Crafting a Confucian Culture in Chinese Corporations: A Case Study of Guangzhou Borche

Abstract

Corporate culture is an important source of enterprise’s soft power. Confucianism, which has been regarded as official teaching over a thousand years, manifests its profound values in modern management and is adopted by a number of private companies in China. This paper employs a case study method, concentrating on the development of Borche - a private enterprise in Guangzhou. Data and other information were collected from interviews, open reports and historical records and got ensured by triangulation verification. It seeks to explain how the Confucianism got internalized as part of a corporate culture and serves us its management guideline. The result demonstrates that the internalization of Confucian values in a corporation will go through three stages: cultural identity, identity strengthening and spontaneous order. Confucianism’s corporate culture is reflected in four aspects: of spirit, institution, behavior, and matter. The cultural infiltration mechanism is thus created.

Keywords

• corporate culture
• confucianism
• cultural internalization mechanism
• culture evolution