Examining the positive and negative effects of guanxi practices: A multi-level analysis of guanxi practices and procedural justice perceptions

In this research, we compared and contrasted the effects of managers’ interpersonal level guanxi practice and group level guanxi practice on employees’ procedural justice perceptions. Results indicated that interpersonal guanxi practice was associated with increased employee fairness perceptions whereas group level guanxi practice (the sense that guanxi is used often to make human resource decisions within a management group) was negatively related to perceived fairness. Thus, while individuals may like the personal favors of managers’ interpersonal guanxi practice, their sense of justice is undermined by the broad use of guanxi. In addition, group level guanxi practice moderated the relationship between interpersonal guanxi practice and procedural justice such that this relationship was stronger in work units with high levels of group level guanxi practice. Thus, when employees see many others affected by guanxi, their sense of justice is even more strongly influenced by interpersonal guanxi practice.

[1]  Anne S. Tsui,et al.  Where Guanxi Matters , 1997 .

[2]  Paul D. Sweeney,et al.  Research Notes: Using Relative Deprivation Theory to Explain Satisfaction With Income and Pay Level: A Multistudy Examination , 1990 .

[3]  Amy Buhl Conn,et al.  Is everyone in agreement? An exploration of within-group agreement in employee perceptions of the work environment. , 2001, The Journal of applied psychology.

[4]  D. Tjosvold,et al.  Guanxi and leader member relationships between American managers and Chinese employees: open-minded dialogue as mediator , 2007 .

[5]  John M. Maslyn,et al.  Multidimensionafity of Leader-Member Exchange: An Empirical Assessment through Scale Development , 1998 .

[6]  Z X Zhang,et al.  The Effects of Frequency of Social Interaction and Relationship Closeness on Reward Allocation , 2001, The Journal of psychology.

[7]  Li Wang,et al.  An investigation on the attitudes of Chinese workers towards individually based performance-related reward systems , 2007 .

[8]  Joseph J. Martocchio,et al.  CHINESE AND AMERICAN MANAGERS' COMPENSATION AWARD DECISIONS: A COMPARATIVE POLICY‐CAPTURING STUDY , 2001 .

[9]  T. Tyler,et al.  The Social Psychology of Procedural Justice , 1988 .

[10]  J. Greenberg.  Employee Theft as a Reaction to Underpayment Inequity: The Hidden Cost of Pay Cuts , 1990 .

[11]  Chao C. Chen,et al.  Negative externalities of close guanxi within organizations , 2009 .

[12]  Zhi-xue Zhang,et al.  Beyond Distributive Justice: The Reasonableness Norm in Chinese Reward Allocation , 1998 .

[13]  Rosalie L. Tung,et al.  Achieving business success in Confucian societies: The importance of guanxi (connections) , 1996 .

[14]  K. Hwang.  Face and Favor: The Chinese Power Game , 1987, American Journal of Sociology.

[15]  E. Lind,et al.  The Psychology of Own Versus Others’ Treatment: Self-Oriented and Other-Oriented Effects on Perceptions of Procedural Justice , 2001 .

[16]  G. Leventhal.  What Should Be Done with Equity Theory? New Approaches to the Study of Fairness in Social Relationships. , 1976 .

[17]  Andrew G. Walder,et al.  Communist Neo-Traditionalism: Work and Authority in Chinese Industry , 1988 .

[18]  Ying Fan,et al.  Ganxi's Consequences: Personal Gains at Social Cost , 2002 .

[19]  T. Tyler,et al.  A Relational Model of Authority in Groups , 1992 .

[20]  L. James,et al.  Estimating within-group interrater reliability with and without response bias. , 1984 .

[21]  Jaesub Lee,et al.  Leader-Member Exchange, Perceived Organizational Justice, and Cooperative Communication , 2001 .

[22]  R. Cropanzano,et al.  The effect of organizational structure on perceptions of procedural fairness. , 2000, The Journal of applied psychology.

[23]  Pierre Bourdieu,et al.  Outline of a Theory of Practice , 2020, On Violence.

[24]  Michael W. Morris,et al.  Justice for all? Progress in Research on Cultural Variation in the Psychology of Distributive and Procedural Justice , 2000 .

[25]  Paul E. Spector,et al.  The Role of Justice in Organizations: A Meta-Analysis , 2001 .

[26]  E. Lind,et al.  The injustices of others: Social reports and the integration of others' experiences in organizational justice judgments. , 2002 .

[27]  Cynthia Lee,et al.  The Effects of Gender in Organizational Justice Perception , 1999 .

[28]  R. Eccles,et al.  Networks and Organizations: Structure, Form, and Action , 1992 .

[29]  Yuen J. Huo,et al.  Procedural context and culture : Variation in the antecedents of procedural justice judgments , 1997 .

[30]  Kenneth S. Law,et al.  Effect of supervisor–subordinate guanxi on supervisory decisions in China: an empirical investigation , 2000 .

