Migrant construction workers are among the most vulnerable working populations in China as they are prone to facing the problem of wage arrears under the multi-tier subcontracting system. Based on ethnographic research of migrant construction workers in Tianjin, Shenzhen, Nanchang and Shaoguan, we examine workers’ divergent responses to wage arrears. While extant literature focuses on the positive role of informal networks in facilitating collective action, our findings indicate that the network structure between labour subcontractors and migrant workers plays a key role in enabling or constraining labour protests. We identify two network structures: the satellite network – characterized by arm's-length relationships between subcontractors and clusters of workers; and the spider-web network – characterized by strong relationships between subcontractors and their workers. We found that workers in satellite networks were prone to stage protests over wage arrears, but those in spider-web networks never held collective actions when facing the same problem. We argue that strong guanxi is a double-edged sword for the mobilization of labour protests and that workers’ responses to wage arrears are mediated through the network structure. Future studies may further scrutinize the role of a social network and its operating mechanisms in shaping workers’ working conditions and labour politics.

Relationships are widely recognized as key to business success in the form of both informal interpersonal networks and formal organizational relationships. While Chinese personal networks (guanxi) have attracted scholars’ interest, the concept has not been fully investigated or understood in other contexts, especially the Middle East, where personal networks fulfill some of the same roles. The underlying socio-cultural formulae of the distinctive cultural dimensions that influence relationship formation in the Middle East also remain under-explored. This research therefore investigates the dimensions of guanxi-type relationships in the Middle East and introduces a new model integrating these relationships into the existing relationship marketing framework, enabling firms to harness personal networks for organizational gain, in turn generating customer satisfaction and retention. Using empirical data from a survey of 637 hotel guests in 17 countries – drawn from a unique target population of guests introduced to Middle Eastern hotels via personal relationships – we show how guanxi-type relationships influence organizational relationships and improve satisfaction and retention. Our significant contributions to theory and practice include extending a holistic understanding of guanxi, enhancing knowledge of its dimensions in the Middle East, and providing managers with clear evidence for a hybrid system of guanxi-type and organizational relationships.

This article offers a synthesis of understandings of wasta, seen as a form of social network prevalent in the Arab Middle East. Whilst there has been increasing interest in this practice, research remains fragmented and has been criticised for its limited theoretical rigor. To address this issue, a systematic review of peer-reviewed journal articles exploring wasta published between 1993 and 2019 was conducted. We analysed the identified papers according to the theoretical lens from which wasta was viewed, creating a bridge between a theoretical focus on the macro aspect of wasta and an alternative focus on its micro aspects, leading to the development of a holistic model of wasta. The model also helps us to understand the complexity of wasta, both as the network itself and as the social ties that exist among its members, and sheds light on the complex nature of the role and interactions of the wasta. The findings respond to calls for more holistic and inclusive research to inform social networks research and bridge the micro–macro divide. This article offers recommendations to future researchers to build on the holistic and emic approach to wasta research adopted here.

Previous research has debated whether guanxi persists or declines with the development of formal institutions. This study addresses this debate by investigating how the development of formal institutions in China's state-owned organizations influences employees’ guanxi behavior. Building on institutional logics theory, I propose that guanxi behavior is a reaction to the socialist institutions adopted by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and is associated with the collective identity of SOEs. Thus, employees’ identification with SOEs is the mechanism that influences their guanxi behavior. A survey of 721 employees from 12 organizations compared guanxi behavior across three types of organizations with different degrees of state ownership: SOEs, public firms, and joint ventures. The results showed that the employees of joint ventures identify less with SOEs and engage in less guanxi behaviors than do SOE employees. The employees of public firms still identify with SOEs, and their guanxi behavior did not differ from that of SOE employees. Identification with SOEs mediated the effect of organizational type on guanxi behavior, whereas formalization did not. Therefore, the development of formal institutions does not necessarily decrease guanxi behavior, and its effect depends on whether the collective identity underlying guanxi is changed. This study has important implications for guanxi research, institutional logics theory, and transition economies.

