SU Managing Managing a Compliant and Diverse Workplace Discussion

Recall from the Management Team Briefing on Employment Laws Assignment that the company in the assignment was the defendant in some HR-related lawsuits; claims of harassment, failure to reasonably accommodate disabilities, and work-life balance issues were made by employees, forcing the company to answer to the claims in its own defense. As the new CHRO, you want to enact stronger policies and guidelines to avoid such situations in the future.

Write a 5–6 page paper in which you:

1. Briefly note how workplace harassment affects equal employment opportunity and describe at least four elements a plaintiff must show to pursue a harassment claim. How might an organization prevent the risk of being the subject of such claims? Hint: Read 6 Tips to Avoid Harassment and Discrimination Claims.
2. Explain your overall understanding on reasonable accommodation of disability (consider reviewing ADA rules). Then, discuss a minimum of three things a plaintiff filing a failure to accommodate claim must show to prove they are qualified for the job in question.
3. Make a connection between religious advocacy or harassment and bona fide occupational qualification. Can churches promoting a certain religion refuse to hire people of other faiths? Why or why not?
4. Discuss your overall understanding of FMLA and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act as they relate to organizations granting leave for each. Then, identify two or three common FMLA mistakes managers make and what you would do to avoid the mistakes. Hint: Read The Top Five FMLA Compliance Mistakes That Could Land You in Court.
5. Go to Basic Search: Strayer University Online Library to locate at least three quality academic resources in this assignment. Note: Wikipedia and other websites do not qualify as academic resources.

Works cited
[1]Angela Reddock-Wright, (1) New Messages!.” i-sight.com, May. 2012, https://www.isight.com/resources/6-tips-to-avoid-harassment-and-discrimination-claims/.
[1]FMLA-5-Slip-Ups-White-Paper.qxp.” kansastag.gov, Feb. 2010,
https://www.kansastag.gov/AdvHTML_Upload/files/FMLA-5-Slip-Ups-White-Paper.pdf.
Rosemary Hays-Thomas. Managing Workplace Diversity and Inclusion : A Psychological Perspective. Routledge,
2017. EBSCOhost, search-ebscohostcom.libdatab.strayer.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=1441307&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Moran, Robert T., et al. Managing Cultural Differences. Routledge, 2014. EBSCOhost, search-ebscohostcom.libdatab.strayer.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=707655&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Reny, M.-E. (2018). Compliant Defiance: Informality and Survival Among Protestant House Churches in
China. Journal of Contemporary China, 27(111), 472–485.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2018.1410985
6 Tips to Avoid Harassment and Discrimination Claims.
The economic decline of the last few years has led to an increase in claims of discrimination and
harassment in the workplace. Such claims have arisen as a result of employers having to make
difficult decisions about layoffs and restructuring their businesses and organizations to streamline
them and to make them more efficient.
The EEOC shows nearly 100,000 claims of discrimination and harassment filed, with a notable
increase in claims related to age, religion, disability and national origin, as opposed to traditional
claims of race and sex discrimination.
Although a tough climate in which to do business, employers can take steps to minimize their risks in
the areas of discrimination and harassment, while also growing and creating thriving, progressive
work environments.
Harassment investigations can be tricky. You’ll find tips for preventing and
investigating workplace harassment in this free cheat sheet on Workplace
Harassment.
The following guidelines can help to prevent harassment and discrimination claims and reduce risk:
1. Leadership Commitment
First and foremost, the leaders of a company or organization, including the owners, executives and
senior managers, must personally commit to promoting and creating an environment and culture
which does not tolerate discrimination and harassment in the workplace. When employees see that
the leaders of a company or organization are committed to such principles, they are less likely to
engage in such conduct and if they do, they know they may face potentially severe consequences.
2. Strong Policies and Procedures
Employers must establish a strong policy against harassment and discrimination which defines and
provides examples of what constitutes such conduct. If the employer’s business is part of a unique
industry such as the restaurant, retail or manufacturing business, the policy should include examples
which are applicable to that workplace or industry. This will ensure the policy has meaning beyond
words.
3. A Clear Reporting Process
The policy also should include a clear process for employees to report claims of discrimination and
harassment. For example, the policy might state something to the following effect: “Should an
employee feel that he or she has been the victim of discrimination or harassment, the employee
should immediately report the claim to his or her supervisor or to X person in the Human Resources
Department”.
Employers might also consider implementing a third-party compliance hotline where employees can
make reports of discrimination and harassment, as well as other claims and issues, particularly if the
employee does not feel comfortable making the report to any manager or supervisor internally.
Read about i-Sight’s secure anonymous ethics hotline.
4. A Clear Investigation Process
The policy also should include a clear overview of the employer’s investigation process. The policy
should express the employer’s commitment to conducting an immediate and thorough investigation
and to taking any remedial action, where necessary.
5. No Retaliation
The policy also should ensure employees that they will not be retaliated against for making claims of
discrimination or harassment and that the employer will take all steps to protect the employee and
their confidentiality.
6. Training
Perhaps the most important element of a strong prevention program is regular training both for
Rosemary Hays-Thomas. Managing Workplace Diversity and Inclusion : A Psychological Perspective. Routledge,
2017. EBSCOhost, search-ebscohostcom.libdatab.strayer.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=1441307&site=eds-live&scope=site.professionals
or through a recognized online training source. Employers should examine their organizational
culture and environment to determine what is the best training option for their employees. Whatever
decision the employer makes, it should ensure the training is conducted on a regular basis – at least
annually as a best practice.
Although claims of discrimination and harassment are on the rise, they can be limited and their
impact can be minimized where employers commit to having a ZERO tolerance environment for
discrimination and harassment, along with implementing the necessary policies, practices, tools and
training to support that commitment.
Journal of Contemporary China, 2018
VOL. 27, NO. 111, 472–485
https://doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2018.1410985
Compliant Defiance: Informality and Survival Among Protestant
House Churches in China
Marie-Eve Reny
Université de Montréal, Canada
ABSTRACT
Protestant house churches have resorted to a form of subtle contestation
which the author calls compliant defiance. Compliant defiance is the act
of resisting central government policies while cooperating informally
with actors in the local state in exchange for protection for the rules they
challenge. Unregistered clerics engaging in compliant defiance choose not
to formally register their congregations with the government, and operate
independently from state corporatist religious associations in charge of
managing the activities of official churches. They also bypass regulations
on religious education, churches’ interactions with foreign Christian
actors, church leaders’ travels, the distribution of religious material and
proselytization. Informality has placed unregistered pastors in a position
of vulnerability whereby they face risks of arbitrary state interference.
Uncertainty has prompted them to seek protection from actors in local states
by means of symbolic gestures of compliance and signals aimed at showing
officials they are not a threat to political stability.
