KCG Seminar by Juelin Yin on Business Ethics in China

Since its open-door policy in the late 1970s, China has been more and more strongly integrated into the world economy. For the fact that China is nowadays an important player in the world economy and in global supply chains, academics and different stakeholders in the world are more and more interested in gaining insights into how firms do business in China. How business ethics are realized in practice, is one of the focused topics here. The topic has received strong international attention that may also be partially attributable to the widespread media reports on, for example, the 2008 Chinese milk scandal and a spate of suicides that happened in a large-sized company in China which manufactures electronic products for many international firms.

Focusing on the academic perspective of business ethics in China, Prof. Juelin Yin, Ph.D. (Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU)), KCG External Research Fellow, will give a research seminar on May 25, 2018 at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. Her presentation titled “Business Ethics in the Greater China Region: Past, Present, and Future Research” aims at providing a comprehensive survey of the business ethics literature with the Greater China region as the focused research region.

The abstract of her presentation is as follows:

While business ethics has generated a great deal of research internationally over the last few decades, academic reviews of the business ethics literature remain limited. Moreover, there has been little attempt to date to analyze this literature specifically in the Greater China region, which has been experiencing rapid socioeconomic growth and dynamic evolution of business ethics in recent decades. This paper addresses this research gap by undertaking a comprehensive and critical appraisal of the business ethics literature on Greater China. In particular, it maps out the existing research findings, identifies limitations in methodology, and suggests future directions for business ethics research in this region. The findings indicate that the scholarly interests cover 24 research themes, including corporate social responsibility and social performance; ethical beliefs, judgment, values, decision-making, and culture; workplace ethics and behavior; marketing ethics and consumer behavior; and sustainability. This review reveals a growing imbalance between empirical and conceptual/theoretical studies on business ethics. In addition, the published works covered in this review heavily rely on survey method and convenience sampling, with a predominant focus on a single individual level of analysis. Importantly, this study identifies four directions for future research: contextualized theoretical development, addressing multilevel research, developing research design tailored to the Chinese context, and ensuring more diversified and rigorous data collection.

The seminar will take place in the Medienraum (A211) at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (Kiellinie 66, 24105 Kiel, Germany) at 12.00-1.00pm on May 25, 2018 (Friday).