تمرین Guanxi و روابط خریدار- تامین کننده چینی: دیدگاه خریدار

This study explores the different effects of guanxi practice on Chinese buyer–supplier relationships in the initiation and the maintenance stages during the buyer–supplier relationship lifecycle. Using survey data collected from the retail industry in China, we find that retailers perceive varying buyer–supplier relationship behaviors in these two relationship stages and, accordingly, guanxi practice exerts opposite effects on retailer satisfaction. Specifically, during the relationship initiation stage, guanxi practice is negatively related to retailer social satisfaction and commitment. However, during the relationship maintenance stage, guanxi practice is positively related to retailer economic satisfaction. The results from this study provide suppliers with managerial implications on when to and when not to practice guanxi in China.

Buyer–supplier relationships have been an important area of marketing research for decades. To date, excellent progress has been made in our understanding of behavioral relationships ranging from early accumulation of knowledge on inter-firm power and dependence to a more recent focus on relationship marketing (see Palmatier, Dant, Grewal, & Evans, 2006 for a review). In relationship marketing, firms strive to develop mutual trust and maintain long-term relationships with channel members in order to manage uncertainties and reduce transaction costs during the value-adding process (Anderson and Narus, 1990, Ganesan, 1994, Geyskens et al., 1998, Geyskens et al., 1999 and Morgan and Hunt, 1994). As a result, success in managing buyer–supplier relationships has become one of the great sources for achieving sustainable competitive advantage (Dwyer et al., 1987, Frazier, 1999 and Ganesan, 1994); and social networking and relationship building have become critical for the survival and success of firms around the world (Palmatier et al., 2007, Peng and Luo, 2000 and Uzzi, 1996). Parallel to the explosive growth in relationship marketing research, the so called Chinese version of relationship marketing–guanxi–has also generated a growing interest among managers and researchers who are interested in China (e.g., Ambler, Styles & Wang, 1999; Davies et al., 1995, Liu et al., 2008 and Lovett et al., 1999), the world's second largest economy only after the United States ( World Bank, 2010). Guanxi refers to a special type of personal relationships or social connections based on mutual interests and benefits that bonds the exchange partners through reciprocal obligations and exchange of favors ( Davies et al., 1995 and Yang, 1994) whereas guanxi practice is the activity used to build and maintain guanxi ( Yang, 1994). Due to the cultural embeddedness of business relations in China, guanxi has been described as a pervasive relationship lubricant that increases the efficiency and effectiveness of daily operations ( Ambler et al., 1999; Davies et al., 1995, Fock and Woo, 1998 and Styles and Ambler, 2003). As a result, for more than three decades, the advice typically given to Western practitioners is to learn how to cultivate guanxi and practice it when conducting business in or with China. Along with the growing interest in guanxi, there is one major issue in the extant guanxi literature that has limited our understanding — the controversy over the increasing or declining role of guanxi practice in the Chinese transitional economy. There are two primary perspectives on this controversy. One perspective, represented by scholars such as Davies et al., 1995, Yang, 1994 and Yi and Ellis, 2000, views guanxi as a deep-seated idiosyncratic cultural fact of Chinese society, and that its intricate and pervasive network has strong implications for interpersonal and inter-organizational dynamics in Chinese society. As such, this perspective suggests that guanxi's importance will continue and guanxi practice will increase at an accelerated rate ( Yang, 1994). The other perspective, however, views guanxi as “an institutionally defined system – i.e. a system that depends on the institutional structure of society rather than on culture” ( Guthrie, 1998, p. 255). Represented by Guthrie (1998), this perspective proposes that guanxi be explained in terms of the weak institutional structure presented by China's transition to a market-based economy. As the rational–bureaucratic system matures, guanxi will eventually disappear ( Guthrie, 1998). Interestingly, both of the perspectives have received empirical support. For example, Peng and Luo (2000) find that guanxi with business partners and with government officials are significant predictors of firm performance and Zhuang, Xi, and Tsang (2010) confirm the positive influence of guanxi on channel cooperation, corroborating the argument of the flourishing role of guanxi in business relations. On the other hand, Shi, Hu, and Fu (2006) report the negative effects of guanxi on firm performance and Gu, Hung, and Tse (2008) caution that the negative impacts of guanxi under the increased competition intensity and technological turbulence, supporting the claim of the diminishing role of guanxi in economic exchanges. All of these studies, however, examine guanxi in a static rather than dynamic form of business exchanges, ignoring the fact that exchange relationships are often processes in which firms go through a sequence of phases ( Dwyer et al., 1987 and Frazier, 1983) and various aspects of exchange may have systematically differing effects over the relationship life cycle ( Wilson, 1995). We contend that the importance of guanxi may be different in different buyer–supplier relationship stages. Thus, to solve the controversy, we propose to study the role of guanxi in buyer–supplier relationships and compare the efficacy of the two perspectives in the relationship initiation and the relationship maintenance stages. The purpose of this study is to advance our understanding of the role of guanxi in the buyer–supplier relationship life cycle. Specifically, we test and compare the impacts of guanxi practice on other relational constructs during the buyer–supplier relationship initiation and maintenance stages in China using data collected from retailers. The paper is organized as follows. First, we review relationship marketing and guanxi literature and propose corresponding hypotheses related to the buyer–supplier relationship initiation and maintenance stages. This is followed by a description of our method for testing the hypotheses. We conclude with a discussion of results, implications, limitations, and directions for further research.

It has long been recognized in the West that doing business in China is particularly difficult because of guanxi. A key difference between Chinese and Western business practices lies in the importance of interpersonal relationships — guanxi characterizes Chinese relations, whereas legal forces and contracts influence Western practices ( Davies et al., 1995). By studying guanxi practice in the buyer–supplier relationship initiation and maintenance stages, we solve the puzzle for answering the question — is guanxi flourishing or declining in China? The findings from this study indicate that guanxi is still flourishing in business market in the existing relationships; but for newcomers, guanxi practice is not a wise choice. A newcomer should focus on performance to earn buyer's trust before forming the guanxi tie.