Abstract

There is much talk about the trust crisis in China and the possible role of religion in rebuilding China’s moral order. This study is an attempt to examine religion’s impact on the emerging market economy in China, focusing on trust in business relations that might be generated by the Christian faith. Based on 43 in-depth interviews with Christian entrepreneurs in China, our study shows that the majority of our respondents tend to be: (1) more willing to be trustworthy after becoming Christians; (2) trusting people who share their faith more than others; (3) perceiving religious persons, regardless of what that religion is, as more trustworthy than the non-religious. Our study shows that religiosity is used by many Christian entrepreneurs as a category to guide their decision-making and that it is significant in stimulating and maintaining trust in and from others.

Comments

This is a PDF of Tong, J.K.C.; Yang, F. Trust at Work: A Study on Faith and Trust of Protestant Entrepreneurs in China. Religions 2016, 7, 136. DOI: 10.3390/rel7120136, published by MDPI AG, Basel, Switzerland. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (CC BY 4.0).

Keywords

Christianity; China; trust; entrepreneurs

Date of this Version

12-20-2016

DOI

10.3390/rel7120136

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