Personal Networking in Russia and China:: Blat and Guanxi

By Snejina Michailova, Verner Worm. 2003

436 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Blat and guanxi are terms describing personal networks in Russia and China respectively. They have existed and been practiced for centuries and remain highly relevant today. By employing a social network perspective, we analyse the architecture of blat and guanxi and some of the similarities between them. We also argue that personal networks in Russia and China are products of specific cultural heritages and as such have their own particular configurations and characteristics. Following a dynamic perspective, we examine how blat and guanxi have evolved over time: while they were similar in a number of dimensions during the command economy period, there are interesting signs of increasing differentiation in the post-command decade. The paper outlines important insights for Western managers and expatriates in terms of surviving in and effectively using blat and guanxi.

Subfields: Communication, Sociology and Political Science, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/394b8b42996188e32a827d491f5a9a3ef268fd9a

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Citations in the corpus

Knowledge Sharing and National Culture: A Comparison Between China and Russia (2004, background): “Rules are not as important as personal relations; indeed, individuals are not managers or representatives of remote institutions, but are of unique personal importance with special claims on emotional involvement (Michailova and Worm, 2003).”
Corporate Governance in China - is Economic Growth Potential Hindered by Guanxi? (2005, background): “special social investment which has always played an important role in Chinese society (Michailova and Worm, 2003).”
Do all elements of intellectual capital matter for organizational performance? Evidence from Russian context (2016, background): “…of Russian culture that promote the 401 Evidence from Russian context value of personal relations and personal trust fosters situations when personal relationships often precede or even become a prerequisite for business relationships (Salmi and Bäckman, 1999; Michailova and Worm, 2003).”
Exploring the Relationships between Strategy, Innovation, and Management Control Systems: The Roles of Social Networking, Organic Innovative Culture, and Formal Controls (2011, background): “In overview, contemporary social networking inspired by Blat is characterized by a distinctive, historical grounded orientation to: 1) collectivism, 2) mediated exchanges of favors, and 3) continuity (Butler and Purchase 2004; Michailova and Worm 2003; Ledeneva 1998).”
Entrepreneurship in Russia and China: The Impact of Formal Institutional Voids (2010, background): “In this context, the perception of blat has in many ways reverted 450 ENTREPRENEURSHIP THEORY and PRACTICE to that of the communist period when it was utilized within the shadow economy by illegal entrepreneurs to conduct their black-market businesses (Michailova & Worm, 2003).”
The Impact of Corruption on Firm Tax Compliance in Transition Economies: Whom Do You Trust? (2013, background): “For example, Russia’s blat networks that pre-date Soviet era and relate to the use of extra-market, personal networks and contacts, in circumvention of formal procedures, to obtain goods and services (Ledeneva 1998; Michailova and Worm, 2003).”
The view from the field: A case study of the expatriate boundary-spanning role ☆ (2010, background): “Research taken from the social network perspective has recognized the role of the expatriate in establishing informal networks (Harzing, 2001; Michailova & Worm, 2003).”
Probing theoretically into Central and Eastern Europe: transactions, resources, and institutions (2005, background): “Tentatively, both Estrin (2002) and Djankov and Murrell (2002) attribute the poorer performance in countries such as Russia to the weaker institutional development.”
Changing patterns of global staffing in the multinational enterprise: Challenges to the conventional expatriate assignment and emerging alternatives (2007, methodology): “It also results in greater competition between MNCs for managers with the context specific knowledge of how to do business successfully in these emerging markets (Bjorkman and Xiucheng, 2003, Michailova & Worm, 2003).”