Measuring Guanxi Quality in the Workplace

• Published in: Journal of business and psychology 2022-06, Vol.37 (3), p.581-599
• Main Authors: Chen, MiaoHua, Bedford, Olwen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Behavioral Science and Psychology; Business and Management; Business ethics; Chinese culture; Community and Environmental Psychology; Industrial and Organizational Psychology; Original Paper; Personality and Social Psychology; Professional relationships; Psychology; Social Sciences; Trust
• ISSN: 0889-3268; 1573-353X
• DOI: 10.1007/s10869-021-09762-3

Guanxi is important for career and organizational success in Chinese societies. Although guanxi has received a lot of research attention, most studies explore business outcomes rather than guanxi itself, meaning that many guanxi measures are ad hoc or assess static guanxi ties instead of guanxi quality, which is inherently dynamic. We analyzed existing measures and conceptual models of workplace guanxi to provide a foundation for developing the 15-item guanxi quality scale (GQS) as an effective and accurate way to operationalize evaluation of guanxi quality in the workplace. We demonstrated that guanxi quality is best represented with three dimensions: reciprocal favor ( renqing ), affection ( ganqing ), and trust ( xinren ), and that reciprocal favor encompasses face ( mianzi ). We also demonstrated the incremental validity of the GQS over two measures of guanxi quality with respect to 3 outcome variables: commitment, trust in the partner’s organization, and satisfaction. We discuss application of the GQS in the context of boundary spanner relations, which have been highlighted in the literature due to their potential for corruption. By grounding our measure squarely in past research and resolving conflicting conceptualizations in the literature, we expect that the GQS can provide a unified starting point for future investigation of workplace guanxi .