Question 1: What is harmonious corporate culture in Chinese mind?Harmonious corporate culture is a new and special conception for Chinese. General views of Chinese can be found by searching dimensions of harmonious corporate culture. In fact, different people have different ideas. Maybe there are differences among different groups, which can be classified by sex, age, education and position. This study will find and explain those differences.Question 2: How do different Chinese perceive harmonious corporate culture?Today, many Chinese companies advocate building harmonious corporate culture. Understanding conception and characters of harmonious corporate culture are very important. This paper will answer two questions which are the basis of this field.2. METHODS2.1 Sample and ProcedureThe empirical analysis was carried out in Jiangsu and Shanghai. J iangsu’s economic and social development has always been taking the lead in China. Shanghai is China’s chief industrial and commercial centre and one of its leading centres of higher education and scientific research. They both lie in center of China’s eas t coast. We can know what modern Chinese are thinking and hoping by studying employees in Jiangsu and Shanghai.Questionnaires couldn’t be counted because we used both paper version and computer version. From January 2007 to January 2008, authors sent questionnaires to employees who worked in Jiangsu and Shanghai. 329 questionnaires were returned and 291 questionnaires were valid, representing a response rate of 88.45%.Table 1 summarizes the key statistics for the sample used in the study.Table 1 Characteristics of the sample2.2 MeasuresThe authors designed an open-ended questionnaire based on the purpose of the study. This scale only used one question to collect information for answering question 1 of this study. This question is “Please use ten words or ten sentences to describe harmonious corporate culture”.3. RESULTSThis research found out that there were some similar viewpoints about harmonious corporate culture from collected questionnaires. The authors classify these viewpoints into 15 dimensions after holding 10 study group meetings. Some dimensions were identified based on China’s traditional culture and present policies. Table 2 lists 15 dimensions in English and Chinese because of some dimensions with Chinese characteristics.Table 2 Dimension and frequency of harmonious corporate cultureThis s tudy calculated dimensions’ frequencies from different groups to know different people’s ideal harmonious corporate culture. Table 3 shows statistics for male’s and female’s viewpoints on harmonious corporate culture.Table3 Frequency and order of harmonious corporate culture from female and male4. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION4.1 ResultsSome companies advocate building harmonious corporate culture and some companies boast that they possess harmonious corporate culture after the central government calls on all society to create harmonious culture. But what is harmonious corporate culture? Some scholars wanted toexplain it, but nobody has answered this question by empirical study. The authors answered question 1 of this study by analyzing collected data. A lot of standpoints were found, but some standpoints could be integrated as one because they possess same meaning but are described with different words. The study group held 10 meetings to discuss harmonious corporate culture dimensions based on questionnaires. Finally, 15 dimensions were identified. They are People oriented, steady development, scientific administration, vitality, stability and order, fraternity and concord, unity and cooperation, fairness and impartiality, democratic participation, managing in good faith, pursuing excellence, social responsibility, energy conservation and environmental protection, incorporating things of diverse nature, and common development and win-win situation. The result answered question 1: What is harmonious corporate culture in Chinese mind?Dimensions were arranged on frequency. People oriented ranked first. People oriented in China has three sources: Max’s study of humanity; “People first” descending from Chinese history and new anthropocentric[2]. The Chinese like speaking “people oriented” relating to Chinese traditional culture. The genesis of people oriented is traceable to the Western Zhou Dynasty and people oriented became the core thought of Confucianism which influenced the Chinese deeply. Many archaism were concerned with people oriented, such as “The pe ople are the most important element in a state; next are the gods of land and grain; least is the ruler himself[3].”(min wei gui, she ji ci zhi, jun wei qing) Many scholars also considered people oriented is the core and basis of harmonious corporate culture[4][5].This paper compared different groups’ viewpoints to answer question 2 -- how do different Chinese perceive harmonious corporate culture?People oriented, unity and cooperation, vitality, and fraternity and concord were ranked from 1 to 4 by female and male. The same results made the authors surprised. But they are different in fifth dimension. The fifth of female is democratic participation and the fifth of male is stability and order. Female status was lower than male in ancient China. Female had to comply with the three obedience and the four virtues (san cong si de) in past. The three obediences (obey her father before marriage, her husband when married, and her sons in widowhood) and the four virtues (morality, proper speech, modest manner and diligent work) of women in ancient