Importance Of Harmony In Chinese Culture

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Gender and residential status
- Rural female migrant workers
- Female university graduates with non-local residential status
- Secondary earner of the migrant family
- Recruitment

2.2 Core values as antecedents of Chinese companies’ recruitment practices

2.2.1 Harmony and Zhong yong

He (Harmony) can be considered as one of the most important characteristics in Chinese culture. It is an ongoing endeavor to harmonize the diversity which is different from the ideal. Harmony in Chinese is not only one sided value: it is regarded not only to human beings, but also to nature and human society. The main idea of it is to be able to deal with social and political life avoiding conflict and pressure. In comparative studies …show more content…

It represents Chinese indirect, holistic and fuzzy thinking. Zhongyong oriented people tend to minimize their own interests, going to compromises before taking actions (C. F. Yang & C. Y. Chiu, unpubl. data, 1997) Thus they can easily hold on their ideas in order to find a solution accepted by others, instead of promoting their own opinions.

2.2.2 Power distance

The Confucian model of the social hierarchy order provides philosophical basis starting from maintenance of the family structure to the government. Confucius’s followers believe that society is a trust based community on social responsibility not an adversarial system based on individual rights. That might be one of the reasons why Chinese people have high sense of vertical order in their attitudes.

2.2.3 Mianzi

Mianzi stands by the reputation, social achievements person has. The higher social status he has, the more face he earns. It can be gained by one’s illustrious origins, by means of personal efforts, talent or just by the strength of one’s guanxi. According to Pelled and Xin (1997), saving face is related to harmony; both emphasize the avoidance of conflict in interpersonal relationships. Its influence defines widespread phenomenon of holistic and indirect thinking. Face can be built or lost in social interactions, and one’s face is not an individual and private issue but it is closely associated with entire …show more content…

All employees in the company have their roles in the company and they are all expected to behave in appropriate way based on their social statuses roles (Shore et al., 2004): managers set clear differentiation between themselves and subordinates(Lockett, 1988); subordinates show respect for hierarchy and accept the hierarchical nature of the superior-subordinate relationship (Jiang and Cheng, 2008). All the managers expected to fulfil role expectations and treat their subordinates well. The subordinates are expected to be loyal to their supervisor

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