Guanxi's Effect on Administrative Ethical Decision-making-An Empirical Study of 188 Cases Based on Content Analysis

摘要

China is a Guanxi (Relationship)-oriented society, some researches have shown that guanxi has some negative impacts on business ethical decisionmakings, but seldom evidence of its impacts on administrative ethical decision-makings, as a hot topic, has been proved in academic circles. This paper aims to explore whether and how guanxi will influence administrative ethical decision-makings, based on systematical reviewing of available literatures of administrative ethical decisionmakings, guanxi, and guanxi's influences on ethical decision-makings. We selected 188 unethical decisionmaking cases from the 2157 cases reported during 2006 and 2011 on the website of Supreme People's Procuratorate of the People's Republic of China and that of Ministry of Supervision of the People's Republic of China through stratified random sampling Moreover, with SPSS 18.0 we used method of contents analysis to analyze the data. The results support that guanxi affects the ethical decision-makings of administrators adversely and its impacts are also subject to other relevant elements. At last, drawing upon the results of this study and associating with the cultural background of our country, this paper put forward some suggestions on building a regulating mechanism combining internal and external controls together to prevent and deal with administrative unethical decision-makings.