Confucianism and Chinese Humanistic Management

Humanistic management, a form of management focusing on the welfare of the people, is directly affected by the culture of the society in which it is practiced more than in most other forms of management because societies have different perspectives of people’s welfare and fundamental purposes of businesses. Taking humanity as its core, Confucianism has established deep, historic roots in the Chinese society and hence has the potential for persuading Chinese companies to adopt humanistic management. This chapter explores this contention through two case studies. Both companies have benefited significantly by following Confucian virtues and by providing humanistic care and humanistic education to their employees. Based on their practices and a review of humanistic literature, we develop a conceptual model of what may be called the process of Chinese humanistic management with propositions on the key variables in the model, including Confucianism, humanistic leadership, the process of humanistic management, hedonic and eudemonic outcomes for the employees, and certain sustainable outcomes for the company.