Introduction
Overt resistance has constituted an important object of analysis in Chinese politics and society. It
is divided into studies of rebellions in imperial times, twentieth-century revolutionary activities and
contention in China’s reform period.1 Protests in reform China have by far attracted the most attention
since the 1990s. Studies have delved into the causes, unfoldings and outcomes of a rising number of
instances of collective resistance in urban and rural China.2 The forms of resistance that were central to
those studies were, for the most part, overt, public and sometimes disruptive, including street protests,
CONTACT Marie-Eve Reny
marie-eve.reny@umontreal.ca
1
Lucien Bianco, ‘Les paysans et la révolution: Chine, 1919–1949’, Politique étrangère 2–3, (1968), pp. 117–141; Ho-Fung Hung, Protest
with Chinese Characteristics: Demonstrations, Riots, and Petitions in the Mid-Qing Dynasty (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011); Elizabeth J. Perry, ‘Challenging the mandate of heaven: popular protest in modern China’, Critical Asian Studies 33(2), (2001),
pp. 163–180; Elizabeth J. Perry, Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993).
2
Yongshun Cai, Collective Resistance in China: Why Popular Protests Succeed or Fail (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010);
Xi Chen, Social Protest and Contentious Authoritarianism in China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Yanhua Deng
and Kevin J. O’Brien, ‘Societies of senior citizens and popular protest in rural Zhejiang’, The China Journal 71, (2014), pp. 172–188;
William Hurst, ‘Understanding contentious collective action by Chinese laid-off workers: the importance of regional political economy’, Studies in Comparative International Development 39(2), (2004), pp. 94–120; Ching Kwan Lee, Against the Law: Labor
Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007); Kevin J. O’Brien and Lianjiang Li,
Rightful Resistance in Rural China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Kevin J. O’Brien and Rachel E. Stern, ‘Introduction:
studying contention in contemporary China’, in Kevin J. O’Brien, ed., Popular Protest in China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2008), pp. 11–25.
© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY CHINA
473
road blockages, hunger strikes, attempts at disrupting factory production, self-immolations, as well as
public sit-ins and performances.3 Resistance also took the form of rights defense practices via institutional channels such as local courts, the petitioning system and village elections.4 In these latter cases,
resistance was formal but not necessarily overt, and if overt, it was for the most part not disruptive.
Little attention has been paid to resistance that is not readily apparent.5 This is intriguing given
that China is an authoritarian polity where the freedom of expression remains restrained, and one
would anticipate citizens would avoid voicing their discontent with state decisions in ways that are
too obvious. This analysis brings attention to a form of contestation of formal institutional rules that is
so far unaddressed in the study of Chinese politics and society. It is subdued, rather than overt, and an
important means through which some Protestant house church leaders have interacted with actors in
the local state apparatus. The author calls this phenomenon compliant defiance. The concept is defined
as the act of resisting central government policies while cooperating informally with actors in the local
government for protection for rules transgressed. The policies compliant defiant actors bypass are in
sensitive areas that are particularly important to the central government, but which local authorities
may consider of lesser priority. Sensitive policy areas may not be on the central government’s priority
list on a day-to-day basis, but they are central enough to regime survival that the state carefully builds
institutions to prevent the threats that might arise from dysfunctions in such areas from materializing.
Compliant defiant actors defy central government policies based on the perception that they are
unfair or obsolete, that is ill-suited to their local reality. They consider the state’s interference in such
policy spheres to be illegitimate or burdensome, and wish to reduce its influence. Yet, compliant defiant
actors also know their choice to resist central government policies places them in a position of weakness
whereby they engage in activities that are illegal. Informality increases their risk of being subjected to
political harassment on the part of local state actors unfamiliar with religious leaders’ intentions and
seeking to enforce regime interests. The policies that religious leaders defy, however, do not challenge
the main priorities of local governments. Compliant defiant actors, therefore, try to earn the trust of
actors in the local state, in this case, public security bureaus, and seek protection from them. They
anticipate that sustained bargains with these officials can help facilitate their survival in the system.
This is especially true of actors who are more at risk challenging central government regulations. Risks
in being unregistered indeed vary from one religious organization to another. Religious leaders accumulate information about officials’ priorities in their interactions with them and other church leaders.
They comply with informal rules set by the authorities or interpreted as such, to earn their respect and
reassure those officials they are not a threat to political stability. While compliant defiant actors are
willing to make compromises with local authorities, these bargains do not come at the expense of their
commitment to resisting central policies they view as unlawful.
As shown in this analysis, Protestant church leaders have resorted to compliant defiance in some
urban areas to ensure the political safety of their unregistered religious sites and congregants. They have
rejected the central government’s policy of religious cooptation by refusing to register their church with
Feng Chen, ‘Subsistence crises, managerial corruption, and labour protests in China’, The China Journal 44, (2000), pp. 41–63; Deng
and O’Brien, ‘Societies of senior citizens and popular protest in rural Zhejiang’; William J. Hurst and Kevin O’Brien, ‘China’s contentious
pensioners’, The China Quarterly 170, (2002), pp. 345–358; O’Brien and Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China; Kevin J. O’Brien and
Yanhua Deng, ‘Repression backfires: tactical radicalization and protest spectacles in rural China’, Journal of Contemporary China
24(93), (2015), pp. 457–470; Lu Zhang, Inside China’s Automobile Factories: The Politics of Labor and Worker Resistance (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Wu Zhang, ‘Leadership, Organization and moral authority: explaining peasant militancy
in contemporary china’, The China Journal 73, (2015), pp. 59–83.
4
Mary E. Gallagher, ‘Mobilizing the law: informed disenchantment and the development of legal consciousness’, Law & Society
Review 4(40), (2006), pp. 783–816; Rachel E. Stern, Environmental Litigation in China: A Study in Political Ambivalence (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); William Hurst, Mingxing Liu, Yongdong Liu and Ran Tao, ‘Reassessing collective petitioning
in rural China: civic engagement, extra-state violence, and regional variation’, Comparative Politics 46(4), (2014), pp. 459–482;
Kevin J. O’Brien and Lianjiang Li, ‘The politics of lodging complaints in rural China’, The China Quarterly 143, (1995), pp. 756–783;
Lianjiang Li, ‘The empowering effect of village elections in China’, Asian Survey 43(4), (2003), pp. 648–662.
5
An exception to the rule is Diana Fu’s work on ‘disguised collective action’, whose purpose is to promote clandestinely individual
rather than collective claim-making. See Diana Fu, ‘Disguised collective action in China’, Comparative Political Studies 50(4),
(2016), pp. 499–527.
3
474
M.-E. RENY
the State Administration for Religious Affairs. Religious practice is a sensitive policy area in China as the
Chinese Communist Party seeks to prevent faith from being used to subvert authoritarian institutions.
