The Inclusiveness and Emptiness of <i>Gong Qi</i>: A Non-Anglophone Perspective on Ethics from a Sino-Japanese Corporation

This article introduces a non-Anglophone concept of gong qi(communal vessel, 公器) as a metaphor for ‘corporation’. It contributes an endogenous perspective from a Sino-Japanese organizational context that enriches mainstream business ethics literature, otherwise heavily reliant on Western traditions. We translate the multi-layered meanings of gong qi based on analysis of its ideograms, its references into classical philosophies, and contemporary application in this Japanese multinational corporation in China. Gong qi contributes a perspective that sees a corporation as an inclusive and virtuous social entity, and also addresses the elusive, implicit, and forever evolving nature of organizational life that is rarely noticed. We propose gong qi can be applied in other organizations and wider cultural contexts to show a new way of seeing and understanding business ethics and organization. Rather than considering virtue as a list of definable individual qualities, we suggest that the metaphor of gong qi reveals how virtue can be experienced as indeterminate, yet immanently present, like the substance of emptiness. This, then allows us to see the virtue of immanence, the beauty of implicitness, and hence, the efficacy of gong qi

Accounting History and Religion:a review of studies and a research agenda

Since around 2003, the number and extent of studies into accounting history and religion has increased significantly from their prior scarcity. This growing interest in the junction of accounting, religion and theology recognizes the social and economic importance of belief systems and religious institutions. Yet, publications are unevenly distributed, with a focus on a micro-perspective – analysing the manner in which accounting is practised within organizations. Few studies take a macro-perspective to consider how religion influenced (or potentially could influence) accounting outside of religious institutions. The purpose of this article is to review the contributions in the last three decades, to highlight the topics that remain relatively unexplored, and thus to encourage more research into accounting history and religion. Opportunities for extending knowledge include: comparative studies, studies of countries, people and faiths that have been left largely unexplored, and studies from theologians concerning key concepts (such as ethics) which impact academic understandings, as well as the practical application, of accounting