Las competencias básicas

formation of the relational structure consisting of team-based Guanxi groups with strong exclusivity, Paternalistic Leadership with strong benevolent and authoritarian leadership, and hierarchical Senior-junior Guanxi. The relational structure interplayed with the formal

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role coordination mechanism, creating double-edged organisational outcomes, as discussed in this subsection.

It was found that the team-based Guanxi groups were featured with team cohesion and solidarity, proactive mutual support, flexible task distribution and tacit understanding. First, while the emphasis of Guanxi on group harmony resulted in cohesive atmosphere within teams, the awareness of mutual dependence under the familial collectivism caused some team solidarity (PC1, QC2 & QCM). Secondly, due to the relatively strong and affective social exchange between team members, they proactively supported each other to accomplish tasks, substituted those who were not at the office and looked after each other at work and in private life (RDE2, PC1 & DS). Third due to the awareness of mutual dependence and task interdependence, team members often jointly distributed team tasks, did not limit themselves to predefined formal roles but were flexible in task distribution (RDE3 & QC2). Besides, the frequent interaction within teams led to abundant information sharing and thus the development of tacit understanding between team members (PCM & PC1). As a result, team members often coordinated with each other autonomously without the intervention of their team leaders (RDE 3 & PC1). Therefore, the team-based Guanxi groups strongly supported the formal role coordination mechanism in within-team coordination.

Moreover, it was demonstrated that the Paternalistic Leadership resulted in the obedience, loyalty and commitment of employees, supporting the formal role coordination mechanism in the manager-subordinate coordination. According to Section 4.2.2, the Paternalistic Leadership consisted of moral leadership and strong benevolent and authoritarian leadership. The authoritarian leadership had a consequence of employee obedience. Many interviewees pointed out that employees respected and obeyed management even when they had disagreements (SDM, QCM, RDE1 & IS). Moreover, the strong benevolent leadership and the moral leadership promoted employee loyalty and commitment. Though the company did not offer competitive salary, its staff turnover was low because employees appreciated the strong benevolence and well treatment of senior managers (SDM & DGM). In addition, many employees were committed to their jobs because of their affection on the strong benevolent leadership and the moral leadership (DS, IS & QCM). In particular, due to close Family-like Guanxi between managers and their senior subordinates, the senior subordinates presented strong commitment, asking for challenging tasks proactively and showing strong ownership without holding any share of the company (DGM, RDE1, QC1, DS & QCM).

Furthermore, it was discovered that the Senior-junior Guanxi in the company offered a relational hierarchy for the coordination between senior and junior team members. Section 4.2.2 revealed the relational obligations in the hierarchical Senior-junior Guanxi, such as

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support and protection from the seniors and respect and obedience from the juniors. While senior team members dominated task distribution within teams and set work standards for their junior counterparts, the juniors obeyed the seniors’ instructions (RDE2, RDE3 & DGM). Moreover, the senior team members are responsible for training the junior team members and supporting the skill development of the juniors in the company (RDE1, RDE2 & QC1). Not only so, the senior team members, who presented strong commitment and work ethics to honour their close relationships with managers, often played as a role model for the junior team members to follow (SDM & RDE2). In other words, the Senior- junior Guanxi sustained the coordination between the senior and junior team members within teams, further supporting the formal role coordination mechanism.

However, despite the relational structure of Guanxi facilitated within-team and manager- subordinate coordination, it was often associated with negative organisational outcomes. Firstly, the team-based Guanxi groups presented strong exclusivity, harming cross-team coordination (Section 4.2.2). Secondly, the relational obligations in the hierarchical Senior- junior Guanxi sometimes worked against organisational obligations because the seniors felt it difficult to disclose the juniors’ bad performance and the juniors were unable to refuse the task distribution of the senior that went against organisational expectations (Section 4.2.2). In addition, the Paternalistic Leadership with strong benevolent and authoritarian leadership had some negative effects for performance management and employee participation, as illustrated in Table 4.5.