How does China promote its military officers? We present a qualitative study on the determinants (connections versus performance) of the selection of military officers. Drawing on 48 in-depth interviews with serving and retired military officers, we argue that the inability of the rule-based personnel system to assess candidate performance (professional competence and political integrity) leads to the rise of the informal institution of guanxi – a Chinese version of personal connections – in promoting military officers. Guanxi both substitutes for and competes with the formal personnel system. Information received through guanxi networks is used by superiors to evaluate subordinates’ professional competence and political integrity. Guanxi is also used by corrupt officers to distort democratic procedures and facilitate the buying and selling of military positions. We conclude that the co-existence of a rule-based personnel system and guanxi leads superiors to promote competent candidates within their guanxi networks.

This paper provides an analytical review of the social science literature on guanxi. The focus of this review is on the prevalence and the increasing significance of guanxi during China's post-1978 reforms, which were implemented to move the country towards a market economy. Since then, researchers have engaged in debates on what guanxi actually means to Chinese people in the past and today, how it has been adaptive to ongoing institutional transformations, and why its influence in economic, social, and political spheres can stabilize, increase or decrease with market reforms and economic growth. The author provides a synthesis of these debates before offering a theoretical framework which provides an understanding of the dynamics of guanxi through the changing degrees of institutional uncertainty and market competition. Survey findings on the increasing use of guanxi in labour markets from 1978 to 2009 are presented to illustrate the usefulness of this framework. In the conclusion, the author argues that guanxi is a five-level variable, and that the nature and forms of guanxi influence are contingent upon whether guanxi is a tie of connectivity, a sentimental tie, a sentiment-derived instrumental tie, an instrumental-particular tie, or an obligational tie that facilitates power and money exchanges. This five-level conceptualization is aimed at advancing future scholarship of guanxi in China's rapidly changing society.

Moral obligation, reciprocity, and affection contribute to the development of strong interpersonal relationships. An indigenous notion in Chinese culture, jiangyiqi, captures these three component principles of strong relationship development in one concept. Jiangyiqi has been held anecdotally as a common code of conduct for building strong, trustworthy relationships in China. We explore the possible integration of these three components of interpersonal relationships in Chinese society in our introduction of the construct of jiangyiqi, based upon Confucian ethics and the circles of relationships delineated in past literature on Chinese societies. Drawing from social exchange theory as well as the perspective of reciprocal altruism in evolutionary biology, we propose that jiangyiqi makes an individual a good candidate for developing strong non-kin relationships. We discuss the managerial implications of jiangyiqi for relationship building in a Chinese cultural context.

Despite the major cultural and political differences between the United States and China, in both countries access to jobs is supposed to be guided by fair and equitable procedures. In the US, there is a presumption of an open labor market in which potential employees compete on the basis of their qualifications, where the fairness of decisions is guided by anti-discrimination laws and normative organizational policies. In China, although there is a history of close relationships that guide the exchange of favors, following the 1949 revolution, Communist Party leaders were given the authority to allocate positions in ways that were supposed to eliminate special privileges of class and background. Yet recent research has suggested that social connections are an important part of getting a job in both the US and China for two-thirds to three-quarters of job seekers. In the US context, such connections are described as social capital. In the Chinese context, connections are defined as guanxi. In this article, we review research on labor market processes in both the US and China to address three important questions: (a) How can we understand the similar functioning of labor markets in such distinct cultural and political systems as the US and China? (b) What are the mechanisms or processes by which people find jobs in the US and China, and how are people able to access these mechanisms or processes in the context of constraining social structures and legal environments? and (c) What are the theoretical implications of the ‘generalized particularism’ that seems to shape labor markets in both the US and China.

We trace the social networks around Chinese entrepreneurs back to their firm's founding to learn about the role early events play in the later success of a business. We use name generator questions paired with career history questions to identify ‘event contacts’ missed by the usual focus on current business. We draw four conclusions from interviews with a large, stratified random sample of entrepreneurs: (1) Relations with event contacts stand out for guanxi qualities of high trust relatively independent of the surrounding network structure, and are critical to distinguishing more successful entrepreneurs from the less successful. (2) The substance of a significant event matters less than the fact that the entrepreneur deems it significant. (3) When family is turned to for support it is most likely at founding, but family is not the usual source of support at founding. Rather, entrepreneurs turn to people they have known for many years, typically people beyond the entrepreneur's family. (4) The transition from founding to first significant event stands out as distinctly consequential for later success. Entrepreneurs who turn for help on their first significant event to a person separate from, but especially close to, the founding contact are more successful in their business development. That early move is not visible in the later network around the entrepreneur.