Rejecting state cooptation has exposed unregistered churches to the risk of being raided by public
security bureaus, which might be unaware of their activities and intentions. Not all church leaders
face equal risks in being unregistered in China’s uncertain political environment. Those that are part
of domestic and international networks, and which have many members, are more likely to attract
the attention of local public security bureaus. Church leaders also know that being vocal may cause
them trouble. They have thus strategically kept a low profile in public, avoided talking politics during
sermons, and shared information about their activities with public security officials upon their request.
Such forms of compliance have helped reassure local authorities that house churches are not a threat
to political stability despite their opposing the central state’s cooptation of religious organizations.
This analysis complements and builds upon recent work in the study of Chinese politics and society that explores how citizens test the limits of what is considered acceptable speech and activities,
while simultaneously minimizing risks of state coercion. Fu draws attention to the fact that informal
labor organizations resort to ‘censored entrepreneurialism’.6 They are entrepreneurial in that they seize
opportunities to exploit the weaknesses of local states by training activists to exert pressure on the
authorities to have their demands addressed. Yet they self-censor to avoid attracting public attention.
They refrain from communicating with the media, avoid mobilizing collectively, and are low key during
significant events.7 Informal labor organizations are assumed to have information about the state which
informs their calculations, although the process through which they arrive at such information is unclear.
Similarly, Stern and Hassid argue that professionals, including journalists and lawyers, who challenge
boundaries of legality in their own field, nevertheless rely on ‘control parables’ to avoid crossing red
lines deemed unacceptable by the Chinese state.8 Such parables are ex post-facto interpretations of
the causes of state repression targeting other professionals, in an attempt to define the ‘grey zone’
between the risks that are politically safe to take, and the ones that are not.9 The concept of ‘control
parables’ is particularly insightful to understand the process via which individuals collect information to
build a narrative about the state, and identify limits not to bypass. Yet how actors use that information
to decide what to do, or not to do, to avoid state interference in their activities remains unclear. This
analysis bridges information and action by capturing how citizens challenging formal rules maximize
their safety in a politically uncertain setting. It sheds light on the information they accumulate about
government interests, the bargains they strike with local authorities to ensure their safety, and how
they strategize about these moves.
The remainder of the analysis proceeds in four parts. First, it discusses how and why the study of
contention in China has focused on overt and public resistance, rather than subdued forms of defiance. Second, it introduces the concept of compliant defiance. It explains the motivations underlying
religious leaders’ decision to become compliant defiant actors, and local governments’ motivations for
tolerating them. It distinguishes compliant defiance from popular contention, including Kevin O’Brien
and Li Lianjiang’s concept of ‘rightful resistance’, and explains how it is different from Lily L. Tsai’s concept of ‘constructive non-compliance’, political dissidence and James C. Scott’s concept of ‘everyday
forms of resistance’.10 Third, it discusses how Protestant house church leaders in China have engaged
in compliant defiance to maximize the safety and survival of their congregations. Finally, it addresses
compliant defiance’s applicability to other social actors and policy spheres in China.
Diana Fu, ‘Fragmented control: governing contentious labor organizations in China’, Governance 30(3), (2017), p. 453.
Ibid., p. 454.
Rachel E. Stern and Jonathan Hassid, ‘Amplifying silence: uncertainty and control parables in contemporary China’, Comparative
Political Studies 45(10), (2012), pp. 1230–1254.
9
Ibid., ‘Amplifying silence’, p. 1231.
10
O’Brien and Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China, p. 4; Lily L. Tsai, ‘Constructive non-compliance’, Comparative Politics 47(3),
(2015), p. 253–279; James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1985), p. 36.
6
7
8
JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY CHINA
475
The Study of Resistance in China
Since the late 1990s, scholars have paid attention to the study of overt and public forms of contestation in Chinese society. The issues at the center of citizens’ contestation have, for the most part, been
socio-economic and post-materialist. Protests have involved the making of claims concerning property
rights,11 occupational conditions,12 tax burdens,13 environmental protection,14 nationalism15 and religious freedom respectively.16 Religious protests nevertheless tend to be cyclical rather than a feature
of everyday societal politics in China, and they pale in comparison with the number of socio-economic
and environmental demonstrations.17 Most of the literature on overt resistance has focused on the latter
grievances rather than religious resistance.
Studies have produced a number of concepts capturing the overtness of popular resistance. Ching
Kwan Lee, for instance, distinguishes ‘protests of desperation’ from ‘protests against discrimination’.18
The former are outdoor and disruptive and involve workers contesting the loss of social benefits they
once had. Those workers make claims of ‘despair about downward mobility, exclusion and betrayal’,
which are targeted at the state.19 The concept of ‘protests against discrimination’, similarly, describes
a form of resistance that is not only overt but in some cases also formal, that is public mobilization or
the use of legal channels to contest unequal treatment in the workplace, and in the market economy.20
O’Brien and Li’s concept of ‘rightful resistance’, similarly, captures a form of contestation emerging in
rural China starting in the 1990s, which is ‘noisy, public, and open’, and involves the condemnation of
perceived injustices committed by local authorities, framed in lawful rhetoric.21 Finally, O’Brien and
Deng shed light on ‘protest spectacles’, which consist in the occupation of a public sphere aimed at
generating ‘a carnival-like atmosphere’ to attract the support of citizens towards occupiers’ claims, and
pressure local authorities to accommodate the latter.22 What the above concepts have in common is
Yongshun Cai, ‘Collective ownership or cadres’ ownership? The non-agricultural use of farmland in China’, The China Quarterly 175,
(2003), pp. 662–680, Cai, Collective Resistance in China; Qiangqiang Luo and Joel Andreas, ‘Using religion to resist rural dispossession: a case of a Hui Muslim community in north-west China’, The China Quarterly 226, (2016), pp. 477–498.
12
Chen, ‘Subsistence crises, managerial corruption, and labour protests in China’; Eli Friedman, Insurgency Trap: Labor Politics in
Postsocialist China (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014); Fu, ‘Disguised collective action in China’; Hurst, ‘Understanding
contentious collective action by Chinese laid-off workers’; Lee, Against the Law; Ching Kwan Lee, ‘Precarization or empowerment? Reflections on recent labor unrest in China’, The Journal of Asian Studies 75(2), (2016), pp. 317–333; Zhang, Inside China’s
Automobile Factories.
13
O’Brien and Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China; Wu Zhang, ‘Protest leadership and state boundaries: Protest Diffusion in
Contemporary China’, The China Quarterly 222, (2015), pp. 360–379.
14
Stern, Environmental Litigation in China; Christoph H. Steinhardt and Fengshi Wu, ‘In the name of the public: environmental
protest and the changing landscape of popular contention in China’, The China Journal 75, (2016), pp. 61–82.; Zhang, ‘Leadership,
Organizations and Moral Authority’.