Interviewee Quotes

Negative effects of strong benevolent leadership

SDM ‘The general manager is very benevolent. … When disciplining an employee, he may suggest to give up with a consideration of other issues. It is not because the employee’s problem is not big enough. … [It is understandable]. I may hope to have good relationship with my subordinates so that they will be loyal to me …but then I may have soft heart when they make mistakes and feel that I should not punish them because of our relationships.’ Negative efforts of strong authoritarian leadership

IS ‘Management has most thorough information [about business] … Sometimes sales staff do not have sufficient information to make best judgement and thus lose customers.’ QC1 ‘Last time a mass number of products were sent back for re-manufacturing. It was very

serious incident…. But I was not informed about this even though my job is most related to such issue. I didn’t know why the products were sent back for re-manufacturing, what was the cause, and whether it was my fault.’

PC1 ‘I am not very clear about the performance assessment. … I do not know if he [my manager] is assessing me.’

Table 4.5 Negative effects of Paternalistic Leadership in Case Study I

Under the strong benevolent leadership, managers often gave up disciplining or dismissing under-performing employees with formal performance management rules (IS, SDM & DGM). Due to the strong authoritarian leadership, the managers had neither sufficiently listened to employees’ feedback for decision-making nor involved employees in problem-solving or in the implementation of new organisational systems (IS, DS, QC1,

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PC1 & QC2). In other words, the strong benevolent leadership led to some difficulties in dealing with problematic performance, while the strong authoritarian leadership inhibited cross-hierarchical open dialogue and employee participation, causing centralised decision-making. These negative organisational outcomes show that the relational obligations associated with the relational structure of Guanxi often surpassed organisational guidelines under the incomplete implementation of the formal performance management system.

4.3.3 Particularistic rules interplay with formal role coordination mechanism Whilst universalistic cultures stress universal, impersonal rules and obligations, the particularistic Chinese Guanxi culture stresses exceptional situation and situational obligations based on interpersonal relationships (Worm and Frankenstein, 2000). The particularistic tendency of Guanxi culture resulted in some particularistic rules governing role performance in the organisation. As discussed in this subsection, these particularistic rules included ambiguous but flexible role specification, a strong preference for relational coordination practices, and particularistic emphasis on employee behaviour input, supplementing and hindering the formal role coordination mechanism.

First of all, the particularistic tendency of Guanxi caused ambiguous but flexible role specification, encouraging employees to go beyond their formal role definition in their coordination. According to Section 4.3.2, due to the awareness of mutual dependence and task interdependence between team members, there was flexible task distribution within the team. Due to the strong commitment of senior team members, team leaders were able to assign extra tasks to them and place them in any duties which they were able to perform (DGM & STM). Furthermore, the Familiar Guanxi between cross-team colleagues promoted less calculative social exchange and thus flexible distribution of some ambiguously defined tasks between them (TSM). In addition, under the relational collectivism of Guanxi, employees sometimes perceived whatever they were able to contribute to the company with their skills as their responsibilities (RDE3). In other words, the ambiguous but flexible role specification stimulated extra-role behaviour of employees in the coordination of work.

Moreover, there was a strong preference for relational coordination practices, such as informal interpersonal communication, relational exchange for collaboration, interpersonal trust for management control and relational approach for performance management. First, there was a reliance on informal interpersonal communication rather than formal communication. Employees strived to communicate issues and solve disagreements through informal interpersonal conversation and only brought the issues to management after informal communication failed, because such failure was often viewed as a lack of

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collaborative attitude from both parties (DS, RSM, PCM & DGM). Second, there was a strong preference for relational exchange for organisational collaboration. It was seen as essential to develop harmonious interpersonal relationships to receive cooperation from colleagues, and it was regarded as a common strategy to develop relational obligations for strengthening support and collaboration (QC2, RDE3, SDM, IS, DS & DGM). Third, there was a heavy reliance on interpersonal trust for management control. Managers gave important tasks and high autonomy to the subordinates whom were believed to be proactive and reliable, but utilised formal organisational rules to monitor and restrict subordinates who were viewed to be passive at work (DGM & RDE3). As a result, the strong preference for relational coordination practices supported organisational communication and collaboration and management control under the very limited use of formal organisational systems and processes.

