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This article reveals a managerial issue that multinational corporations (MNCs) in China are at a strategic crossroad where their employees are competing with the same sources of guanxi networks for different business deals simultaneously.

Triggered by a real company case in China and guided by a literature review on business guanxi, the author bridged them into a specific inquiry, as little was known and should be further examined.

The author identified a paradoxical/applied scenario in MNCs between the use of guanxi and overall firm performance damaged by overusing it.

Empirical studies are deemed necessary to seek more understanding between the role of guanxi and MNCs in China.

Guanxi is not a straightforward guarantee of business achievements in China. Management should note the influence of its actors – own employees – who can potentially diminish the positive returns of guanxi on overall firm’s achievements because of non-obvious interplays among employees and “contacts” on the overlapping guanxi networks. The larger the organisation, the higher the risk is.

This article proposes a new line of thoughts for practitioners about the effect of business guanxi on overall firm performance and serves as a starting point for academics to explore empirical research. The concept of overlapping guanxi networks is institutionalised and discussed. A three-step rule is also suggested for MNCs as a basic solution.

Cultivating loyal customers is a pressing concern for streamers. The present study investigates how to build interpersonal relationships with streamers and whether different interpersonal relationship factors lead to repurchase intention and WOM intention in live streaming commerce. The moderating effect of gender is also examined.

A self-administered questionnaire was completed by 429 live streaming commerce users in mainland China. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to test the research hypotheses.

The results indicate that all four streamer attributes (expertise, authenticity, attractiveness, and homophily) have a positive influence on swift guanxi, and swift guanxi is effective in predicting both calculative commitment and affective commitment. In addition, all interpersonal relationship factors (swift guanxi, calculative commitment, and affective commitment) significantly affect repurchase intentions, with only affective commitment being linked to WOM intention. Also, the moderating role of gender was confirmed in expertise – swift guanxi, attractiveness – swift guanxi, cognitive commitment – repurchase intention and affective commitment – repurchase intention linkages.

This paper contributes to the live streaming commerce literature by integrating swift guanxi, calculative commitment, and affective commitment to understand the repurchase intention and WOM intention from the relationship-building process perspective. In addition, this paper enriches the source credibility and source attractiveness models by identifying gender boundaries on the effectiveness of these models in predicting swift guanxi.

Drawing on the challenge–hindrance stressor framework and the “too-much-of-a-good-thing” principle, this study examined the curvilinear effects of two emic social challenge stressors (guanxi beliefs and participative decision-making (PDM)) and the moderating effect of an etic social hindrance stressor (perceived organizational politics) on Hong Kong and United States nurses’ job satisfaction.

A quantitative survey method was implemented, with the data provided by 355 Hong Kong nurses and 116 United States nurses. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the degree of measurement equivalence across Hong Kong and US nurses. The proposed model and the research questions were tested using nonlinear structural equation modeling analyses.

The results show that while guanxi beliefs only showed an inverted U-shaped relation on Hong Kong nurses’ job satisfaction, PDM had an inverted U-shaped relation with both Hong Kong and United States nurses’ job satisfaction. The authors also found that Hong Kong nurses experienced the highest job satisfaction when their guanxi beliefs and perceived organization politics were both high.

The results add to the comprehension of the nuances of the often-held assumption of linearity in organizational sciences and support the speculation of social stressors-outcomes linkages.

Managers need to recognize that while the nurturing and development of effective relationships with employees via social interaction are important, managers also need to be aware that too much guanxi and PDM may lead employees to feel overwhelmed with expectations of reciprocity and reconciliation to such an extent that they suffer adverse outcomes and become dissatisfied with their jobs.

First, the authors found that influences of guanxi beliefs and PDM are not purely linear and that previous research may have neglected the curvilinear nature of their influences on job satisfaction. Second, the authors echo researchers’ call to consider an organization’s political context to fully understand employees’ attitudes and reactions toward social interactions at work. Third, the authors examine boundary conditions of curvilinear relationships to understand the delicate dynamics.

Three types of industrial buyer-seller relational process models are available: joining theory, stage theory, and state theory. However, historically, these models have developed based on the knowledge and cultural context of the Western world. Several researchers note that national culture may have an impact on international industrial buyer-seller relationships. Including culture in the models is highly important, especially as the business environment is increasingly more global and different countries have different business cultures. The goal of this paper is to define the most suitable industrial buyer-seller relational process models for describing relationships in various contexts. The paper includes a through literature review and a single case study in order to reach this objective. A new state theory model evolved during the research. It consists of two beginning states: searching and starting; four purely middles states: constant/static, decline, growth, and troubled; and a purely end state: termination. The state of dormant/inert is both a middle state and an end state, that is, when the relational actors are not in contact does not mean that the relationship has ended, but instead, for example, new legislation may have been implemented, which requires the actors to evaluate their relationship and its future. A relationship goes through the two beginning states in the order mentioned above, but after that, any state may occur.

