Chinese sense of 'Self and 'Others': Implications for Chinese Public Sector Employment in Britain

Tlie current study is an inquiry into tlie possible reasons for the underrepresentation of ethnic Chinese in the British public sector. This thesis argues that the Chinese have a distinctive perspective on 'Self and 'Others', which influences their social behaviours, their social relationships and their social interactions, which might be the basis for their under-represented in public sector employment (local government and criminal justice system) in multiracial Britain. This argument competes with the proposition that this under-representation is the result of institutional racism, racial discriminatory and economic considerations. The proposition advanced here is that a Chinese person may find the way they have to relate to 'Others' in Western public organisations culturally unacceptable. The social behaviours of ethnic Chinese, it is argued, cannot be fully understood by the application of salient methodological individualism and methodological holism, the contending methodologies offered by Western social sciences to explain social behaviour. Chinese social behaviours are not merely detemnined by individual choices or social value, for they are grounded in relational context — giving rise to methodological relationalism. This proposition has its philosophical origins in the traditions of Confucianism, and has been used by social psychologists to explain social behaviours of those who seek to conform with the traditions of Confucianism (Easterns). This reflects the fact that Westerners and Easterners think differently and have different cognitive processes, which has been established by empirical psychological research based on the sample selected from different countries in the East and the West. This study uses methodological relationalism as a perspective to gain insights into Chinese behaviour in an organisational context. The research concludes by developing an organisational archetype - the patrimonial bureaucratic organisation, or Confucian organisation — with a distinctive set of social relationships presumptions, which provides the basis for an hypothetical explanation, for subsequent empirical testing, as to why the Chinese may reject public sector employment because they find working in such organisations to be culturally unacceptable.FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES & BUSINES