THE INFLUENCE OF CHINESE HARMONIOUS CULTURE ON CSR
PRACTICES TO EMPLOYEES
The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) originated in the West and was just brought into China in the mid-1990s, with multinationals springing up in Chinese market (Myllyvaino and Virkkala 2006). The emergence of CSR required companies not only to be responsible to their shareholders, but also to balance the interests of wide range of stakeholders, including employees, customers, the community, the society and the environment (Wang and Justin 2009). In the beginning, Chinese enterprises only passively accepted CSR standards and codes of conduct and tended to slavishly follow in the footsteps of the West (Moon 2002). However, western regulations were later found to be difficult for Chinese enterprises to manage, because of their inconformity with the Chinese reality (Wang and Justin 2009). Chinese standards, values, cultures and business environment that will definitely have impacts on CSR conduct and performance, are all different from those in the Western countries. In addition to this, China is in a period of social transition; there are still many social issues that need to be solved, such as unhealthy labour relations, environment pollution and poor social security system (Wang and Justin 2009). In light of this, there is a wide gap between the West and China with regard to CSR and the Western CSR concept cannot be directly transplanted to Chinese enterprises without any adaption to the Chinese reality. Therefore, we argue that CSR concept cannot perfectly fit the Chinese market unless it embraces Chinese culture into consideration in order to be better understood by Chinese enterprises.
In the year of 2006, the former Chinese president Hu Jintao officially stressed the strategic task of building a ‘harmonious society’ at the Sixth Plenum of the 16th
Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) (See 2009). Since then, significant discussion over Chinese CSR practices appeared in the society. The major reason why ‘harmonious society’ has raised wide scholars’ interests in CSR is that the objective of achieving a harmonious society is seen as quite similar as that of CSR practices. See (2009) pointed out that the construction of a harmonious society was conducive to raise corporations’ awareness of CSR and increase corporate engagement in CSR practices. Therefore, it is suspected that developing harmonious culture, as the key to build a socialist harmonious society, is of significant importance and likewise can improve Chinese enterprises on fulfilling CSR practices.
Harmonious culture, in a broad sense, is the ideology and culture that value
‘harmony’, no matter it is interpersonal, between human and society, or between human and nature. In other words, any cultural values that enhance harmony and will contribute to the construction of a harmonious society can be treated as harmonious culture.
Any social consciousness has some degree of historical inheritance. The desire for harmony is not only the request of modernization. Chinese people’s pursuit of harmony has been deeply rooted in Chinese traditional culture. Tracing back to two

thousand years, Confucianism has already put forward the concept of building a
‘Datong Society’, which depicts a picture of a great harmonious society. The harmonious culture is the marrow of Confucian philosophy. Confucianism developed many ethical values that are very beneficial in dealing with interpersonal relations; examples like Ren , which encourages people to show their benevolence and Shu , which emphasizes forgiveness. Even though these values were put forward thousands of years ago, they still remain their usefulness as guidelines for building a harmonious society in current days. In light of this, it is suggested that Confucian values will have positive effects on constructing harmonious culture in Chinese corporations and improving their CSR practices.
Due to a short history in China, the term of CSR has not been fully understood and recognised by Chinese enterprises. Most enterprises have misunderstandings of corporate responsibilities to the society (Zhao 2012). They thought external activities, such as philanthropies and social identity acquisition are identical with CSR practices, therefore lacking concern for internal responsibilities to employees. Currently, labour rights issues concerning harsh working environment, insecurity in health and safety, insufficiency of education and training and so forth are severe and significantly influence the harmonisation of labour relations. Zhao (2012) in a recent article pointed out that establishing harmonious labour relation should be the foundation of corporate social responsibility. It can arouse employees’ motivation, improve corporate reputation and promote the sustainable development of enterprises.
Additionally, in current years an increasing number of Chinese enterprises and entrepreneurs are showing great interests in the potential power of Confucian values in CSR strategies and already put them into practice. They start learning to show their benevolence and care for their employees (Zhao and Roper 2011). By knowing the trend in Chinese CSR practice and the necessity of establishing harmonious labour relations, we would like to study in real context to find out whether harmonious culture can improve Chinese CSR practices and promote the establishment of harmonious labour relations.
The purpose of this study is to explore how Chinese harmonious culture influences the way Chinese enterprises doing CSR to employees, and to find out whether the harmonious CSR approach leads to positive outcomes in terms of labour relations, employees’ motivation, enterprise’s reputation, etc. At the same time, this study seeks to assess the roles of top-level executives and lower-level employees in CSR organizational change. Specifically, a conceptual model of harmonious cultural CSR strategic change is designed. The model suggests two things. The first is that CSR change can be initiated from both the top-level managers and the lower-level employees. And the second is that no matter in which approach harmonious culture influences CSR strategy, it will lead to positive outcomes in terms of employee motivation, satisfaction, productivity, etc.
To achieve these objectives, this paper first reviews the literature of CSR development in China and Chinese harmonious culture, highlighting the key CSR issues in current years and the linkage between Confucian harmonious values and CSR practices to

