Impacts Of Leader-Member Guanxi On Employees' Work Attitude In Chinese Private Enterprises

When we applaud western management theories and models, we should also reflect upon the following two questions:Shall western management theories and models still fit into Chinese context? Are there any Chinese features in Chinese management?This paper holds the view that study of Chinese management, particularly organizational behavior, should not overlook guanxi, which is the key to the black box of Chinese management. Thanks to the more and more important role private enterprises are playing on China's economy and features of Chinese private enterprises, this paper studies the impacts of leader-member guanxi on employees' work attitude in private enterprises.On the basis of analyzing and summarizing domestic and foreign literature of guanxi, this paper proposes the concept of Leader-Member Guanxi(LMG), and defines it as "the direct particularistic ties between a leader and a member in an organization, both of which develop interpersonal relationship in accordance with specific principles". Then it compares LMG with other two concepts reflecting interpersonal relationship between a leader and a member in western management circle, i.e. Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) and Supervisory Commitment or Commitment to Supervisor, and concludes that LMG is better than the other two concepts in describing leader-member relationship and exchange in Chinese enterprises, In addition, it makes an attempt to construct a Leader-Member Guanxi scale, which not only measures the existence of guanxi, but also the strength of guanxi, and hence is more feasible and practical. This paper uses empirical investigation data to study the impacts of demographic factors on LMG, distributive justice, procedural justice, interactional justice, job satisfaction, affective commitment and turnover intention, and constructs a structural equation model to verify and modify the theoretical model of impacts of LMG on employees'work attitude in private enterprises. Finally, it proposes a series of management suggestions based upon the findings.This paper constructs a theoretical model of impacts of LMG on employees' work attitude (i.e. job satisfaction, affective commitment and turnover intention) mediated by organizational justice (i.e. distributive justice, procedural justice and interactional justice). It uses 337 valid questionnaires to collect data, SPSS 15.0 software to make descriptive statistical analysis, exploratory factor analysis, independent sample t-test, one-factor ANOVA, and AMOS7.0 to verify and modify the structural model. The findings are shown as follows:a. LMG has a direct positive effect on an employee's job satisfaction, no direct positive effect is found on affective commitment and turnover intention.b. LMG has a direct positive effect on an employee's distributive justice, procedural justice and interactional justice, with the strongest effect on interactional justice, followed by procedural justice and distributive justice.c. Distributive justice has a direct positive effect on an employee's job satisfaction, and interactional justice has a direct positive effect on an employee's affective commitment.d. LMG has an indirect positive effect on an employee's job satisfaction mediated by distributive justice, and an indirect positive effect on an employee's affective commitment mediated by interactional justice. No mediating effect of procedural justice is found between LMG and any kind of work attitude.e. A positive correlation is found between an employee's job satisfaction and turnover intention, as well as between affective commitment and turnover intention.The findings show that LMG is conducive to improve employees' organizational justice, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, reduce employees'turnover intention, and hence facilitate the realization of organizational goals and harmonious, sustainable development of an organization. Only an enterprise attaches great importance to LMG can it attract and maintain employees, particularly core employees, stimulate employees'positive attitude, exert their maximum values, and form its sustainable competitive advantage. Conversely, overlooking LMG will lead to negative attitude of employees, turnover of talents, and severely impede an enterprise's development. This paper proposes several management suggestions on how to improve LMG, and therefore improve employees'organizational justice, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment, reduce turnover intention, based upon the findings.a. make great efforts to cultivate and improve LMGIf a leader intends to cultivate and improve LMG, the main approach is to transform leader-member Shengren guanxi into leader-member shouren guanxi. Among the 8 guanxi listed in LMG scale, only friend guanxi is not predetermined. So a leader must spare no effort to develop friend guanxi with employees, particularly core employees.b. establish a fair distribution systemIn terms of means of the three types of organizational justice, interactional justice (3.5883) is the highest, followed by procedural justice (3.5292) and distributive justice (3.3581). It shows that employees are least satisfied with distributive justice. As a result, an enterprise must investigate into employees' lower satisfaction with payment, and accordingly take some measures to improve the current distributive system. When designing distributive plans, an enterprise will use income gap to motivate core employees'positive work attitude, but it will also prevent the broadening of income gap, in case some employees might form negative attitude to jeopardize its harmonious development.c. establish an efficient internal communication systemIn terms of means of each item of procedural justice, "a leader will hear out an employee's opinions and suggestions when making a work-related decision" is the lowest. So an enterprise needs to establish an efficient internal communication system between leaders and employees.d. promote human-based managementThe findings show that interactional justice accounts for the biggest variance in China's organizational justice structure, because it is closely related to Chinese culture highlighting interpersonal harmony. In management, an enterprise must promote human-based management, reflected in thinking for employees, respecting employees, caring for employees, communicating with employees in decision-making process and results to form employees'fair perception from the leader.e. emphasize on cultivating new employees'affection on enterpriseThe findings show that turnover intention of employees with more than ten years'seniority is less than employees with less than three years'seniority, affective commitment of employees with more than ten years'seniority is greater than employees with less than three years'seniority. And therefore, an enterprise should give emphasis to proper management of new employees, recruitment training, use corporate culture and affection to attract and maintain employees.This study inevitably has some limitations owing to the restriction of time, resource, individual ability and other conditions. For example, all the data are self-report data, samples come from the same city, and the number of samples is small (N=337). Moreover, the theoretical model uses organizational justice as the mediator between LMG and employees'work attitude. Future research might add other mediators, like organizational support, perceived supervisory support, LMX. The consequence variables are the three attitude variables of employees, future research might select employees'work behavior variables, like work performance, organizational citizenship behavior, organizational retaliatory behavior.