EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Finding the Ethics of “Red Capitalists”: Political Connection and Philanthropy of Chinese Private Entrepreneurs

Yuan Yang (yuanyang@tongji.edu.cn) and Min Tang (tang.min@mail.shufe.edu.cn)
Additional contact information
Yuan Yang: Tongji University
Min Tang: Shanghai University of Finance and Economics 627

Journal of Business Ethics, 2020, vol. 161, issue 1, No 10, 133-147

Abstract: Abstract In China, many private entrepreneurs have obtained political offices in the government. In this study, we argue that Chinese private entrepreneurs who are formally connected with government institutions, compared to other Chinese private entrepreneurs, tend to contribute more to philanthropic causes not only for instrumental concerns but also out of altruistic values. We submit this argument to an empirical test through a secondary data analysis of a representative sample of Chinese entrepreneurs collected by a coalition of government and industry groups. The results of this analysis show that politically connected entrepreneurs are more likely to make major philanthropic donations and, at the same time, hold a stronger sense of the responsibility for doing so. The most important contribution of this research is that it reveals the ethical basis of the philanthropic activities of Chinese private entrepreneurs, especially those with political connections, that has been unappreciated by extant literature.

Keywords: Philanthropy; Private entrepreneurs; Political connection; Donations; Values (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-018-3934-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:161:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1007_s10551-018-3934-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-018-3934-y

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla (sonal.shukla@springer.com) and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (indexing@springernature.com).

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:161:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1007_s10551-018-3934-y