HONG KONG,CHINA - Media OutReach - 10 April 2019 - Corruption is a major threat faced byChina and anyone who wants to do business in the country. In recent years, theChinese government's crackdowns incorruption has led to some success.  In the Berlin-based non-profit TransparencyInternational's CorruptionPerceptions Index 2017, China ranked 77^th with ascore of 41 out of 100, a slight improvement from the score of 36 in 2014. Theindex ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of publicsector corruption according to experts and businesspeople with a scale of 0 to100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.

While the government continues to combat corruptionfrom the top level, it also needs the support of individuals. How do Chinesepeople perceive bribery acts? Are their perception any different from people ofthe Western culture? Prof. HongYing-yi, Choh-Ming Li Professor of Marketing at TheChinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Business School has revealed someinteresting answers in her research.

With her collaborators from other universities, herresearch entitled "Is individual bribery or organisational bribery moreintolerable in China (versus in the United States)? Advancing theory on theperception of corrupt acts" takes a look into how two cultures (Chinese,American) perceive two types of bribery: individual and organisational.

Individualbribery is bribe-giving on behalf of an individual to serve individualinterests (e.g., a parent bribing a teacher in order to get favourabletreatment for his or her child); whereas organisational bribery is bribe-givingon behalf of an organization to serve the collective interests (e.g., a listedfirm bribes the auditor to produce fraud financial reports or a company bribesthe government for policy support).

Accordingto Prof. Hong, the distinction between individual and organisational bribery isimportant. "Past research suggested that cultures vary in their construalsof individuals and collectives as two separate, cognitively meaningful socialentities," says Prof. Hong.

"Weexpect that in cultures emphasising the agency of collectives over individuals(e.g., China), organisational bribery might be seen as a more significanttransgression than individual bribery, whereas in cultures emphasising theagency of individuals over collectives (e.g., the United States), individualbribery might be seen as a more significant transgression than organisationalbribery," she adds.

The Study

Theresearchers conducted several studies with hundreds of college students andworking adults in mainland China and the United States. The participants werepresented with a list of nine individual (e.g., a person who breaks a trafficlaw gives money to the police officer) and nine organisational bribingbehaviour descriptions (e.g., a company gives money in order to win a biddingwar). They were then asked to describe their perceptions toward the bribingbehaviours via questionnaires.

"Wepredicted that the Chinese participants would be more intolerant of organisationalbribery than individual bribery because they tend to perceive organisationalbribery as driven by internal desire, whereas individual bribery as driven byexternal norms (e.g., other parents are bribing the teacher too). By contrast,we predicted that the American participants make the opposite attributions Inother words, they would be more intolerant of individual bribery than organisationalbribery because they tend to perceive individual bribery as driven by a person'sfree choice, whereas organization bribery as driven by external business norms,"Prof. Hong says.

Aspredicted, the results showed that participants in both cultures found briberyintolerable. However, the Chinese participants were more intolerant of organisationalbribery while the US participants were more intolerant of individual bribery.

To unravelthe psychological mechanism underneath the difference in the culturalperceptions toward bribery, the researchers recruited a fresh batch ofparticipants in mainland China and the U.S.

Afterreading some of the bribing behaviours in the previous study, the participantswere asked to estimate the reasons for such behaviour. For example, an internalreason for bribery can be presented as "a person or a company does nothave high moral standards" whereas "this is the social norm" isregarded as an external reason.

"Interestingly,Chinese participants made more internal attributions for organisational briberythan for individual bribery, whereas the results for the US participants werecompletely opposite," she remarks.

Perception ofBribery through Bicultural Lens

To further test the cultural effect on intolerance of individual versusorganisational bribery, the researchers extended their study to Hong Kong wherepeople are being influenced by a combination of East and West cultures.

Previous research has shown that Hongkongers are bicultural in a waythat they grow up in a Chinese cultural milieu and are also exposed to Westernculture through education and the media.

"Cultures are like open systems and individuals may have access tomore than one system; when and how the cultural system influences one'sjudgment depends on factors such as contextual cues and identities," Prof.Hong explains.

To measure bicultural identity, the team adopted the Bicultural IdentityIntegration (BII), which is the degree to which people experience their twocultural identities as close and compatible or distant and conflicting.

"Hong Kong people who are high in BII view their Eastern andWestern identities as close and compatible, whereas those who are low in BIIview their two cultural identities as distant and conflicting," sheexplains. "As such, people with high BII can easily switch between theEastern and Western culture in different situations, but those with low BIIwill resist the switching and react against the situation," she adds.

Through conducting several surveys among 117 bicultural Hong KongChinese undergraduate students, the researchers predicted that those with highBII would show more intolerance towards organisational bribery when they arereminded of the Chinese culture and more intolerance towards individual briberywhen primed with the American culture. That is, they will assimilate theirjudgment in accordance with the primed culture. By contrast, those with low BIIare expected to behave in the opposite way.

Once again, the results confirmed the researchers' hypotheses.

The 'Slippery Slope' Effect

Accordingto Prof. Hong, one possible reason of Chinese people being more intolerant oforganisational bribery because lay persons perceive more agency or 'power' inorganisations than in individuals. That is, organisations often shapeindividuals' outcomes, but individuals are relatively 'powerless' in alteringthe paths of organisations.  This alsoexplains why organisational misconducts often evoke strong public outrages inChina (e.g., the infant milk formula scandal).

AlthoughChinese people are more intolerant of organisational bribery than individualbribery, large-scale corruptions often start from an individual level thattypically escalates from personal favours into policy favours. Therefore, Prof.Hong says this 'slippery slope' effect should be closely monitored to preventmore damaging forms of bribery.

"InChina, policies and measures may be necessary to regulate the acts of briberyat the individual level, especially those that involve close relational others(e.g., family members of politicians), as a first step toward preventing moredamaging forms of bribery from exerting influence," she says.

"Inrecent years, some of the anti-corruption policies and measures in China havebegun targeting individuals, such as the launching of more explicitstipulations on specific behaviours by government officials and businessmen,"she concludes.

Reference:

Zhi Liu, Xiao-xiaoLiu, Ying-yi Hong, Joel Brocknerd, Kim-pong Tam and Yan-mei Li (2017), "Is individual bribery or organizational bribery moreintolerable in China (versus in the United States)? Advancing theory on theperception of corrupt acts".Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes Volume 143, Pages 111-128.

Thisarticle was first published in the China Business Knowledge (CBK) website byCUHK Business School: https://bit.ly/2G9fden.

About CUHK Business School

CUHKBusiness School comprises two schools -- Accountancy and Hotel and Tourism Management -- and fourdepartments -- Decision Sciences andManagerial Economics, Finance,Management and Marketing. Established in Hong Kong in 1963, it is the firstbusiness school to offer BBA, MBA and Executive MBA programmes in the region.Today, the School offers 8 undergraduate programmes and 20 graduate programmes including MBA, EMBA,Master, MSc, MPhil and Ph.D.

In the FinancialTimes Global MBA Ranking 2019, CUHK MBA is ranked 57^th. In FT's 2018 EMBA ranking, CUHK EMBA is ranked 29^th in the world. CUHK Business School has the largest numberof business alumni (35,000+)among universities/business schools in Hong Kong-- many of whom are key business leaders. The School currently has about 4,400undergraduate and postgraduate students and Professor Kalok Chan is the Dean ofCUHK Business School.

More information is available at www.bschool.cuhk.edu.hk or byconnecting with CUHK Business School onFacebook: www.facebook.com/cuhkbschool and LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/school/3923680/.