This study examines the effects of incentive compensation and guanxi, a type of informal personal relationship between people, on the objectivity of Chinese internal auditors. Given that the objectivity of internal auditors is essential for promoting financial reporting quality, it is important to investigate the effectiveness of internal audit functions, especially in emerging markets where the corporate governance mechanisms designed to promote objectivity are less mature.

The research employs a 2 × 2 between participants experiment with 116 graduate accounting student participants.

After controlling for internal auditors’ ethicality, we find that close-guanxi between management and internal auditors and incentive compensation in the form of bonuses based upon meeting earnings targets both have the capacity to impair the objectivity of Chinese internal auditors. Participants were more tolerant of management’s attempts to manage earnings when there was close guanxi or bonus compensation. Further, compensation structure only influenced internal auditors’ support of management when guanxi was distant, but when there was close guanxi between internal auditors and management, internal auditors were unlikely to challenge management regardless of the compensation structure.

Drawing on the organizational learning and relational governance literature, this study aims to advance a theoretical model to explain the export performance of emerging market export ventures.

This study selects quantitative methodology because the main objective of this study is to explore the role of export ventures’ performance (past) on guanxi networking, co-creation marketing strategies and present performance.

The empirical evidence suggests that guanxi networking and co-creation strategy can mediate the relationship between export venture performance in the preceding year and export venture performance in the following year. In addition, this study also provides some guidance for emerging market export ventures on how to build a strong guanxi networking and create opportunities for collaboration when the effect of export performance in the preceding year on current performance is absent.

The authors propose the inclusion of strategic guanxi networking-related factors (e.g. top executives’ ties with business-to-business customers, such as distributors in the host market) in the prior performance-current performance paradigm. The outcomes of this study also contribute to extant organizational learning theory research by integrating preceding performance research with the co-creation theory. The study offers new insights into organizational learning and relational governance from the emerging market perspective.

We conceptualize corporate social capital within the context of Chinese guanxi culture. We assert that the formation and mobilization of corporate social capital are culturally and institutionally contextualized. Building upon a relational approach to corporate performance, we examine culture-sensitive properties of Chinese guanxi and compare guanxi social capital with non-guanxi social capital. We then explain why guanxi-based corporate social capital is of growing significance to the Chinese transitional economy in an era of increasing market competition and institutional uncertainty. We conclude by proposing a research agenda about the roles that guanxi-based corporate social capital plays for boosting corporate performance.

This chapter presents systematic evidence on the persistent power of guanxi, the Chinese phrase for informal social relations and networks, in transitional China. I draw heavily on my previous publications reporting findings from a series of probability sample surveys of the Job-Search Network (thereafter JSNET) project in Chinese cities, and job histories of the survey respondents combined cover a span of 37 years from 1978, the beginning year of China's market-oriented reforms, to 2014, the year of last JSNET survey completed.

This study examines how project uncertainties (environmental uncertainty and participant uncertainty) affect guanxi and contractual governance and assesses the mediating role of guanxi governance between project uncertainty and contractual governance.

Data were collected in two stages from Chinese contractors. First, in-depth interviews were conducted with nine construction engineering project practitioners in different contracts as a pilot for questionnaire designing. Second, a cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted with professionals and practitioners of construction enterprises to collect primary data. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test seven hypotheses based on data collected from 198 respondents.

Project environmental uncertainty promotes the use of guanxi governance, while project participant uncertainty hinders it; the relationship between both types of uncertainty and contractual governance is the same as with guanxi governance. Furthermore, guanxi governance promotes contractual governance and partially mediates project environmental uncertainty and contractual governance and a complete mediating role between project participant uncertainty and contractual governance.

As the interviewed samples are mainly from China, the study should be replicated using large representative samples from East Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea, to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the influence of guanxi governance. Further, while the internal consistency reliability and convergent validity of the questionnaire data in this study align with the standards, a larger sample size would improve the reliability and validity of the research results and better represent the overall work situation of contractors, owners and public policymakers.

The results provide insights into project governance research and have implications for construction practitioners in deploying governance-related resources.

Drawing on institutional theory, this study investigates the role of individual cultural values on the adoption of socially sustainable supply chain management (socially SSCM) for Chinese suppliers facing the normative institutional pressures of guanxi (interpersonal relationships).

Using empirical data collected in three waves from 205 Chinese manufacturers supplying international markets, the proposed theoretical model is tested through partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The results indicate that guanxi has a positive impact on socially SSCM, and this positive effect is strengthened when the individual cultural values of the supplier's representative embody high collectivism and low uncertainty avoidance.

This study highlights the leading role of guanxi in improving socially SSCM practices due to its normative institutional force. In addition, the findings suggest that future studies should consider individual differences in supply chain partners, which may lead to distinct reactions when facing normative institutional pressures.

This study suggests international buyers should adopt guanxi management with their Chinese suppliers to encourage them to adopt socially SSCM. In addition, managers should note that the guanxi strategy is more effective when the supplier's representative collectivism is high and uncertainty avoidance is low.

This study contributes to socially SSCM research in emerging economies by unveiling the role of guanxi as a key driver of socially SSCM in the Chinese market and providing empirical evidence of the moderating effect of individual culture on the guanxi normative institutionalization process.