The great wall of trust: A look at the importance of guanxi in international business

December 19th, 2011

Chinese culture puts great emphasis on personal relationships, a phenomenon called guanxi. In business relationships with Chinese executives, overseas executives may be at a disadvantage for lack of guanxi.

In a research paper published in the December 2011 Journal of International Business Studies, Crystal Jiang, assistant professor of management, and colleagues Roy Chua of the Harvard Business School, Masaaki Kotabe of the Fox School of Business, and Janet Murray of the University of Missouri-St. Louis, investigate how important this concept is to the Chinese and how foreign executives might overcome the challenge.

The paper, "Effects of Cultural Ethnicity, Firm Size, and Firm Age on Senior Executives' Trust in Their Overseas Business Partners: Evidence from China," explores the role that trust plays in forming bonds across cultures and national borders.

This article about the research was published in  Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.

Keywords: China, College of Business, Crystal Jiang, guanxi, international business, management, Research