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Journal of Business Ethics

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24.10.2019 | Original Paper

Business Ethics, Confucianism and the Different Faces of Ritual

verfasst von: Chris Provis

Erschienen in: Journal of Business Ethics | Ausgabe 2/2020

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Abstract

Confucianism has attracted some attention in business ethics, in particular as a form of virtue ethics. This paper develops ideas about Confucianism in business ethics by extending discussion about Confucian ideas of ritual. Ritual has figured in literature about organisational culture, but Confucian accounts can offer additional ideas about developing ethically desirable organisational cultures. Confucian ritual practice has diverged from doctrine and from the classical emphasis on requirements for concern and respect as parts of ritual. Despite some differences of emphasis amongst early writers, classical texts like the Analects and Mencius allow for the importance of ritual as opportunity for interpersonal encounter. These are texts that bring out the flexibility and context-sensitivity of ritual, with associated implications about the need for care and attention to other individuals. They eschew ritual as unthinking repetition, in favour of ritual as meaningful expression. The mutual awareness such ritual can engender is an important part of human existence. Such ritual is a means to solving coordination problems through common knowledge, as opposed to unthinking routine. Undue routinisation can be one problem with organisational ritual, while another can be use of ritual as a means of oppressive control. In organisations, ritual should satisfy general requirements of concern and respect, and should maintain opportunities for mutual encounter. The difference between arrangements which do or do not offer such opportunities may suggest lines of development for virtue ethics in business.

Vorheriger Artikel Thematic Symposium Editorial: Virtue Ethics Between East and West

Nächster Artikel How Would Confucian Virtue Ethics for Business Differ from Aristotelian Virtue Ethics?

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While Chinese characters are avoided in the main text, pinyin accents are used on the transliterated terms lǐ [禮], rén [仁], jìng [敬], and yì [義]. In quotations the form is used that appears in the source, which may be li for lǐ and either ren or jen for rén.

So far as translation is concerned, Ames and Rosemont note that “Li has been translated as ‘ritual,’ ‘rites,’ ‘customs,’ ‘etiquette,’ ‘propriety,’ ‘morals,’ ‘rules of proper behavior,’ and ‘worship’” (Ames and Rosemont 1998, p. 51), and that any of those terms may be appropriate, depending on context. Any difficulty is not merely one of translation, but that the term is used with varying scope and connotation in different Confucian texts and commentaries (see e.g. Shun 1993, pp. 457–458). The issue is made more difficult still because there is a case to be made that Confucius himself is modifying and extending the idea of lǐ. Hagen says: “The debate over how best to interpret li is an old one. I read Confucius as reforming the notion of li, just as he reformed other key concepts, such as ren and junzi. His disciples certainly found his teachings anything but conventional. (Hagen 2010, p. 1).”

For extended discussion of the respect involved in lǐ and the idea of respect in modern Western philosophy, see Kim and Strudler (2012).

Such a point can be found at a number of places elsewhere in the Analects and Mencius. For example, Analects 13.23 contrasts mere ‘conformity’ with attempting to find genuine ‘harmony’ with others: “The Master said: ‘A gentleman seeks harmony, but not conformity. A vulgar man seeks conformity, but not harmony.’ (Leys 1997, p. 64; cf. Li 2006, p. 586)” As at many other points of the classical Confucian texts, translation is not quite straightforward. Analects 13.23 is translated as follows by Lau and Legge respectively: “The Master said, ‘The gentleman agrees with others without being an echo. The small man echoes without being in agreement.’ (Lau 1979, p. 122)” "The Master said, “The superior man is affable, but not adulatory; the mean man is adulatory, but not affable.’ (Legge 1971, p. 273)”

However, it is no surprise and no novelty that there may be disagreement about translation (for other possible translations of 13.23, see e.g. Chan 1963, p. 41 and Ames and Rosemont 1998, p. 169). As Gardner shows, there have been such disagreements from very early times: Zhu Xi (1130–1200) gives a quite different interpretation of some parts of the Analects than was given by his predecessor He Yan (c. 195–249) (see e.g. Gardner 2003, p. 73).

Drawing from Martin Buber, we might say that such encounters go beyond I-It relationships to establish I-Thou relationships (see e.g. Buber 1970, p. 56).

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Titel: Business Ethics, Confucianism and the Different Faces of Ritual
verfasst von: Chris Provis
Publikationsdatum: 24.10.2019
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Erschienen in: Journal of Business Ethics / Ausgabe 2/2020
Print ISSN: 0167-4544
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-0697
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-019-04306-5

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