IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jtrust/v2y2012i1p53-70.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Neither collectivism nor individualism: Trust in the Chinese guanxi circle

Author

Listed:
  • Jar-Der Luo
  • Yung-Chu Yeh

Abstract

This paper illustrates the phenomenon of the social circle in Chinese culture, including the type and role of trust in such a circle, which we call a guanxi circle. In general, a guanxi circle is an ego-centric network. The Chinese national culture is generally thought of as a culture of collectivism, which in turn makes the Chinese network structure dense and closed in organisational settings. However, we find that there are also aspects of openness and flexibility in both Chinese business and social networks, as guanxi circles. In addition, the guanxi circle has a unique structure with ‘differential modes of association’. Finally, the boundary of a guanxi circle is not closed, and outsiders may be included in this circle. That makes the Chinese network structure flexible to opening or closing. This flexibility may be rooted in the Chinese guanxi operation, and trust plays the key role in the operation of guanxi circles. In particular, different levels of association in the circle require different types of trust.

Suggested Citation

  • Jar-Der Luo & Yung-Chu Yeh, 2012. "Neither collectivism nor individualism: Trust in the Chinese guanxi circle," Journal of Trust Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 2(1), pages 53-70, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jtrust:v:2:y:2012:i:1:p:53-70
    DOI: 10.1080/21515581.2012.660355
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/21515581.2012.660355
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/21515581.2012.660355?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chin‐Hwa Lu & Chung‐Hua Shen, 2020. "Do networks or performance impact the promotion of Chinese officials? Evidence from prefecture‐level cities," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(4), pages 539-573, October.
    2. Peter Ping Li, 2017. "The time for transition: Future trust research," Journal of Trust Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(1), pages 1-14, January.
    3. Miao, Yumeng & Du, Rong & Ou, Carol, 2022. "Guanxi circles and light entrepreneurship in social commerce : The roles of mass entrepreneurship climate and technology affordances," Other publications TiSEM f19a203f-abb6-4835-9c34-2, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    4. Jar-Der Luo & Meng-Yu Cheng & Tian Zhang, 2016. "Guanxi circle and organizational citizenship behavior: Context of a Chinese workplace," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 33(3), pages 649-671, September.
    5. Huimin Gu & Tingting (Christina) Zhang & Can Lu & Xiaoxiao Song, 2021. "Assessing Trust and Risk Perceptions in the Sharing Economy: An Empirical Study," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(4), pages 1002-1032, June.
    6. Yangyong Zhang, 2023. "Self-Care Practice and Retention: Narratives of Social Workers in China," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(3), pages 21582440231, September.
    7. Sven Horak & Markus Taube, 2016. "Same but different? Similarities and fundamental differences of informal social networks in China (guanxi) and Korea (yongo)," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 33(3), pages 595-616, September.
    8. Mengying Wu & Rongsong Wang & Peixu He & Christophe Estay & Zubair Akram, 2020. "Examining How Ambidextrous Leadership Relates to Affective Commitment and Workplace Deviance Behavior of Employees: The Moderating Role of Supervisor–Subordinate Exchange Guanxi," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(15), pages 1-18, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jtrust:v:2:y:2012:i:1:p:53-70. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RJTR20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.