The Inclusiveness and Emptiness of Gong Qi: A Non-Anglophone Perspective on Ethics from a Sino-Japanese Corporation

Wenjin Dai (), Jonathan Gosling () and Annie Pye ()
Additional contact information
Wenjin Dai: The Open University Business School
Jonathan Gosling: University of Exeter Business School
Annie Pye: Cardiff University

Journal of Business Ethics, 2020, vol. 165, issue 2, No 7, 277-293

Abstract: Abstract This article introduces a non-Anglophone concept of gong qi (communal vessel, 公器) as a metaphor for ‘corporation’. It contributes an endogenous perspective from a Sino-Japanese organizational context that enriches mainstream business ethics literature, otherwise heavily reliant on Western traditions. We translate the multi-layered meanings of gong qi based on analysis of its ideograms, its references into classical philosophies, and contemporary application in this Japanese multinational corporation in China. Gong qi contributes a perspective that sees a corporation as an inclusive and virtuous social entity, and also addresses the elusive, implicit, and forever evolving nature of organizational life that is rarely noticed. We propose gong qi can be applied in other organizations and wider cultural contexts to show a new way of seeing and understanding business ethics and organization. Rather than considering virtue as a list of definable individual qualities, we suggest that the metaphor of gong qi reveals how virtue can be experienced as indeterminate, yet immanently present, like the substance of emptiness. This, then allows us to see the virtue of immanence, the beauty of implicitness, and hence, the efficacy of gong qi.

Keywords: Ethics; Virtue; Gong qi; CSR; Non-Western; Chinese; Japanese (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-019-04308-3 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:165:y:2020:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-019-04308-3

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

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-019-04308-3

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 () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().