What Is the Negative Impacts of Confucianism on Relationship Between Supervisors and Subordinates in Chinese Firm.

What is the negative impacts of Confucianism on relationship between supervisors and subordinates in Chinese firm.

Chinese traditional culture has a profound influence on the relationship between supervisors and subordinates in Chinese firm.In order to management can be implemented effectively in Chinese context, it is necessary for managers to attach importance to Chinese traditional culture. This essay will describe some Chinese Confucian principle which can influence relationship between supervisors and subordinates in Chinese firm, such as “ li” , “mianzi” and “guanxi”, with particularly focus on their negative impacts.

The concept of “li” means "propriety". But it does not simply means behave or speak in a polite way, its deep meaning is people need appropriately behave or speak according to their own identity or position in social hierarchy.For example, in father-son relationship, it is perceived as “li” if a son respect his father and obey father’s any requirement or command. In enterprise context, “li” means subordinates obey supervisor and cannot oppose or give advice to managers. On the other hand, managers also need behave according to “li”. It means they just need control and command subordinates, and do not need to consider subordinates’ needs and advices.Therefore, the Confucian “li” principle mainly causes “organizational hierarchy and centralized decision making” (Child, 1994). Under the influence of “li” , many Chinese managers implement authoritarian leadership and do not ask for decisions or suggestions from organization members. Moreover, it is also discourages or disables employees to build friendly relations or actively communicate with their managers. On one hand, they cannot give advices or suggestion to managers because this behave is not conform to “li”. On the other hand, employees also do not want to communicate with managers.Because they are afraid to make mistakes and leave a bad impression on the leaders during communication....