15
Jeremy Wallace and Jessica Chen Weiss, ‘The political geography of nationalist protests in China’, The China Quarterly 222, (2015),
pp. 403–429.
16
Religious resistance has translated into street demonstrations, riots, clashes with local state actors, the decision not to abide by a
government decision, ignoring acts of disrespect by cadres, and self-immolations. See Robert Barnett, ‘The Tibet protests of spring
2008: conflict between the nation and the state’, China Perspectives 3, (2009), pp. 6–23; Jianbo Huang and Fenggang Yang, ‘The
cross faces the loudspeakers: a village church perseveres under state power’, in Fenggang Yang and Joseph B. Tamney, eds, State,
Market, and Religions in Chinese Societies (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 41–62; Tsering Woeser, Tibet on Fire: Self-Immolations Against
Chinese Rule (London: Verso, 2016). Religious resistance has been reported in the media but understudied in the academic literature.
It includes conflicts that occurred between Protestant churches and local authorities as a result of the ‘Three Rectification, One
Demolition’ Campaign led by the Zhejiang government from 2013 to 2015. See Ian Johnson, ‘Chinese Christians resist government
plan to remove crosses’, The New York Times, (10 August 2015). An exception on this case is Cao’s study, although its focus is less
on religious resistance than the factors having triggered the cross-removal campaign. See Nanlai Cao, ‘Spatial modernity, party
building, and local governance: putting the Christian cross removal campaign in context’, The China Review 17(1), (2017), pp. 29–52.
17
Land-related protests were estimated to represent 60% of mass incidents reported in China in the late 2000s. See Tao Ran, ‘China’s
land grab is undermining grassroots democracy’, The Guardian, (16 December 2011). Human rights watchers, including those
interested in religious issues, have compiled information about instances of protests around specific claims. Yet their objective is
not to compare the proportion of protests occurring across issue areas. See for instance China Labour Bulletin’s strike map, China
Aid’s reports, and International Campaign for Tibet’s list of self-immolations. From such reports, one is unable to assess whether
religious protests are rising compared to protests on other policy issues.
18
Lee, Against the Law, pp. 11–12.
19
Ibid., pp. 11–12.
20
Ibid., pp. 11–12.
21
O’Brien and Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China, p. 4.
22
O’Brien and Deng, ‘Repression backfires’, p. 457.
11
476
M.-E. RENY
their depiction of popular defiance as public and involving direct challenges to either government
policies or local economic practices.
What accounts for a predominant interest in overt forms of resistance in China’s reform period?
Starting in the 2000s, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, among other sources, revealed that there
were surprisingly high numbers of popular protests unfolding in the country, which triggered media
and scholarly attention. These numbers rose steadily over that decade.23 The proliferation of popular
protests defied the common assumption that citizens in authoritarian regimes were coerced into passivity, and initially raised hopes that pressures from below might eventually constrain Beijing to begin a
number of political reforms towards democratization. Popular resistance was seen as having the potential to exert ‘serious pressure on the Party-State’24 and ‘challeng[e] the legitimacy of the government’.25
Perry and Selden considered whether Chinese citizens were ‘a ticking time bomb, about to detonate
the Communist state’.26 The study of resistance was to help gauge how serious ‘a basis for confidently
predicting a “coming collapse” of China’ collective action represented.27
The literature has paid less attention to non-public forms of popular defiance and interactions
between society and the state. In some studies, the absence of observable protests may have even
implied that citizens are apolitical, passive and/or obedient of state policies. Ching Kwan Lee’s insightful
analysis of state-owned enterprise workers’ responses to market reforms implies that the absence of
overt resistance means collective inaction.28 O’Brien and Li, similarly, suggest the alternative to ‘rightful
resistance’ might be withdrawal.29 Yet as Beissinger observes in his study of contention in the Soviet
Union, ‘the absence of an event cannot be taken to mean the absence of challenge, but only the absence
of perceivable challenge’.30 By focusing primarily on public forms of contestation, the literature on protests in China neglected the question as to how risk-averse citizens who have not engaged in public
mobilization, and might therefore appear as apolitical, have nevertheless critically engaged with the
state. One way they have done so has been to refuse to comply with central regulations they deem
unjust or obsolete. The concept of compliant defiance captures this reality.
What Compliant Defiance is
Compliant defiance is the act of not conforming with central government policies while cooperating
with local government officials in charge of their implementation in exchange for informal protection.
Compliant defiant actors are the leaders of unregistered religious organizations, and the rules they
bypass are central government regulations on religious activities. Those policies are part of an overarching system of state corporatism where religious organizations are co-opted, and their activities are
managed by the government. State corporatism is one of the important channels via which authoritarian regimes have ensured their long-term resilience.31 Its objective is to prevent an independent civil
society from emerging and challenging government control over the freedom of association. Hence,
by defying the state’s cooptation of religious organizations, compliant defiant actors make a possibly
politically sensitive move.
Compliant defiant actors challenge central government regulations in a particular policy sphere
because they perceive them as unjust or inadequate to local realities. Compliant defiant actors believe
Chen, Social Protest and Contentious Authoritarianism in China, p. 27; Lee, ‘Precarization or empowerment?’, p. 318.
Cai, Collective Resistance in China, p. 1.
25
Yongshun Cai, ‘Civil resistance and rule of law in China: the defense of homeowners’ rights’, in Elizabeth J. Perry and Merle Goldman,
eds, Grassroots Political Reform in Contemporary China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 175.
26
Elizabeth J. Perry and Mark Selden, ‘Introduction’, in Elizabeth J. Perry and Mark Selden, eds, Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and
Resistance (Abingdon: Routledge, 2003), p. 15.
27
Murray Scot Tanner, ‘China rethinks unrest’, The Washington Quarterly 27(3), (2004), pp. 137–156.
28
Lee, Against the Law.
29
O’Brien and Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China.
30
Mark R. Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 15.
31
Eva Rana Bellin, ‘Contingent democrats: industrialists, labor, and democratization in late-developing countries’, World Politics 52,
(2000), pp. 175–205; Bruce J. Dickson, Red Capitalists in China: The Party, Private Entrepreneurs, and Prospects for Political
Change (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003); and Teresa Wright, Accepting Authoritarianism: State–Society Relations
in China’s Reform Era (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010).
23
24
JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY CHINA
477
the state ought to relegate control over that sector to society, or the private sphere. Because they cannot
change the design of already existing institutions, they try to change those rules in practice. They do
so by avoiding relevant regulations. Challenging those rules means that they operate in the informal
spheres of society. Informality is not an end in itself, but a means to enforce a moral commitment to
resisting a policy considered illegitimate in a polity that offers few possibilities for citizens to influence
formal institutional change. Informality does not exclusively result from citizens’ condemnation of a
regulation. Religious leaders may defy state rules assuming there are benefits to espousing illegality
under authoritarian conditions, insofar as it helps them avoid intrusive state policies more effectively.