This paper explores the role of guanxi, particularly in its special form of tunqin, in building rural resilience in a poverty-stricken county in north China. The emphasis of this paper is placed on the nature and function of such guanxi. By presenting how guanxi is maintained, this paper also analyses the impact and effectiveness of local guanxi as a strategy to cope with poverty. Whereas tunqin guanxi appears to have built rural resilience in order to cushion villagers against life's upheavals, the maintenance of rural guanxi diminishes this resilience as scarce resources are spent on the exchange of cash gifts, thus aggravating local poverty.

How does guanxi facilitate corrupt transactions? Utilizing fieldwork data and published materials, this paper investigates how guanxi practices distort the formal military promotion system and facilitate the buying and selling of military positions in the People's Liberation Army (PLA). It identifies the three key functions of guanxi in facilitating corrupt transactions: communication, exchange and neutralization. Guanxi enables effective and safe communication among corrupt military officers, holds transaction partners to their word, and neutralizes their guilt about committing corrupt acts.

Adopting a dynamic view of guanxi, we investigated how the closeness in Chinese coworker relationship changes as a function of interpersonal incidents, exploring factors such as the prior closeness level as well as the valence and job relevance of the incident. Two studies of PRC managers probed the content and dynamics of their coworker relationships. Results indicate that such relationships mix affective and instrumental ties. A key finding about changes is that the increase in closeness created by positive incidents was greater when the prior relationship was distant, and the decrease created by negative incidents was greater when the prior relationship was close. The implications of these findings for theory development and future guanxi research are discussed.

Do Chinese people restrict their complex transactions to a trusted inner circle composed of strong ties? Hwang's (1988) study points out that Chinese people often convert unfamiliar ties into familiar ties when the latter become trustworthy people. This conversion is instrumental in ensuring the fulfilment of promises in complex transactions because it contains an element of emotional attachment or moral obligation. This paper employs network data in a Chinese workplace to demonstrate the following points: first, there is indeed a type of guanxi in the Chinese workplace that can be described as ‘familiar ties’. Second, familiar ties contain as much trust as friendship ties and more than acquaintance ties. A Chinese person may search for his or her possible partners among strangers, then develop trust within this guanxi and gradually transform the relationship into familiar ties. It is through these ties that interpersonal trust can grow and enable complex transactions.

We examine the influence of social distance on levels of trust and reciprocity in China. Social distance, reflected in the indigenous concept of guanxi, is of central importance to Chinese culture. In Study 1, some participants participated in two financially salient trust games to measure behaviour, one with an anonymous classmate and the other with an anonymous, demographically identical non-classmate. Other participants, drawn from the same population, completed hypothetical surveys to gauge both hypothetical behaviour and expectations of others. Social distance effects on actual and hypothetical behaviour were statistically consistent. The results together corroborated the hypothesized negative relationship between trust and social distance. However, reciprocity was not responsive to social distance. Study 2 found that affect-based trust, but not cognition-based trust, played a mediating role in the relationship between social distance and interpersonal trust in a hypothetical scenario. We conclude that close guanxi ties in China engender affect-based trust, which is extended to shouren classmates. This is true despite the fact that no more cognition-based trust is placed nor reciprocity received or expected from classmates compared to demographically identical shengren non-classmates.

This article addresses three questions concerning authority relations (personal relations with superiors) in transitional China. First, can superiors retain an organizational unit in order to save a protege's job? Second, has instrumental usage of particularistic relations, or guanxi, lost its importance? Third, has ‘principled particularism’, an integration of political loyalty and authority relations, continued to impact careers? Based on first-hand survey data, I find that state-owned enterprises in which managers had closer authority relations were less likely to be sold or discontinued, and close authority relations also reduced the likelihood of career blockage (demotion/lay off). The significant interactive effect of party membership and authority relations revealed the continuation of ‘principled particularism’. The study underlines institutional continuity during rapid social change, renders insights into the processes of organizational restructuring, and depicts the relational base of formal organizations.

