昆明理工大学 中国文化英语作业

Insight into chinese culture The Modern Value of Confucian Thoughts in Society
Name: Tianding Hu
Number:2014708005
Teacher:Professor Liffer
Faculty Of Chemical Engineering
Date: July 1, 2015
The Modern Value of Confucian Thoughts in Society
(Kunming University of Science and technology, Kunming, Tianding Hu, 20150701)
1 Introduction
In the past decade, a great number of multinational companies entered the Chinese market for getting increasing profits and sustaining the growth in the increasing fierce global competition. They are mainly interested in a favourable investment environment and cheap labor and raw materials. The social and public image of these companies were good for quite a lot of years because they created many job opportunities and became important financial source of local government taxes . The wake-up call came to seriously review these enterprises’human resource management practices only after the employees’suicide events of Foxconn.
2 The basic ideas of confucian on society management
As the key of Chinese traditional culture values, Confucian established their value viewpoints based on "benevolence". The thought includes two aspects: first, "benevolence（Ren）" is in human nature, which origins from the most basic human`s family relations. Second, society consists of people. Peole must establish a harmonious interpersonal relationship with others .Only by paying attention to the other members within a family and a society, individuals could grow up and families could be harmonious and a society could be prosper. The Confucian social management relies heavily on the ethical principles.
2.1“Benevolence”:originates from the most basic human relationships in family
Benevolence is the nuclear idea of Confucian values. In “The Analects”there are many descriptions about the disciples asking Confucius questions: what is the “benevolence”? Although Confucius’s answers were very different each time, his main idea can be summed up as “loyalty and filial piety”(Confucius, 2008 [1]). In Confucius’s answers, Ren origins from the most basic human relationships within a family. If one person is filial piety to his parents (“filial piety”), respects his elder brother (“Ti”), his action is the most pristine performance of benevolence
(Confucius, 2008 [1]). Further, if everybody can treat others as if treating his family members, treat his leader with “loyalty”and be trustworthy by his friends with “xin”, the society will be perfect. Mencius further developed Confucius’s thoughts, he pointed out that four natural affective components consist of human nature (he called them “four minds”): sympathy, sense of shame, sense of right and wrong, yielding(Mencious ,2009[2]) . Mencius viewed benevolence as the necessary of human four pristine emotions and human nature outpouring naturally. So people can live peacefully together when they have these emotions in a right way. The later development of Confucianism basically integrated both Confucius and Mencius’s viewpoints, claims social intercourse principles are derived from the most basic human relationships in family, it should be the start point of society rules and systems. Having benevolence was seen as the core how an individual can belong to a “group”.
2.2 The human relations based on the family relationship
According to Confucianism, the family is the basic unit of social structure, and all social relationships can find their initial root in family life. Taking the family relationships as the origin of all social relationships, family relationships construct the social network, this idea constitutes the design principles of Chinese traditional societal structure. Confucianism termed the interpersonal relationship as Five-Lun (five ethic relationships), of which three Lun (father and son, elder brother and younger brother, husband and wife) are connected to family life. The relationship between the ruler and the being ruled subordinates should refer to the relationship between father and son, the fellowship and friendship may refer to the relationship between brothers. According to the Confucian view, a society is a super large family based on family organization principle. “Family”or “nation”comes down in one continuous line essentially, that is so-called “self-cultivation→family harmony→state governing→keep the land under the heavenly peace”(The Philosopher Zeng, 2011[3]). Being originated from family, people constitute many groups like concentric circles, in which people fulfill their duties and responsibility while obtain their respective identity and social value. In the super big family like a concentric circle(Fei Xiaotong ,1998[4]), kinship is the main link of interpersonal relationships(Lin Anwu ,1998[5]), the most important social responsibility of the individual is the “loyalty”and “filial piety”.
3 To place people as the first, harmonious coexistence, the modern value of confucianism in ethic leadership
The globalization has brought profound influence on China and the enterprise in China. As a developing country, in the modernization process the Chinese social structure and traditional values have been changes. The West values have taken more dominant position. Along with the disorganization of traditional society structure and traditional values, the Confucianism ideas on which the social structure and values were based, have been for a quite long time considered as obstacles of Chinese modernization process (Yang Guorong, 1994[7]). Having emphasize on technological innovation, strict scientific management system and standardization of production processes, the modern Western management thoughts have gradually replaced the Chinese traditional values in business and management. However, like other developing countries, the fierce competition brought by the globalization compressed Chinese enterprises growth’s space. Being at the low end of production chain companies like Foxconn are typical cases of Chinese enterprise’s plight actuality. For pursuing profit maximization, the Chinese enterprises such as Foxconn have to cut costs mainly through strict control system and standardized production processes. In the production process, employees are simplified as parts of large machine, they are asked to act according to rules and orders and standards without making errors.In the production process, individual differences and authenticity are ignored. For the sake of saving cost, enterprises ignore employees’personal life entirely except for the part when they are productive and valuable for the production processes. The highly efficient and consistency of production process contrasts with the employees after-work life which is not paid any attention to. In the enterprises such as Foxconn, human resources are not seen as sustainable, enterprises don’t provide the space for employees’self-development, the channels for releasing employees’emotions. Ignoring employees’human desire resultes ultimately in the events such as Foxconn’s employee suicide. The example of Foxconn showed the serious shortcoming of capitalism development model based on economic profit seeking. The scholars called this model as social development model governed by scientific technology.
4 Conclusion
Human resources are essential of the society development, especially if the Chinese
enterprises want to move to the direction of having own brands, upgrade to the high-technical areas. Being confronted by the fierce global competition, the Chinese enterprises must innovate new management ideas that are suitable for the Chinese cultural context and the Chinese way of economic development. The challenge is how to build healthy and harmonious enterprise culture, how to form good circulation between employees’self-development and enterprises development and create Chinese style of management culture. This article proposes that the Confucian ethics leadership thoughts can be very valuable for dealing with these challenges, and the implementation of Confucianism ideas in the daily management can have positive effect in improving the Chinese enterprises’performance in not only profitability but also sustainability.
Reference
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