Resisting central policies places compliant defiant actors in a position of weakness. The organizations those actors run lack a legal status, and the activities they engage in are illicit. Because they are
clandestine, compliant defiant actors operate in a context of political uncertainty: local authorities
might interfere in their activities and send them warnings about the risks of defying the law. Just as
state policy in authoritarian settings may lack coherence and consistency,32 warnings and sanctions
by local state actors may be sudden, arbitrary, irregular, and therefore unpredictable. Religious leaders
never know when they might end up on the authorities’ radar, how frequently they will be harassed, and
what the price to pay for being involved in informal activities will be. In this context of unpredictability,
compliant defiant actors make themselves the least threatening possible to local authorities. They also
seek to earn their trust to maximize their political safety.
They assess how to secure their survival in the medium and long run based on the prior accumulation of information about officials in the local state apparatus. They are interested in the conditions
under which those authorities could repress or coerce them. These conditions help them identify the
limits not to cross to avoid risks of state reprisal. As Stern and Hassid insightfully suggest, ‘speculation
surrounding a warning or punishment generates a set of imagined rules designed to prevent future
clashes with the authority’.33 This information is shared among religious leaders, including former targets
of coercion and physical abuse.34 The information compliant defiant actors collect about state interests
enables them to negotiate their space for religious practice more effectively. They also know local
officials are not always committed to enforcing central government regulations.35 Some regulations
might indeed be costly to enforce or may conflict with local governments’ interests.36 To that extent,
the policies compliant defiant actors challenge may compromise central-level interests but not disrupt
local governance. Yet compliant defiant actors also know local and central governments share common
interests, despite their sometimes conflicting policy agendas. Where local and central governments
agree is on the need to ensure political stability. Ironically, this priority sometimes takes precedence
over the strict implementation of some central government policies. Compliant defiant actors, therefore,
anticipate they may be able to secure themselves informal protection from actors in the local state if
they commit to not challenging political stability in their locality.
In China, informal religious organizations may be perceived by local authorities as threatening
political stability, depending on their characteristics. Local governments worry about the possibility
that the leaders of unregistered religious organizations embrace opinions or pursue agendas that are
antagonistic to the regime, and diffuse them.37 Other factors come into play when assessing if organizations might threaten stability, including whether they are part of cohesive or loose domestic or
international networks. The tighter those networks are, the more worrisome the authorities consider
them to be. Religious actors are also likely to attract local government attention if they run large informal
Stern and Hassid, ‘Amplifying silence’; O’Brien and Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China.
Stern and Hassid, ‘Amplifying silence’, p. 1241.
34
Ibid., p. 1230.
35
Timothy Hildebrandt, Social Organizations and the Authoritarian State in China (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press,
2013), p. 71; Minxin Pei, China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2006).
36
Pei, China’s Trapped Transition.
37
The same is true of unregistered NGOs in China, with the exception that unlike the heads of such organizations, spiritual leaders
may be an alternative source of authority to the state for religious believers. See Hildebrandt, Social Organizations and the
Authoritarian State in China; Karrie J. Koesel, Religion and Authoritarianism: Cooperation, Conflict, and the Consequences
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 2.
32
33
478
M.-E. RENY
organizations, and if they have ambitions to become socially influential, or lack a low profile. With this
information in mind, and to ensure their political safety, compliant defiant actors avoid framing their
resistance to central government policies as anti-regime and refrain from making their activities public.
They further agree to sharing information about their informal activities with local government officials
upon their request. Some might strategically limit the size of their church to avoid raising concerns on
the part of the local government, although not all risk-averse church leaders will do so. Aware that size
might make the authorities nervous,38 the leaders of larger congregations may invest that much more
into building patron–clientelistic ties with local state actors to avoid unanticipated interference in their
activities. The same logic applies to unregistered churches that are part of networks. Those churches
are also careful to limit the frequency with which they interact with other religious actors.39
Compliant defiant actors have incentives to engage in subdued resistance insofar as the regulations they defy are in a sensitive policy area. They anticipate that making public claims for institutional
reforms in such an area would not only fail, but also increase their risks of being surveilled and subject
to state coercion. What is more, making such claims public would bring central government attention
to gaps in religious policy implementation and local state actors would rather avoid getting that kind
of attention from the higher level. Mobilization is therefore not an option for compliant defiant actors
seeking to nurture good relations with local authorities.
Why do local state actors part with central government regulations and tolerate compliant defiant
actors? Unregistered church leaders are not politicized, and if they are part of networks, those tend to
be incohesive. This means that they are neither inclined, nor do they have the resources, to undermine
the regime. Informal toleration also comes with benefits: it generates incentives on the part of unregistered religious leaders to remain low key and divides the informal religious sphere between compliant
and dissident religious leaders. It also enables state actors to collect information about the activities
of unregistered religious organizations other strategies would not allow as easily. Such information, in
turn, helps local officials deal with unregistered clerics in a less forceful or co-optive way. The conditional
toleration of unregistered churches is, therefore, a middle-ground compromise that enables local state
actors to reconcile the interests of informal churches with regime stability.
For the purposes of conceptual clarity, it is important to explain what compliant defiance is not, and
what the alternatives to the phenomenon are. First, it is not a form of popular contention. O’Brien and
Li emphasize three characteristics that are specific to contention, which encompasses their concept of
‘rightful resistance’: it is overt and meant to attract public attention; it occurs on a punctual and periodic basis; and it involves the making of claims for policy reforms.40 Compliant defiance has none of
the above features. It is covert and does not translate into public collective action, it is sustained rather
than episodic, and it does not come with the articulation of formal demands for policy change. If, in the
context of their interactions with local officials, compliant defiant actors voice demands for policy transformation, they do so informally. They anticipate that if they were to engage in formal demand-making,
they would compromise their cooperative relations with actors in the local government.
Compliant defiant actors also differ from rightful resisters in their perception of local and central
government policies and intentions. Rightful resisters legitimize central government regulations. They
view local policy implementers as an obstacle to their transparent application, while they depict central
government authorities as the bearers of solutions to perceived injustices committed by local authorities.41 Compliant defiant actors, in contrast, view local policy implementers as possible allies in their
struggle against central government policies they deem inadapted.
Second, compliant defiance differs from Lily L. Tsai’s concept of ‘constructive non-compliance’. Tsai
defines the concept as ‘non-compliance with state policies and regulations that is justified by citizens
38
On the reporting of large-scale religious activities, see article 42, State Council, ‘Religious Affairs Regulations’, 26 August 2017,
translated by China Law Translate.
39
For a similar finding on NGOs, see Hildebrandt, Social Organizations and the Authoritarian State in China, pp. 61, 78–80.