Furthermore, because the formal performance management system had not been fully implemented, there was a preference for relational approach of performance management in the organisation. Under the lack of explicit performance requirements and universalistic reward rules, there were informal mutual understanding and agreements on performance expectations and rewards (IS, DS, RDE2, PCM & DGM). While performance assessment was quite informal, managers recognised proactive and conscientious work attitude as an informal performance criterion and assessed such attitude with informal feedback from other employees (DGM & TSM). In the performance assessment, relationship skills had become critical because the lack of relationship skills often caused negative feedback from other employees (PC1 & IS) and managers had to reconcile relational conflicts between employees to maintain harmony and thus valued the relationship skills (DGM & PCM). As a result of the informal performance assessment, managers often adopted a relational approach to deal with under-performing employees, such as, by demanding them to work overtime or on hard-laboured tasks or damaging their Face in public (PCM & RDE3). Table 4.6 offers some indications about the relational approach of performance management, which supported performance management in the organisation under the lack of formal performance management system.

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Interviewee Quotes

DGM ‘If you are not conscientious, your colleagues are all watching you. Some of them may complain about their coordination with you and tell me that someone [you] delay work again … It is tiring for me. But if the issue continues, I have to fire the person who affects the efficiency and mentality of whole team. … Sometimes I have to explain to comfort both parties.’

PCM ‘If someone is not competent, the company normally suggests him to resign. … Rather than tell directly that he is fired, the company offers other reasons to reserve his Face. He will then resign. … If [a subordinate] makes repetitive mistakes, … I must not discipline him. At most I ask him to work overtime for me, or work on some hard-laboured tasks for me.’

RDE2 ‘If he is not conscientious, [the manager] will ask about his progress in weekly team meeting and demand him to learn from other team members about how to perform. If he still does not perform well, he would normally resign after three months [of public humiliation].’

Table 4.6 Relational approach of performance management in Case Study I

In addition, there was strong particularistic emphasis on the behaviour input of employees, such as employee proactivity and commitment. The interviewees highlighted the criticalness of individual proactivity for good performance and recognised performance problems as an issue of proactivity (IS, RDE2 & DGM). Moreover, managers stressed the importance of winning employee commitment rather than monitoring employee performance closely because the employee commitment would save the time and energy of the managers so that they can focus on other issues (DGM). It is argued here that the strong particularistic emphasis on employee behaviour input made up the very limited use of formal organisational systems and procedures in the company for the control of work processes and outcomes. However, due to grown organisational size and the process of formalisation, the decreased interpersonal interaction and organisational investment on the development of interpersonal relationships but increased emphasis on formal management practices resulted in the loss of relational commitment and conscientious input of employees (Section 4.1).

As a consequence, the particularistic rules of Guanxi strongly supplemented the formal role coordination mechanism by promoting extra-role behaviour of employees, organisational communication and collaboration, and management control, and by making up the very limited use of formal organisational systems and procedures. However, it was discovered that the particularistic rules hindered the implementation of formal role coordination mechanism in the organisation. First, the ambiguous but flexible role specification altered the formal definition of role responsibilities. There were some role conflicts between senior team members and team leaders, as suggested by QC1, a senior employee:

‘Because it is the team leaders’ job to coordinate with another team [leaders], it is awkward for me to do so. Sometimes my team leader is in charge of cross-team coordination but I am required to

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communicate [with other team leaders]. I am not a manager and am not very sure which role I shall represent in the communication.’ (QC1)

Second, the strong preference for relational coordination practices distorted universalistic formal organisational rules. It was viewed impossible to demand employees to fully comply with impersonal organisational rules due to the consideration of Renqing and affective obligations (DGM). Under the relational approach of performance management, it was difficult to ensure the workplace fairness perceived by employees (PC1) and to implement universalistic formal performance management system in the company due to the concerns of relational obligations (DGM & QC1). These negative outcomes suggest that because the company had not formally developed its organisational culture or values, the particularistic values of Guanxi often overtook universalistic and rationalistic values of the formal role coordination mechanism. As a result, the particularistic rules interplaying with the formal role coordination mechanism produced double-edged organisational outcomes for the coordination of work.

To summarise, Section 4.3 indicates that while the relational coordination mechanism supplemented the formal role coordination mechanism, it often overrode the formal role coordination mechanism, resulting in many negative organisational outcomes. Moreover, due to the incomplete implementation of formal performance management system and the lack of formal development of organisational values, the formal role coordination mechanism had not addressed these negative organisational outcomes by enforcing organisational expectations.