[31]  R. Friedman,et al.  Supervisor–Subordinate Guanxi: Developing a Three-Dimensional Model and Scale , 2009, Management and Organization Review.

[32]  Karl-Dieter Opp,et al.  The evolutionary emergence of norms , 1982 .

[33]  Stuart S. Nagel,et al.  Procedural Justice: A Psychological Analysis , 1976 .

[34]  S. Kozlowski,et al.  Multilevel Theory, Research, and Methods in Organizations: Foundations, Extensions, and New Directions , 2000 .

[35]  Jasmine Tata,et al.  An Examination of Procedural Justice Principles in China and the U.S. , 2003 .

[36]  R. H. Willis,et al.  Social Exchange: Advances In Theory And Research , 1981 .

[37]  Wei He,et al.  Rewards-Allocation Preferences of Chinese Employees in the New Millennium: The Effects of Ownership Reform, Collectivism, and Goal Priority , 2004 .

[38]  G. Leventhal.  What Should Be Done with Equity Theory , 1980 .

[39]  Robin I. Lissak,et al.  Apparent impropriety and procedural fairness judgments , 1985 .

[40]  R. Friedman,et al.  Examining the Positive and Negative Effects of Guanxi Practices , 2009 .

[41]  Chao-chuan Chen,et al.  New Trends in Rewards Allocation Preferences: A Sino-U.S. Comparison , 1995 .

[42]  Tom R. Tyler,et al.  Psychological models of the justice motive: Antecedents of distributive and procedural justice. , 1994 .

[43]  Robert H. Moorman,et al.  Relationship between organizational justice and organizational citizenship behaviors : do fairness perceptions influence employee citizenship ? , 1991 .

[44]  R. Folger,et al.  Effects of Procedural and Distributive Justice on Reactions to Pay Raise Decisions , 1989 .

[45]  D. Ones,et al.  Examining the Construct of Organizational Justice: A Meta-Analytic Evaluation of Relations with Work Attitudes and Behaviors , 2002 .

[46]  Jacob Cohen,et al.  Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences , 1979 .

[47]  D. Conlon,et al.  THE INFLUENCE OF SPEED OF THIRD PARTY INTERVENTION AND OUTCOME ON NEGOTIATOR AND CONSTITUENT FAIRNESS JUDGMENTS. , 1990 .

[48]  J. Pearce,et al.  Guanxi: Connections As Substitutes for Formal Institutional Support , 1996 .

[49]  D. Guthrie,et al.  The Declining Significance of Guanxi in China's Economic Transition , 1998, The China Quarterly.

[50]  K. Bhal.  LMX‐citizenship behavior relationship: justice as a mediator , 2006 .

[51]  L. Festinger.  A Theory of Social Comparison Processes , 1954 .

[52]  Karen S. Cook,et al.  Distributive Justice: A Social-Psychological Perspective. , 1986 .

[53]  Danielle E. Warren,et al.  Social Exchange in China: The Double-Edged Sword of Guanxi , 2004 .

[54]  Carol A. Heimer.  Doing Your Job and Helping Your Friends: Universalistic Norms about Obligations to Particular Others in Networks , 1992 .

[55]  Donald E. Conlon,et al.  Influence of Speed of Third-Party Intervention and Outcome on Negotiator and Constituent Fairness Judgments , 1990 .

[56]  Paul D. Sweeney,et al.  Using relative deprivation theory to explain satisfaction with income and pay level: A multistudy examination. , 1990 .

[57]  Jerald Greenberg,et al.  Determinants of Perceived Fairness of Performance Evaluations , 1986 .

[58]  Terri A. Scandura,et al.  Leadership and Organizational Justice: Similarities and Differences across Cultures , 1999 .

[59]  Donald E. Conlon,et al.  Justice at the millennium: a meta-analytic review of 25 years of organizational justice research. , 2001, The Journal of applied psychology.

[60]  Chao C. Chen,et al.  Special Issue on Corporate Transformation in the People's Republic of China: Guanxi Practices and Trust in Management: A Procedural Justice Perspective , 2004, Organ. Sci..

[61]  Carol T. Kulik,et al.  Individual and corporate dispute resolution: Using procedural fairness as a decision heuristic. , 1993 .

[62]  J. Thibaut,et al.  Procedural Justice: A Psychological Analysis , 1976 .

[63]  P. Bliese.  Within-group agreement, non-independence, and reliability: Implications for data aggregation and analysis. , 2000 .

[64]  H. Markus,et al.  The Cultural Psychology of Personality , 1998 .

[65]  J. Colquitt.  On the dimensionality of organizational justice: a construct validation of a measure. , 2001, The Journal of applied psychology.

[66]  R. H. Moorman,et al.  JUSTICE AS A MEDIATOR OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN METHODS OF MONITORING AND ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR , 1993 .