employees. Then it briefly introduces two organizational change approaches, namely the traditional strategic change approach and the employee-centered approach. Based on the literature reviewed, a conceptual model is developed as guidance for conducting the research. The third part of this paper explains the research design, together with methods of sampling, data collection and data analysis. In the fourth part, the paper goes into considerable detail about the application of Confucian harmonious values to CSR practices to employees at a real Chinese enterprise. Finally, this paper will discuss the potential value of this study, demonstrate major research limitations and provide feasible suggestions for future research.
By reviewing the literature of CSR organizational change, we can find clear evidence that both traditional strategic change process and employee-centered approach can be effective ways to generate CSR practices. Even though the traditional perspective still dominates people’s thinking on how organizations change, it does not mean that CSR initiatives from employees is of little value and can be completely neglected. In examining corporate CSR practices, if researchers just see organizational strategies coming from the top management team, they may overlook the huge power of lower-level employees to induce the occurrence of organizational CSR change.
Therefore, in order to comprehensively explore the processes of how Chinese harmonious culture, step by step, affects the ultimate corporate CSR activities to employees, this paper intends to analyze an in-depth study of corporate CSR change by adopting both traditional and modern organizational change perspectives in
Chinese context.
For better illustration of the impact of harmonious culture on CSR practices to employees, a conceptual model is developed to guide the study. Figure 1 below shows the conceptual model.

Figure 1 Conceptual Model
This model seeks to investigate alternative approaches to CSR organisational change as well as the results of Chinese harmonious cultural impact on CSR practices to employees. It is expected that leadership is not the only factor that foster the adoption of CSR in corporate strategies. Employees are also taking an active role in CSR strategy-making. It is also suspected that Chinese harmonious culture will have positive influences on companies implementing social responsibilities to their employees. In the following section, the major targeted objectives and their hypothesized causal relationships will be discussed.
With the aim to explore how Chinese harmonious culture influences the way Chinese enterprises doing CSR to employees, this paper uses an empirical study of Confucian harmonious CSR practices in a local Chinese private enterprise. The research is to be conducted mainly through structured interviews and field observations, associated with case study. The sample population for the interview and observation includes the management as well as employees at all levels from the case company. However, in consideration of the feasibility of interviewing a large number of lower-level employees, data from employees will be collected only through observation, while detailed information obtained by face-to-face interview come from the management.
The paper examined the approach in which Confucian harmonious culture influences company’s CSR behaviour to employees from two perspectives – the traditional strategic change perspective and employee-centered perspective. Following that, considerable detail on the application of Confucian harmonious values to CSR

practices to employees at a real Chinese enterprise was explicitly given. Finally, this paper made a comprehensive discussion about the findings of the research and provided useful suggestions for further research in Chinese cultural CSR practices.
The intended outcomes of this paper are twofold. On the one hand, this paper has examined the roles of top-level executives and lower-level employees in corporate strategic CSR change. There is clear evidence that the traditional CSR change approach can be successful for generating CSR practices and make tremendous contributions to company’s success as well as social welfare. However, the potential value of employee-centered approach has not been discovered since few lower-level employees have the desire to spontaneously participate in CSR strategy making. By examining organizational CSR change in real business context, the traditional strategic change approach has been found out to play a dominant role in company’s
CSR change. Therefore, it is argued that the traditional strategic change perspective should be paid more attention in organizational CSR studies in the future. Even though the employee-centered CSR change approach has not been successfully investigated in this study, its potential value on the process by which companies may change to better fulfilling their responsibilities to the society needs to be hold until proven in future studies.
On the other hand, it is expected to conclude from this study that adopting a harmonious cultural CSR strategy in Chinese enterprise can bring the company with huge benefits, such as enhancing employees’ satisfaction and motivation, reducing turnover rate, improving corporate reputation, and promoting company’s sustainable development. The findings of this paper would be considered to be both theoretically and practically constructive. From the theoretical view, this paper can be a reference for those who seek to examine the theory of CSR development and strategic management issues. From the perspective of practical application, the findings of this study will possibly contribute to both Chinese enterprises and multinationals which are operating in China in human resources management and corporate CSR practices.