An Elementary Study On The Commercial Ethics Of Chang Family As Shanxi Merchants

Chang Family in Chewang village, Yuci, Shanxi, as the most prominent Shanxi merchants , created innumerable commercial legends, in the years from Kangxi Dynasty to late Qing Period. On the basis of inheriting and blending rich commercial management experiences and outsdanding traditional ethics thoughts, Chang Family came into being a certain ethics culture.This article analyses a great deal of literature and anamnesis documents, refers to and quotes some research achievements on traditional ethics and Jin Merchants , making use of historical materialism methodology. It contains three sections, the Chang Family commercial ethics formation, principal specification and modern value analysis.The social status in its time, certain geography circumstance, regional culture and favourable family education, the all together, helped Chang Family commercial ethics to be formed. Chang Family inherited Confucianism, cultivated themselves, and became aware of commercial management principle from the reasons of self-cultivating, keeping one's family in order, running the country well, bringing peace to the world. During their long process, they formed the unique commercial ethics of their own, which contains social justice, commercial personal integrity, commercial morality and so on. They had Confucian viewpoints of justice and benefit, honesty and credibility. Their primary principles also include diligence, hardship and creativity. Their commercial ethics played an extremely important role in the rising and thriving of their family commerce. Further more, the ethics is significant for us, in terms of inheriting and carrying forward traditional business thought so as to construct a harmonious market economy, making for market main body to create upstanding career conception, strengthening credit consciousness and scientific management idea. It is certain that the Chang Family commercial ethics also has some limitations due to the history and localization, so the dross should be discarded and the reasonable essence should be absorbed and combined with the modern market economy.Discussing the Chang Family commercial ethics not only can enrich the studying contents in commercial ethics, but also can offer a scientific reference for the installation of modern commercial ethics to fit the development needs of modern market economy.