An Intercultural Study On Responsibility In China And The West

Responsibility, as an important category in ethics, plays a significant role in handling primary interpersonal relationships especially in the family and in the collective. The notions of responsibility, as an important cultural value, further reflect one's relationship with others. While admitting the universal notions of responsibility in all cultures, people must realize the different cultural implications of responsibility. Due to the influence of cultural value dimensions, the Chinese and Westerners have different notions of family and collective, which in turn cause the differences in the notions of family responsibility and collective responsibility. As a result, on exploring responsibility, its cultural specificity and cultural roots must be discovered.This thesis adopts the research method of comparison and contrast to investigate the Chinese and Western notions of responsibility with family responsibility and collective responsibility as the focus. The application of Hofstede's Theory of Cultural Value and the Face Theory clarifies the differences concerning the notions of responsibility in the Chinese and Western cultures. The analysis of the differences shows that, on the one hand, the Chinese family responsibility reflects hierarchical duties among family members, whereas the Western family responsibility reflects the equal role of each family member, and on the other hand, the Chinese collective responsibility stresses on keeping a balance between maintaining harmonious relationships among group members and achieving the group goals, whereas the Western collective responsibility gives prominence to the individual responsibility to achieve the group goals. In addition, through the discussions about intercultural conflicts caused by different notions of responsibility in the intercultural families and international business negotiations, the study comes to the conclusion that the differences in the notions of responsibility in China and West reflect the orientation of face concerns. The Chinese way of taking responsibility is other-face oriented, which is dependent upon the leading positions of collectivism and high power distance in the Chinese social structure, whereas the Western way of taking responsibility is self-face oriented, which is dependent upon the dominant status of individualism and low power distance in the Western social structure.