Abstract
“People have no trust can’t stand”, “trust” has always been a personal foundation in Chinese traditional culture. The interaction between ancients has always been following the principle of “making to friends, true to its words” 6. At the meantime, the ancients also warned people not to make promises while making friends, “easy promise worth less credit” 7, “we must be true in word and resolute in deed”8. The manners we behave for hundreds of years has always been influenced by the wisdom of ancients, however, nowadays, single person and enterprise can hardly perform the principle of “value trust than profits” under the temptation of interests. In recent years, many credit events of enterprises had been exposed, such as “Melamine” event of Sanlu Milk Power, “Clenbuterol” event of Shuanghui Ham Sausage and “Black Resturant” event of Ele.me, which had severely affected the credibility of Chinese companies and the trust between them.The development history of Chinese private enterprises is rather short. Comparing to state-owned enterprises, the disadvantages of small scale and lacking of resources had existed for a long time. The trust between enterprises is an asset rather than a relationship, for its great commercial values. “Mutual trust can reduce the transaction cost” 9, it can not only reinforce their strength, enlarge scale and win good reputation, but also do benefit to their sustainable development in the long run if the private enterprises can properly handle and build trust and cooperation relationships with each other.
From the view of resource dependence and social network, this paper regards the “trust” between Chinese private enterprises as the starting point of the study. Based on the corporate perspective, it discusses the influencing mechanism of the trust between private enterprises and further finds other affecting factors, including “circle” culture and “face” idea. Besides, it works on the impact of resource dependence on trust relationship by combining the actual interactions between private enterprises. The main contents of this study consist of several aspects as follows:
The influencing mechanism of the friendship between private enterprise owners on individual and organizational trust; (2) the impact of the organizational trust of private enterprise owners on resource dependence; (3) the impact of “circle” culture, “face” idea and political correlations.
The problems that this paper intends to address are: what are the factors that influence the trust between Chinese private enterprise owners? How important the business between companies to building trust relationship with each other? Whether the Chinese traditional “circle” and “face” culture and the political activities that temporary private entrepreneurs are keen on, can have a positive impact on building trust among enterprises?
As for the problems above, this paper considers the private enterprises in all realms as study objects. We have referred to all research results both in China and abroad and integrated opinions of experts and professors. We design the questionnaire on the trust mechanism among Chinese private enterprises on the basis of years of practical working experience of the author. In addition, we conducted the revision and consummation on the basis of small sample tests. In the phase of large samples, this paper made use of the chance of meeting held by private entrepreneurs’ association and association in all aspects and appointed commissioner to conduct a survey on private entrepreneurs which was a simple random sampling and each company only got one chance. We sent out 418 questionnaires in total and got 324 valid samples. During data processing, many methods had been adopted, such as exploratory factor analysis, determined factor analysis, individual sample T testing and regression analysis. We also analyzed and validated the hypothesis and model when testing the reliability and effectiveness of the data.
Comparing to the existed research result on the trust and cooperation among enterprises, the conclusion of this paper is mainly manifested in the following aspects:
The personal trust among entrepreneurs works as intermediary on the impact of the friendship on the organizational trust. In the influencing mechanism above, this paper finds there is an obvious positive correlation between them. Furthermore, this paper ascertains the conclusion above through the testing mechanism of the intermediary. The result above helps us out of the traditional concept of “friendship solve problems”. It’s not due to the friendship between private entrepreneurs that can directly leads to the organizational trust among enterprises, but because friendship can make it easier to build personal trust which further bring in organizational trust; (2) a crucial link is the institutional guarantee for the relationship between private entrepreneurs. It is commonly thought that resource dependence can further business cooperation and then result in trust. This study regards the quality and frequency of relationship between enterprises as the adjusting variable and works on its regulation effect in the impact of the resource dependence on the organizational trust. The results of the data regression reveal the quality and frequency of business activity regulates the impact remarkably and positively and that it plays an important role in building trust among private enterprises. Combined with the actual situations of an imperfect private enterprise institution, the business activities among enterprises can’t get affluent guarantee. Our study results can help to promote the improvement of the private enterprise institution and enhance the quality and frequency of commercial activities; (3) the influencing direction appears to be different concerning the impact of the traditional culture on the trust among companies and organizations. We commonly thought that the typical “acquaintance society” is formed while we are affected by “circle” culture and the ideas of “face”. However, this paper finds something different. Integrating the viewpoint above, this paper introduces the concept of face restriction and study whether the personal trust can be built easier when the private entrepreneurs are classmates or townsmen. The data analysis gets a result opposite to the original hypothesis, that is, face restriction can hardly promote personal trust among entrepreneurs and it will reduce the possibility of the establishment of the above relationship. In addition, social and political guarantee can adjust the trust relationship positively and remarkably, which also verifies the original hypothesis.
Comparing to existed research on the trust among enterprises both in China and abroad, its innovation mainly lies in the following aspects:
Constructing the theoretical model of the influencing mechanism of the trust mechanism among Chinese private enterprises; (2) defining the influencing factor of the trust among Chinese private enterprises and organizations; (3) from the theory of resource dependence, this study finds that private enterprises normally haven’t established perfect exchange mechanism for organizational information which also becomes one main restriction factor for the exchange effectiveness of the resources among private enterprises in China; (4) finding the impact of the “cheating on acquaintance” on the private enterprises which has enormously changed the restriction of “face” in traditional social interpersonal communication and caused severe damage to it. (5) Choosing Chinese private enterprises in all aspects as research samples and providing first-hand data on the status quo of the communication among Chinese private enterprises based on the theoretical analysis of resource dependence and social network embedded.
The study on trust has won widespread attention in other countries, but it is still under the starting phase in China. With the continuous reinforcement of China’s international influence, Chinese enterprises are going to play a more and more important role in the global market and more and more attention has been drawn on the commercial activities under the Chinese context. However, the temporary researches are mainly based on the western culture and theories and taking western companies as study samples which makes the results can only apply to that social context. This paper studies the generation mechanism of the trust among Chinese private enterprises. On the basis of Chinese traditional culture and the actual situations of private enterprises, it helps to promote the research on this realm and its results can act as reference and guidance for the business activities among Chinese private enterprises to some extent.
| Date of Award | 14 Jul 2016 |
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| Original language | Chinese (Traditional) |
| Awarding Institution |
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| Supervisor | Chenting SU (Supervisor) |
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