Guanxi networks are critical for achieving entrepreneurial success in China. Informed by the literatures on network-based entrepreneurship and guanxi, this study used a multiple-case method to examine the development of Chinese entrepreneurs' guanxi networks in the entrepreneurial process. Data induction based on within- and cross-case analyses of six entrepreneurial firms revealed three major findings. First, guanxi network dynamics in terms of network structure, governance mechanisms, and network content change systematically across the stages of the entrepreneurship process. Second, the usefulness of guanxi ties (such as family, business associates, or government officials) is contingent on the stage of the entrepreneurial process as well as on industrial-level factors. Third, in knowledge-intensive industries, cultivating and maintaining guanxi can be achieved through knowledge and information exchange rather than traditional gift-giving or favours. The overall conclusion is that guanxi is still of paramount importance for Chinese entrepreneurs in the midst of China's transformation from a centrally planned to a socialist market economy. We propose a stage model of guanxi network development in the entrepreneurial process and discuss implications for future research.

As the largest and fastest growing transition economy in the world, China's entrance onto the global stage has been swift and dramatic. As such, almost every facet of entrepreneurship, from the identification of nascent opportunities to the challenges of managing triple-digit growth to the transformation of firms from dying to emerging industries, can be studied as natural experiments. The four papers in this issue are dedicated to exploring entrepreneurial innovation in the Chinese private economy. They include two clinical studies, one on the impact of the Beijing Olympics on entrepreneurship, and the other on the co-evolution of guanxi networks and entrepreneurial growth. Two studies test theories explaining the organizational drivers of innovation and entrepreneurship. In the best traditions, these four studies offer theoretical insights on the broader implications of entrepreneurship research in the Chinese context. We locate the findings offered by these four papers in the systems, organizational and social contexts of creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship research. Finally, we offer some suggestions for future research and ways in which advances in the theoretical conversation should proceed.

Guanxi, a social network tie drawing on connections in business relations, has been identified as a powerful strategic tool helping organizations maintain competitive advantages and achieve superior performance. However, prior empirical studies on die gM/m-performance link provide indefinite conclusions. The purpose of this study is to systematically review and quandfy the guanxi-performance link in a meta-analytic framework by decomposing guanxi into business ties (i.e., guanxi with business partners) and government ties (i.e., guanxi with government authorities) and organizational performance into economic performance and operational performance. Based on effect sizes from fifty-three studies encompassing 20,212 organizations, we estimate that the overall effect size of the guanxi-pertormance relationship is positive and significant, thus endorsing the argument that guanxi does enhance organizational performance. Specifically, our meta-analysis results demonstrate that both business and government ties lead to both economic and operational performance. However, business ties have a bigger impact on operational performance, whereas government ties exert larger effects on economic performance. Further meta-analytic regression results suggest that ownership (state-owned vs. non-state-owned) and location (Mainland vs. overseas China) explain some of the variations of the guanxi-performance link. Both business and government ties are more important to organizations in Mainland China than to those in overseas China. Government ties are more important to state-owned than to non-state-owned organizations. Lasdy, while business ties remain a valuable strategic tool in China, the importance of government ties is time-variant and has been declining with the development of the institutional environment in China.

This article investigates a prominent but little discussed CCP central organ, the Central Discipline Inspection Commission (CDIC), and its local discipline inspection commissions (DICs) in the post-Mao era. It analyses how the CCP exerts its control over the disciplinary organizations and argues that the disciplinary agencies' lack of autonomy hinders their efforts to crack down on corruption. This article investigates the important role played by the CDIC in CCP politics by examining its organizational structure, modes of operation and criteria for imposing disciplinary sanctions, and evaluates the measures and approaches employed by the Party's disciplinary organizations to combat corruption. The study concludes that structural, institutional and cultural factors hinder the effectiveness of the CCP's disciplinary agencies in their efforts to control Party members, officials and corruption.