Abstract

China’s business sector has been described as facing serious ethical challenges, including corruption and bribery, distributive injustice, environmental pollution, and misspending of public funds. Unethical decision-making in business represents a potentially destabilizing force for government, business, and society. Recent calls for research that is detailed, nuanced, contemporary, and context-specific on the effects of Asian national business systems on ethical business practices, according to Pereira et al. (2017), are particularly relevant for countries including China that possess the entanglement of a “multiplexity”-multiple business systems co-existing within the same economy reliant on ethics and institutional trust for effective functioning, as discussed by Witt and Redding (2013). To this end, we conduct exploratory research investigating the relationship among Confucian values, Hofstede’s national culture, and ethical decision-making within a business context in China. Using data collected from 550 Chinese MBA students and business executives, results indicate that although both Confucian values and Hofstede’s national culture dimensions are associated with the use of egoism and justice in ethical decision-making scenarios, differential patterns emerged in these relationships. Confucian values were more predictive of outcomes. Of particular interest were the relationships between Confucian values and ethical criteria of yi and justice as well as li and zhi with egoism. Results suggest if the goal is enhancing institutional trust through an increased use of more principled justice-oriented ethics in business in China, an emphasis should be placed on yi (righteousness), coupled with a deemphasis on hierarchy and tradition in the form of li (ritual propriety) and zhi (wisdom). Including love of learning (haoxue), trust (xin), a long-term orientation, and individualistic messages oriented towards family and self-sufficiency may also strengthen overall ethical decision-making for SMEs, MNCs, and SOEs in navigating a multiplexity environment.