Guanxi, Organizational Justice, and Commitment in Chinese State-Owned Enterprises: Regulatory Focus and Justice-Related Work Experiences

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the relationship between Guanxi, organisational justice, and organisational commitment in Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs). It focuses on how informal relational practices in recruitment and promotion are interpreted by senior managers and how employees' perceived Guanxi embeddedness and motivational orientations are associated with justice-related work experiences. The study treats Guanxi as a culturally embedded relational mechanism with both benefits and risks: it can support trust, coordination, and access to resources, but it can also generate concerns about favouritism, opacity, and unequal opportunity. Drawing on social capital theory, organisational justice theory, regulatory focus theory, and social exchange theory, the thesis develops a framework in which Guanxi is understood as conditional social capital. Its legitimacy depends on whether relational ties are linked to competence, role fit, procedural visibility, and organisational value. In the quantitative strand, organisational justice is not measured through the full classical justice scale. Instead, role adaptability, work autonomy, and communication quality are treated as justice-related work experiences through which employees may encounter the effects of Guanxi-shaped organisational arrangements. The study adopts a qualitatively informed mixed-methods design. The qualitative phase comprises 24 semi-structured interviews with senior and middle-senior SOE managers, examining managerial rationales, legitimacy boundaries, and fairness-efficiency tensions in Guanxi-related personnel decisions. The quantitative phase uses matched employee-supervisor survey data from 99 SOE employees and applies partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The quantitative findings indicate that promotion focus is positively associated with role adaptability and communication quality, while prevention focus is positively associated with work autonomy. Role adaptability and work autonomy are negatively associated with supervisor-rated organisational commitment, while Guanxi embeddedness shows a positive direct association with commitment. The dissertation contributes by clarifying when Guanxi is treated as useful social capital and when it becomes a perceived fairness risk in SOE HR governance. It also offers a cautious explanation of why autonomy and adaptability may not always strengthen commitment in bureaucratic settings when they are not accompanied by sufficient authority, resources, clarity, or support. Methodologically, the thesis combines managerial interview evidence with employee-supervisor survey evidence while avoiding the claim that every survey construct was generated directly from the qualitative strand. Practically, it highlights the need for SOEs to manage referrals, recommendations, and relational resources through transparent criteria, visible procedures, and communication practices that protect fairness and legitimacy.