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At my office “Confucian values” means obey the boss. Where did the reciprocity go?

Phạm Quốc Bảo Contributor
· 4 replies · 102 views
Economy & workChineseJapanese & KoreanConfucianismLegalismConfuciusHan FeiziMencius#confucianism#hierarchy#reciprocity#workplace
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I translate for a publishing house in Hanoi. When managers here want staff to stay late without complaint, they speak of Confucian values: respect for seniors, loyalty, harmony. We have a common saying about honouring teachers and respecting the Way. I grew up with it and I am fond of it.

But I have been reading the Analects and the Mencius again, and what strikes me is how two-sided the relationships are in the original. When Duke Ding asks how a ruler should employ his ministers and how ministers should serve their ruler, Confucius answers that the ruler should employ ministers according to ritual propriety, and ministers should serve the ruler with loyalty. Both sides are bound. And Mencius goes further: if a ruler treats his ministers as his hands and feet, they will treat him as their heart; if he treats them as dirt and weeds, they will treat him as a bandit and an enemy.

In the office version only half survives. The hierarchy is kept, and the duties of the superior quietly disappear. Loyalty is owed upward; nobody asks what is owed downward.

I suspect this is common wherever the tradition is used in management or political rhetoric. I'd like to hear whether others recognise the pattern, and whether it is a corruption of Confucianism, or something the tradition made possible by putting hierarchy at the centre.

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4 replies

  1. Ji-woo Park

    Fellow

    Very familiar in Seoul. Large companies here have been described as "Confucian" for decades, usually to explain long hours and deference to seniors. My students absorb this and come to class thinking Confucianism is about obeying. When I show them the Mencius passage you quote, they are genuinely shocked. One boy said, "So the boss can lose the right to be obeyed?" Yes. That is the point.

    Helpful · 2
  2. Chen Yuting

    Fellow

    There is a historical precedent for exactly what you describe. The Qin state ran on Legalist principles: Han Feizi's "two handles" of reward and punishment, clear laws, obedience regardless of virtue. After Qin collapsed, the Han dynasty presented itself as Confucian, but historians often note that the machinery stayed largely Legalist. Confucian in presentation, Legalist in operation. Your office is the Han synthesis in miniature: Confucian words, Legalist incentives.

    Helpful · 3
    1. Phạm Quốc Bảo

      Contributor

      Yuting, "Confucian words, Legalist incentives" is a perfect description of my office, and I'll be careful about who I say it to. Hugo, your point makes me think the corruption is not specific to Confucianism, but that Confucianism is especially vulnerable to it, because the hierarchy is visible and the reciprocity has to be remembered.

      Helpful · 1
  3. Hugo Marchetti

    Contributor

    I'm a union delegate at a container port in Marseille, nowhere near Confucius. But I recognise this exactly. Every management philosophy I've seen promises reciprocity ("we are a family", "your wellbeing matters") and delivers hierarchy. Simone Weil wrote that the notion of obligation comes before the notion of rights. Every manager I've met has learned that sentence and applied it only downward. If what you describe is a corruption, it's a very universal one.