40
See Note 21.
41
Ibid., pp. 6–7, 9, 25. For a similar depiction of local states as obstacles to the implementation of central policies, see Zhang,
‘Leadership, organization and moral authority’, p. 80.
JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY CHINA
479
as a way of communicating constructive criticism about policy performance and factual information
about local conditions to decision-makers’.42 While both ‘constructive non-compliers’ and compliant
defiant actors have in common the fact that they do not challenge the regime, the former differ from
the latter in their purpose and views about local authorities. Like compliant defiance, ‘constructive
non-compliance’ refers to citizens bypassing central government policies they consider inadapted to
their local or personal condition.43 Yet, ‘constructive non-compliers’ defy policies in the hope that the
authorities will realize that they do not work, and change them.44 Compliant defiant actors do not defy
rules to communicate their anomalies. They do so to secure their organization’s best interest, aware that
they can minimize risks of bypassing those rules by cooperating with local authorities. Furthermore,
while ‘constructive non-compliers’ view local authorities as the implementers of unpopular central government policies,45 compliant defiant actors think of them as possible informal reformers of the latter.
Third, compliant defiance differs from political dissidence. Dissidents reject a regime and ‘challeng[e]
its monopoly’.46 As Havel maintains, they do so openly, ‘express[ing] their non-conformist positions and
critical opinions publicly and systematically, within the very strict limits available to them’.47 Compliant
defiant actors, in contrast, refrain from challenging a regime openly and look for solutions that are
compatible with it. Informality, as such, is not associated with a rejection of the system. Some religious
leaders might be critical of the regime, and yet strategically choose not to voice those beliefs or act
upon them. Doing so would compromise their ability to operate outside the reach of the central state
under local governments’ informal protection. While dissidents are willing to take the risk of facing
state punishment, compliant defiant actors are reluctant to do so. For this reason, dissidents might
view compliant defiant actors as opportunistic rather than genuine agents of change.
Finally, compliant defiance differs from James C. Scott’s concept of ‘everyday forms of resistance’,
which he describes as ‘the ordinary weapons of relatively powerless groups: foot dragging, dissimulation, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage, and so forth’.48 While
both forms of contestation might result from popular perceptions of established rules being immoral
or unjust, and while they share in common the fact that they are covert, their relationship to patron–
clientelism is at odds. For Scott’s everyday resisters, in this case, peasants, the sources of injustice reside
in a patron–clientelistic and exploitative social order imposed by the landed elite.49 For compliant
defiant actors, patron–clientelistic relationships constitute a temporary coping mechanism, even if far
from ideal a solution, against political institutions they would like to see transformed, but which they
are unable to change.
Protestant House Church Leaders in China
Since the 1950s, the Chinese Communist Party has managed the practice of religion through state
corporatism. Under this system, citizens are free to practice religion, but official religious sites operate
under the supervision of associations managed by the State Administration for Religious Affairs (guojia
zongjiao shiwuju), formerly called the Religious Affairs Bureau.50 The associations that supervise the
activities of state-sanctioned Protestant churches are the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) and the
China Christian Council (CCC). Legal religious sites have to be registered with the State Administration
42
Tsai, ‘Constructive non-compliance’, p. 253.
Ibid., pp. 255, 257.
Ibid., p. 255.
45
Ibid., p. 264.
46
Tony Judt, ‘The dilemmas of dissidence: the politics of dissidence in East-Central Europe’, East European Politics and Societies 2,
(1988), p. 195.
47
Vaclac Havel, ‘The power of the powerless’, International Journal of Politics 15(3–4), (1985), p. 25.
48
Scott, Weapons of the Weak, pp. 29, 36.
49
Ibid., pp. 26–27, 29–30.
50
Articles 2 and 4, ‘Religious Affairs Regulations’, 2017; Vincent Goossaert and David A. Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern
China (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011).
43
44
480
M.-E. RENY
as Three-Self (sanzi) churches.51 Central regulations also place limits on religious education, interactions
with overseas actors, religious leaders’ travels, the distribution of religious material and preaching faith
outside registered venues.52 The Chinese Communist Party progressively designed such regulations to
counter the influence of foreign actors through religious institutions, which it viewed as a threat.53 Over
time, religion remained a realm that the state controlled to prevent formal and informal religious practice
from undermining Chinese Communist Party rule.54 Informal religious organizations are especially likely
to attract state scrutiny as they operate outside its institutional reach. New regulations reiterate that
religious organizations that are not officially recognized as such are forbidden from conducting any kind
of activity.55 Illegal religious venues are to be shut down, and the leaders of unauthorized gatherings
are subject to a significant fine. Landlords allowing unregistered churches to rent a worshipping space
would, according to those regulations, similarly be liable to a fine.56
In spite of such regulations, unregistered churches have proliferated in China’s urban areas since the
1990s.57 While the government estimated the number of official Protestants to have reached 17 million
early in the decade, unofficial and academic sources estimate Protestants to range between 50 and
130 million.58 This suggests there are more unregistered Protestants in China than there are registered
ones. In 2010, Beijing was said to have at least 2,000 unregistered churches,59 and Wenzhou, where up
to 15% of the population is Christian, was estimated to have over 2,000 such congregations as well.60
Beyond their decision to run unregistered sites, pastors bypass central government regulations in
other ways. Regulations emphasize the state’s exclusive right to authorize the establishment of religious training schools,61 yet unregistered clerics have opened Sunday schools for children. In a rather
dated but nevertheless helpful publication, Liu surveyed 65 house churches in Beijing and found that
34 had set up a Sunday school for children.62 The state also requires to-be-official members of the
clergy to be trained in state-sanctioned seminaries.63 Those are not intended to train individuals who
will, following their minimum three years of education, operate informally.64 House church leaders
have therefore launched their own underground schools to train future clerics. Fifteen underground
theological schools are in the city of Wenzhou, at least three in Ningbo, four in Kunming and 46 in
Goossaert and Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China, p. 324; see articles 4, 5 and 7, ‘Religious Affairs Regulations’,
2017; articles 3, 4 and 6, Zongjiao shiwu tiaoli [Regulations on Religious Affairs] (Beijing: Zongjiao wenhua chubanshe [Beijing:
Religious Culture Press], 2005), p. 19–20.
52
These regulations are discussed in subsequent parts of the empirical section, and the article(s) they are linked to in the law are
cited where relevant.
53
Although perceptions of foreign threat are not what they were upon the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, regulations
still refer to the need to control, or avoid, ‘foreign domination’. See article 4, Zongjiao shiwu tiaoli, 2005, p. 19; article 5, ‘Religious
Affairs Regulations’, 2017.
54
Article 3, Zongjiao shiwu taoli, 2005, p. 19; article 4, ‘Religious Affairs Regulations’, 2017.