China, which were spiritual fetters of wifely submission and virtue imposed on women in feudal society. Female status is improving after female deputy attended the first National Congress of the Communist Party ofChina. Today, Chinese female think much of the rights of women, so democratic participation is the fifth dimension. The ancient belief “Men’s work centers around outside, women’s work centers around the home[6]”(nü zheng wei hu nei, nan zheng wei hu wai) which c ame from The Book of Changes (yi jing). Man had to work hard in society to earn money and get honour for his family. Today, both man and woman work in government, company, school, hospital and so on, but man always plays a major role and assumes primary responsibility in society and at home for traditional culture. The change is fast and the competition is fierce in modern society, so man is facing great pressure. This is the reason why man hopes to live and work in a more stable environment, so stability and order is the fifth dimension.People oriented, unity and cooperation, and vitality were ranked from 1 to 3 by Managerial employee and Nonmanagerial employee. Scientific administration and democratic participation were ordered as the fourth dimension by managerial employee. Managerial employee looks deeper and thinks further than nonmanagerial employee because managerial employee is at higher level and holds more responsibility in organization. Managerial employee cares about management questions. Fraternity and concord was ordered as the fourth dimension by nonmanagerial employee. Nonmanagerial employee concerns less about enterprises’ overall operation and management state than managerial employee does. They understand harmonious corporate culture from their own specific the work and life. Nonmanagerial employee does specific task and needs direct corporation. They believe that the staffs’ civilized language and behaviours, mutual understanding, the warm atmosphere of interpersonal relationships in the enterprise are very important aspects of harmonious corporate culture. Nonmanagerial employee cares about good relationship. Generally speaking, the differences of the harmonious corporate culture dimensions understanding between managerial employee and nonmanagerial employee are closely related to their location in the organizational structure and their working content in the enterprise.People oriented was ordered as first dimension and unity and cooperation was ordered as the second dimension by all persons whatever their education background is Vitality was ordered as the third dimension by all responders except persons who got a master or doctor degree. The responders whose highest education qualification over master degree ordered scientific administration as the second dimension too. The person holding advanced academic degree has more opportunity to be promoted to managerial position, so they think scientific administration is very important in aharmonious environment. Compared with other groups，the relatively higher education group who get undergraduate degree, are more interested in stability and order, fairness and impartiality dimensions. People in this group are the middle and high-level managers in the enterprise, that is, not only they are familiar with the overall state of the enterprise, but also they understand deeply internal staffs’ living conditions characteristics. Therefore, they put more attention on stability and order, fairness and impartiality dimensions.All groups ordered people oriented, unity and cooperation, and vitality as most important three dimensions. The same results showed what core contents for harmonious corporate culture are.4.2 Limitations and Future ResearchThis study was just an exploratory study. The authors searc hed harmonious corporate culture’s dimensions by open-ended questionnaire. But the validity of these results need to be proved by more studies. The authors will design close-ended questionnaire based on this study and collect new data. Dimensions of harmonious corporate culture will be confirmed by exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis.This paper only discussed what harmonious corporate culture is. In the future, how to create harmonious corporate culture should be studied.The authors compared viewpoints from different sex, position and education. Age, birthplace, nationality and work experience influence individual thought too. Different opinions from different groups should be identified in future study.China should act as not only the defender of Chinese culture but an explorer and promoter of the new harmonious culture. Harmony is the social theme for present China. Studying basic theory of harmonious corporate culture will contribute to our society.REFERENCES[1] Lianke SONG, Dongtao, YANG, Hao YANG. Why do companies create harmonious cultures? Comparing the influence of different corporate cultures on employees. Enterprise Management and Change in a Transitional Economy. 2008. p595-603.[2] LU Wanglin. On theoretic s ource of “human oriented” -- analyzing the scientific factor of “scientific development view” from one point of view. Hebei Academic Journal, 26 (5), 2006,p228-230.[3] Mencius. The Mencius. Warring States time.[4] Liangbo CHENG, Lincheng JING. An search on creating harmonious corporate culture. Group Economy, (17), 2007, p294-295.[5] Xiangkui GENG. Extracting kernel of Confucianism to create harmonious corporate culture. Theoretical Research, (3), 2007, p47-48.[6] The Book of Changes.中国人如何认识和谐企业文化？——关于和谐企业文化维度的实证研究宋联可杨浩杨兰摘要党的十六届六中全会指明建设和谐文化是构建社会主义和谐社会的重要任务。
