Friday, November 20, 2009

The Confucian Work Ethic?

There are principles that God has placed in the universe. They work for Christians. They work for non-Christians. There are no guarantees in life but there are principles and there are probabilities. If you choose to act in harmony with those principles you increase the probability of success and happiness no mater who you might be or what you believe. This was true in Solomon’s time and it is proving true in this recession.

In a recent article in USA Today Haya El Nasser observes that cultural factors help limit the recessions impact. Currently unemployment in the United States is running at 10.2%, but Asian unemployment is running at about 7.5%, a significant statistical difference. In fact Asians have the lowest unemployment rate of any American racial group. The reasons can be found in cultural strengths imbedded in family structure and values. Our parents destroyed the extended family in America with the social and geographic mobility we experienced in the years following World War II. My prayer is that the Church in America finds a way to reinvent the extended family.

Education is a family value in many Asian cultures. I have read that homework is sometimes a family affair. The entire family sits around the table. If the parents can’t speak English very well they expect their children to teach them the language even as they are helping them do their homework. Older siblings are expected to help their younger brothers and sisters. Learning is a family affair and those with advanced degrees are reverenced especially if they are teachers.

From the article:

"Asians in the United States, both native born Asians and Asian immigrants, have higher educational levels than other groups," says Alan Berube, senior fellow and research director of the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program. A recent Labor Department report on the work force shows a greater proportion of Asians than other racial or ethnic groups in management, professional and related occupations — jobs that require more schooling and are high-paying. About 47% work in management or professional jobs compared with 35% for the U.S. work force as a whole.”

Asian unemployment is also low because their work ethic is extremely strong, so strong that it is now being termed the Confucian work ethic by sociologists. John Calvin, eat your heart out. The article points out that there is significant evidence that if Asian Americans loose their jobs they are quick to take lower paying work, even if they are grossly over qualified. Sometimes they take jobs within their family’s business.

The Chinese have a history of family enterprise that predates this nation by thousands of years. In one article Peter Drucker discusses the Offshore Chinese family corporation. He claims such organizations are run more like a highland clan than any normal business. In various other articles, the author mentions family owned and operated entities such as the Rothchild banking empire, the Dupont Chemical Corporation, and the traditional Mafia family. All these organizations have at least some similarities to the Chinese clan corporation. I checked out these observations with a Chinese coworker. It turns out his wife is a distant cousin related to one of these combines.

Such corporations are based on Confucian concepts of duty, loyalty, and mutual obligations and operated for the good of the clan, the entire clan. In Chinese history the government was often so corrupt that the only trust was between family members. If a mandarin had a problem with a family business, they had no legal recourse. Therefore, it was important that a businessman could give a bag of diamonds to a cousin for safekeeping and then reasonably expect to have them returned intact in a year or so after the crisis abated. In such organizations the clan chieftain controls all the assets of the corporation. He is also responsible for all the family members even cousins, nieces, and nephews removed by several generations. The chieftain is not however, a dictator. His actions are reviewed by senior family members and younger family members who have been given positions of great responsibility.

In a nutshell, education (particularly in a technical or health care field), plus a strong work ethic, plus a supportive extended family equals a high probability of survival or even success. Solomon and Confucius both understood these truths. Maybe it is time for the Church in America to relearn what first made us strong. Phyllis Tickle in her commentaries on the state of the Church in America, observes that we lost something when adult children and grandchildren no longer eat Sunday dinner at grandmother’s house. During these dinners grandmother might ask one of her grandchildren what they learned in Sunday school. God help the son or daughter if the grandchild’s response was, “We didn’t go to church today.”

Ecclesiastes Chapter 4

[5] The fool foldeth his hands together, and eateth his own flesh.
[6] Better is an handful with quietness, than both the hands full with travail and vexation of spirit.
[7] Then I returned, and I saw vanity under the sun.
[8] There is one alone, and there is not a second; yea, he hath neither child nor brother: yet is there no end of all his labour; neither is his eye satisfied with riches; neither saith he, For whom do I labour, and bereave my soul of good? This is also vanity, yea, it is a sore travail.
[9] Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour.
[10] For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.
[11] Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone?
[12] And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

No comments:

Post a Comment