55
Article 41, ‘Religious Affairs Regulations’, 2017.
56
Article 69, ‘Religious Affairs Regulations’, 2017; Mimi Lau, ‘Why are Chinese Christians so concerned about new religious affairs
regulations?’, South China Morning Post, (6 January 2017).
57
Daniel H. Bays, A New History of Christianity in China (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), p. 193, 199; Goossaert and Palmer, The
Religious Question in Modern China, p. 302.
58
Daniel H. Bays, ‘A tradition of state dominance’, in Jason Kindopp and Carol Lee Hamrin, eds, God and Caesar in China: Policy
Implications of Church–State Relations (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2004), pp. 25–39; Cao, ‘Spatial modernity,
party building, and local governance’, p. 46; Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, ‘An in-house questionnaire survey on Christianity
in China’, in Ji Ze and Qiu Yonghui, eds, Report on China’s Religion (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2010), pp. 190–212;
Lauren B. Homer, ‘Registration of Chinese Protestant house churches under China’s 2005 Regulation on Religious Affairs: resolving
the implementation impasse’, Journal of Church and State 52(1), (2010), p. 58; Richard Madsen, ‘The upsurge of religion in China’,
Journal of Democracy 21(4), (2010), p. 62.
59
Homer, ‘Registration of Chinese Protestant house churches under China’s 2005 Regulation on Religious Affairs’, p. 58.
60
Interview with an academic, Beijing, 2010; Nanlai Cao, Constructing China’s Jerusalem: Christians, Power, and Place in
Contemporary Wenzhou (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011).
61
Article 8, Zongjiao shiwu tiaoli, 2005, pp. 21–22; articles 11 and 12, State Council, ‘Religious Affairs Regulations’, 26 August 2017.
62
Christopher Marsh and Zhifeng Zhong, ‘Chinese views on church and state’, Journal of Church and State 52(1), (2010), pp. 34–49.
63
Carsten T. Vala, ‘Pathways to the pulpit: leadership training in “patriotic” and unregistered Chinese Protestant churches’, in Yoshiko
Ashiwa and David L. Wank, eds, Making Religion, Making the State: The Politics of Modern Religion in China (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2009), pp. 96–125; Goossaert and Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China, pp. 331–334.
64
Vala, ‘Pathways to the pulpit’, p. 103.
51
JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY CHINA
481
Beijing.65 Some are even supported financially by overseas actors.66 These schools compete with the
more than 20 state-sanctioned theological seminaries in the country.67 They have been informally
tolerated by local authorities, although recently updated regulations explicitly claim that local public
security bureaus and relevant religious officials are expected to close down religious schools that have
not received the state’s approval to operate as such.68 Another way house church leaders may have
bypassed state-sanctioned religious education is by being self-educated. That was the case of at least
one informant in my sample.69 Finally, some house church leaders were educated overseas, including
in the United States and Singapore.70
Central government regulations further place limits on churches’ relations and transactions with
foreign individuals and institutions, which in some circumstances must be approved by officials.71
Religious leaders are subject to penalties for travelling overseas without the state’s approval. Churches
that are not formally recognized as registered religious venues are further subject to penalties for
receiving foreign money, and are forbidden from conducting religious activities outside the country.72
Reality nevertheless suggests that unregistered churches have interacted with foreign organizations
outside the supervision of the state, some of their pastors have travelled overseas, and others have
received international funding.73 Regulations also require religious clerics to get government approval
to organize religious activities outside their registered venue.74 Unregistered churches have nevertheless
organized religious activities outside their venue without necessarily asking for government approval,
or negotiating the number of attendees at their events. One unregistered church organized a largescale informal event which was allowed provided that it stuck to a quota of attendees local authorities
had asked them not to go over.75 Finally, regulations suggest that religious materials are to be distributed in registered worshipping locations and need to conform with a number of rules with respect
to their content, which would presumably require government approval prior to their publication.76
Unregistered churches have bypassed such procedures. They have also sold religious materials outside
state-sanctioned channels and distributed them within and outside their congregations.77
Reasons why unregistered pastors dismiss the above regulations and operate informally vary. Some
believe, from a purely normative perspective, that the government should not control the religious
domain.78 Others view clandestineness as more convenient than government registration. Operating
informally allows churches to avoid burdensome rules, and if they are low profile, it may ironically protect
them from frequent state interference.79 Finally, some pastors resist joining the TSPM for denominational reasons, believing the association is too ‘liberal’ in its interpretation of the Bible.80 In an attempt
to ‘indigenize’ the practice of Protestantism, which the CCP thought was essential to the liberation of
China from imperialism in the 1950s, the TSPM was designed as post-denominational: all Protestant
denominations were fusioned into a single corporatist association. For some unregistered pastors,
65
Interview with a house church pastor, Zhejiang, 2010; interview with a former TSPM leader, Beijing, 2010; interview with a house
church leader, Zhejiang, 2012; interview with a house church leader, Yunnan, 2012.
66
Interview with a house church preacher, Beijing, 2010.
67
Interview with a house church leader, Zhejiang, 2010; Vala, ‘Pathways to the pulpit’, p. 103.
68
Article 69, ‘Religious Affairs Regulations’, 2017.
69
See Note 66.
70
Interview with a house church preacher, Shanghai, 2010.
71
On registered religious organizations’ acceptance of donations, see articles 36 and 41, Zongjiao shiwu tiaoli, 2005, pp. 35, 38–39
respectively; article 57, ‘Religious Affairs Regulations’, 2017.
72
Article 43, Zongjiao shiwu tiaoli, 2005, pp. 39–40; articles 41 and 69, ‘Religious Affairs Regulations’, 2017.
73
Interview with a house church leader, Henan, 2010; interview with a house church leader, Beijing, 2010; interview with a house
church preacher, Beijing, 2010.
74
Article 70, ‘Religious Affairs Regulations’, 2016.
75
Article 45, ‘Religious Affairs Regulations’, 2016.
76
Articles 7 and 42, Zongjiao shiwu tiaoli, 2005, pp. 21, 28, 39; article 45, ‘Religious Affairs Regulations’, 2017.
77
Interview with a house church pastor, Beijing, 2010; interview with a house church employee, Zhejiang, 2010; interview with a
house church leader, Kunming, 2012; interview with a house church member, Beijing, 2010.
78
Interview with a house church pastor, Shanghai, 2010.
79
Interview with a Christian academic, Beijing, 2010; interview with a house church leader, Zhejiang, 2012.
80
Fenggang Yang, Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 101.
