Performativity, Corporate Behavior, Institutional Change and Rituals in China

This book provides a broad theoretical and practical position on how ritual behavior functions in Chinese corporations. Rituals are structured to allow individual agents or corporations and corporate groups to transform through different contexts, enact different roles, share the same identities, keep hierarchy levels, provide close relationships with government, weave a guanxi network structure, integrate specific cultural elements, and, more importantly, permit the government and corporations to promote both stability and change in Chinese society. By bridging performativity theory and indigenous perspectives, I have constructed a conceptual and analytical framework for understanding ritual-embedded corporate behavior and the role of institutions in the economies - both historical and contemporary - in a unified way.