Ancient Honest Officials' Behavior Motivation And The Circumstances That They Faced

China has a long history and profound tradition of clean and honest culture,contains universal value of integrity spirit.Lian in the term of Lian Li in Chinese traditional culture first means honest,and this is the the most narrow definition.But it also has other means,including incorruption and thrifty,justice and fair,competent and kindness.Each meaning corresponds to a certain behaviors.Honest officials can be divided into different types depending on their behavior.Honest officials' behavior selection is the result of motivation and environment.Their motivations include safety,promotion,moral integrity and moral satisfaction and self-realization etc.The motivation of most officials is the combination of many kinds of motives.Different officials have different motivational intensity for each kind of motivation.The moral satisfaction,self actualization is intrinsic motivation,directly get satisfaction from the honest behavior.Other motives belong to external motivation,need to be satisfied from the external social identity.From the biographical information of these officials,The following three factors have obvious influence on the motivation of officials:Family,education and situation in officialdom.The role of the ancient social environment has both a positive and constructive side to honest officials.The power of inspiration comes from three aspects:the intellectual culture field,the political sphere dominated by the monarch,and the social field based on the people.Honest officials may be promoted,praised,rewarded,or free from disaster by authority,and they may be extoled,commemorated,or asked to stay by people.However,the incentive system is not necessarily effective,if the official selection system and the examination system cannot investigate the virtue and ability of officials,and corrupt officials get promoted and honest official not.On the other hand,the cost and risk of the officers is also very high.They not only must endure the hardships of life,but often be isolated,suppressed,excluded.There are many officials that their promotion is affected,be demotion,be dismissed and even be punished because of their incorruptible.It can deepen the understanding of the ancient Chinese clean government culture from the motivation-environment-behavior logic.In the contemporary construction of a clean and honest government,we should learn from the pros and cons of ancient construction of a clean and honest government.We should grasp the core meaning of Lian to officials,focus on the meaning of integrity and justice,rather than thrift and poor;respect the diversity of the motivation structure of honest officials to build a multi-level mechanism to encourage honest behavior;promote democracy and rule of law to go out of the vicious circle of corruption;guard against the erosion of the sub culture of corruption.