Christ and Business Culture: A Study of Christian Executives in Hong Kong

Abstract

Does Christian faith matter in business? If so, how does it affect the way executives handle managerial issues, especially the ones that are ethically controversial? This paper reports a study of Chinese Christian executives in Hong Kong. The researchers followed an approach known as the Critical Incident Technique and conducted in-depth interviews with 119 Chinese Christian executives over a two year period from 1999 to 2001. Each interview covered four broad areas consisting of the interviewee's description of his or her Christian faith, business experience, reported critical incidents and general remarks on faith and work. For each reported critical incident, the interviewee deliberated on the incident and its background, his or her response, the rationale behind the response and its consequences. Each interview was tape recorded for transcription and analysis. The major contribution of this study is to propose and document a typology of the executives' responses to ethical challenges in business. The typology is based on earlier work on Christ and culture (Niebuhr, 1951; Siker, 1989) and styles of negotiation (Lewicki et al., 2001; et al., 1994). Preliminary research findings indicate that the proposed typology is an effective paradigm. It has the promise of enabling Christian executives to reflect critically on their ethical behavior and to guide their thought towards more effective responses to ethical challenges.