Research On Patriarchal Clan System And Family Governance

Study on "Family Business" has undergone a paradigm revolution and research boom since Self Lansberg et al.(1988)gave definition to it.However,value deprevation of family business heritage is extremely huge.In the economic background of family business rising rapidly,research on family business began to attract Chinese scholars' attention.But it is far from becoming a research boom,and even has a cooling trend in recent years.In the aspect of company governance,domestic and foreign studies have shown homogenization.Thus,Research on Chinese family business governance has been caught up in a "bottleneck." So,"evergreen family" and "evergreen family business",which is more critical?" Can family governance tools in Western companies be applied to corporations in China?Which has become the focus of attention.What's more,what kind of role does the difference between Western and C hinese institutional environment play in family business?This paper unfolds itself along the path of "Corporate Governance","Family Business Governance" and "family governance" and adopts the text of "A Dream in Red Mansions" to do quantitative analysis.It aims to study patriarchal system(relationship),one of the most important traditional systems in China and find out the impact of its performance and evolution on family and family business as well as its historical value.This paper also studies the deep-rooted problems in China's rapid political,social,economic,cultural development,so as to deepen understanding of the formation of China's long-standing patriarchal family relations and scrutiny of family governance path.The main findings are:Family Business origins from etiquette,while etiquette comes from patriarchal relations such as patriarchal distance,generational relationship,branches,Dishu,master and servant relationship,etc.Patriarchal relations can affect the value,fairness and the consequences of individual members in a family.Members with stronger patriarchal relations are more likely to get excess returns,protection from wrongness and different consequences.The relationship between patriarchal relations and family governance is regulated by factors such as talent and beliefs.This paper examines the patriarchal relationship of family governance and finds that samples about factions have stronger patriarchal relationship than the full sample.Factional figures having stronger patriarchal relations indicates that they are more in line with etiquette and with a higher status.In multiple regression,individual characteristics such as political affiliation,emotions,love and frequency of appearances reflect the significant impact of patriarchal relations from different dimensions.Also,clan features and formation of behaviors in "Dream of Red Mansions" are influenced by patriarchal relations of various dimensions in a similar degree.Thus,the stronger the patriarchal relationship,the easier to obtain political connections,to act as faction leaders and to play the sovereign role in family' s foreign affairs;people with stronger patriarchal relationship are not prone to kindle intense emotions with central figures because they bear more family business and are easy to form entangled conflicts of interest with central figures,which confirms the old saying of "the more you do,the more mistakes you could make" and "to stick your neck out";While they are prone to have love relationship with distant relatives or family servants and become factional leaders and interests aggregates;The more they appear,the more they are likely to be involved in internal conflicts.Family members with farther patriarchal distance,higher seniority and those who are legitimate are more loyal They are protected more by family shelter.But if something happens to the family,their situation will also be relatively difficult and therefore they are more willing to be loyal to the family;Family members with higher seniority and those who are legitimate are also more loyal because they hope to get asylum in the faction,and therefore more loyal to factions and to the family;patriarchal relations do not fully affect foreign relations,which depend on the structure and activity of the faction itself;Family members with farther patriarchal distance,higher seniority and those who are legitimate are more likely to get higher family status and flatters.We can get enlightenment from these findings that figures from factions(circles)with stronger relationship are easier to obtain political ties,and thus play a leadership role and being flattered and attached by outsiders.But they should be careful to keep good loyalty and not to be seen as "stands out" and "scapegoat" in order to obtain a higher status and respectThis paper studies the impact of patriarchal relationship on family governance from the perspective of feudal etiquette and internal governance.It is found that in addition to "punishment" and "consequences" variables,the mean values of full sample are lower than those of faction sample,indicating characters belonging to factions in "Dream of Red Mansions" get a relatively good consequence.In multiple regression,the stronger the patriarchal relations,the higher the salary;people with farther patriarchal distance,lower seniority and those who are immediate and legitimate are more likely to get rewarded or punished when the occasion arises.The reason probably is that people with a higher family status are prone to do things decisively and do not need rewards.While for figures with a lower status,they are more likely to get rewarded,to win affection of Clan elders when they have stronger patriarchal relations.At the same time,the punishment they get are more deterrent.As they lead more faction members,the probability of error increases correspondingly,thus more likely to fall under the condition of " Beat the dog before the lion".People with farther patriarchal distance,lower seniority and those who are immediate,legitimate and owners have a relatively good ending.Once something bad happens to the family,people with a higher family status are more vulnerable and hard to protect themselves because of the political background.While those not so close to them depart early,so their situation is a little better.In "Dream of Red Mansions",most owners who are immediate and legitimate have made proper arrangements before the downfall of Jia Manor.But they can not take into account all family members,so offshoot and concubine members are either being sacrificed in the name of family interests,or being pushed to a more desolate situation due to scarce property.In"Dream of Red Mansions",the influence of patriarchal relations on family governance is a significant,and its positive and negative effects are in line with expectations,reflecting the importance of patriarchal relations in family governance.The enlightenment lies in that the stronger the patriarchal relations,the higher their salaries.People with higher status don't have to worry about rewards and punishment,but once failing,their consequences are more serious.In contrast,though people with lower status are faced with rewards and punishments and are more likely to be sacrificed by family,but as long as they do things prudently and properly,they can protect themselves fully.This paper examines the regulatory effect of patriarchal relationship on family governance and discovers:mean values of "culture" and "faith" in the full sample are lower than those in factions sample,indicating that figures belonging to factions pursue higher in culture and belief and have a better basic foundation.In multiple regression,under cultural effect,patriarchal relationship is significantly positive with remuneration and rewards while significantly negative with punishment,and its relationship with consequences is not stable.Under belief effect the relationship between patriarchal relationship and compensation,reward,punishment are not stable while its relationship with consequences is stable.After embedding regulatory variables "culture" and "belief" into the relationship between family governance and patriarchal relations,the interactive effect is not stabilized.Culture plays a regulatory role in salary,reward and punishment.To a certain degree,culture affects the behavior;Faith plays a regulatory role of in consequences.People of faith can see through the development of things in advance,change their view of the world and arrange "earnings management" ahead of time.The enlightenment is that people's academic attainments can positively affect salary,incentives and punishing in the short term,but long-term consequences will be affected by their inner belongings(faith morals).Considering the short and long term goals altogether,people with culture and beliefs still occupy a certain advantage.Contributions of this paper are:firstly,it extends the research field and direction.Social analysis embedded in traditional economics research has broadened the scope and perspective of economics research.Based on social economics and management theory,adopting Chinese literature and history to discuss the value of social networks and family governance effect,this paper uses quantitative literature and history analysis method and pioneers in the research field of quantitative accounting literature.Secondly,it has some inspiration and reference value to the real society.Under the impact of culture shock from the East and the West,China's social problems are influenced by the interaction of formal institution and informal institution.But research on these problems had better been focused on a certain period in order to focus on one institutional background,easily control the scene and get coherent systematic content and logic.It helps deepen understanding of the pros and cons in existing institutional arrangements to uncover the mechanism and efficiency of social networks in the family by studying informal institutional arrangements,to investigate the synergistic action and its effect of sociology and family governance from the perspective of social organization optimization and to explore the engine for China's sustainable development from the perspective of social ecology and accounting literature.