482
M.-E. RENY
the association lacks conservatism as a result.81 The expansion of house churches must thus be partly
understood as a denominational reaction to a post-denominational state-sanctioned church.82
By choosing to operate informally, house church leaders nevertheless place themselves in a situation of weakness. They can be, and some have in fact been, subject to government harassment and
arbitrary state interference for being unregistered.83 Unregistered churches have been forced out of
their worshipping locations on the grounds that their gatherings were illegal. A high profile church
in Beijing changed locations three times between 2009 and 2010 in the middle of a conflict with the
government, while another one, also in Beijing, had to move four times between 2004 and 2009.84 State
interference not only disrupts the activities of house churches, but also sustains a climate of uncertainty
and instability among church members.
Information about local authorities’ interests is essential to navigating uncertainty. Through their
interactions with officials from public security bureaus, the Ministry of State Security and the State
Administration for Religious Affairs, church leaders register information about what those authorities
worry about with respect to informal religious activities.85 They may do so by recalling the questions
those officials ask when they reach out to them, or interfere in their activities.86 Questions asked are
revealing of officials’ interests. Stories about house churches that are targeted by clampdowns are
also shared among unregistered church leaders, and enable them to draw lessons learned from the
activities that might trigger instances of state coercion.87 An informant suggested the news of a church
being attacked would easily reach other churches.88 These lessons learned ultimately influence how
religious leaders strategize about their survival and how they seek to reassure local authorities they
are not a threat to stability. Even if house churches operate outside the realm of the law, information
about the state and legal awareness may be empowering enough to enable church leaders to navigate
uncertainty. An academic, for instance, thought unregistered church leaders in Henan were coerced in
part because they lacked knowledge of the law.89 Another informant thought house churches subject
to a government clampdown lacked anquangan, that is a safety feeling.90 Having such instinct implied
being smart about the limits not to cross to avoid being on the authorities’ radar.91
Based on their information about local states, house church leaders strategically attempt to nurture cooperative ties with public security officials to avoid interference in their activities.92 Political
safety is important for them to be able to run their activities and ensure their congregants stay in the
community.93 Compliance takes different forms. Pastors keep a low profile, by refraining from talking
politics during sermons and attracting public attention. They are careful in emphasizing that there is
no political intention underlying their informal practice of religion. A preacher, for instance, believed
he could criticize the government, but not in the church.94 Similarly, a congregant emphasized that his
church was not a political organization and did not seek to further political ends.95 Finally, an informant
thought moderation meant the authorities were unlikely to bother his unregistered church.96
Christopher Marsh, Religion and the State in Russia and China: Suppression, Survival, and Revival (New York: Continuum, 2011),
pp. 185–186; Bays, A New History of Christianity in China, p. 177.
Jason Kindopp, ‘Policy dilemmas in China’s church–state relations: an introduction’, in Kindopp and Hamrin, eds, God and Caesar
in China, pp. 1–22.
83
Yingxu Xu, The Meaning of Shouwang (Pushi Institute for Social Sciences, 15 April 2013); Yang, Religion in China, p. 102.
84
Interview with a house church member, Beijing, 2010; Xu, The Meaning of Shouwang.
85
Interview with a house church leader, Beijing, 2010.
86
Interview with a Christian academic, Shanghai, 2010.
87
On a similar observation, see Stern and Hassid, ‘Amplifying silence’.
88
Interview with a Christian believer, Shanghai, 2010.
89
Interview with a Christian academic, Sichuan, 2010.
90
Interview with an academic and adviser to the State Council, Beijing, 2010.
91
See Note 85.
92
Interview with a house church leader, Zhejiang, 2010; interview with a house church leader, Beijing, 2010.
93
Interview with a house church pastor, Zhejiang, 2010; interview with a Three-Self church leader, Zhejiang, 2012.
94
Interview with a house church leader, Yunnan, 2012.
95
Interview with a house church member, Beijing, 2010.
96
Interview with a Christian academic, Jiangsu, 2012. Moderation was understood as the choice not to engage in dissidence.
81
82
JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY CHINA
483
Aside from being depoliticized, some house churches have kept their congregations small to avoid
raising local government concerns. This is true of several house churches in the city of Shanghai where
leaders are said to view the government as conservative and anticipate that large churches might be
more susceptible to government interference.97 The strategy of keeping unregistered churches small
is not unique to Shanghai. A house church leader in a city in Jiangsu claimed to have divided up his
church into distinct meeting locations with no more than 60 members to avoid raising the authorities’
concerns over its activities.98 An academic also claimed a similar strategy was used by Christian fellowships on university campuses.99 Yet if church leaders strategize about their local survival based on what
they know or think they know about local authorities’ interests, not all pastors agree that keeping an
unregistered church small will necessarily help them avoid state interference. An elder whose church
faced trouble with the authorities in the past thought what had mattered in the outcome was not the
size of the church but its social ambition. His church was large, but had it been small, it would have
faced the same outcome.100
Unregistered pastors have finally made their organizations more transparent to the authorities
and shared information about their activities with public security bureaus. A religious leader thought
interacting with officials had ultimately facilitated his church’s ability to rent an apartment space for
worship and having a larger congregation.101 Some pastors are also said to have shared information
about the characteristics of a blacklisted Christian sect known for having infiltrated house churches,
namely the Eastern Lightning.102 Such information may be of use to the guobao, or Domestic Security
Brigade (guonei anquan baowei zhidui), a division inside public security bureaus in charge of monitoring
clerics’ political and religious beliefs.103
Underlying compliant defiance is a fundamental tension between the fact that religious leaders
defy central government rules by operating informally, yet they are also drawn to making concessions
with local authorities to safeguard their existence. That tension was reflected in a house church leader’s
comment suggesting that stopping informal religious gatherings was not an option, yet he thought
that if the authorities had any issue with the church, he would cooperate.104 The informant was referring
to the guo’an, or Ministry of State Security (guojia anquan bumen), which interferes in the activities of
unregistered churches if they are suspected of having ties with foreign actors the government should
worry about.105 A house church leader, similarly, would have spoken with guobao officials on more than
one occasion and told them that if house churches could register as independent religious organizations,
he would register. Yet the current system does not enable independent registration. The guobao was well
aware of his unregistered church, and knew clearly it would not integrate the state-sanctioned system.106
Local government officials are obviously deterred by, and benefit from, church leaders’ risk averseness. Compliant defiant church leaders are easier to tolerate because they do not intend to undermine
the regime by defying central policies, and they deliberately limit the scope of their activities to avoid
giving the impression that they might. A TSPM leader even thought unregistered churches are not that
different from the state-sanctioned churches as far as their allegiance to the regime is concerned.107
Compliant defiant actors are also not part of nationwide cohesive religious networks, which makes
their house churches easier to tolerate.108 Local government lenience further feeds compliant defiant
97
See Note 86.
Interview with a former leader of a local Lianghui, Jiangsu, 2010. Lianghui means two associations, in this case referring to the
TSPM and the CCC.
99
Interview with a Christian academic, Zhejiang, 2010.
100
Interview with a house church elder, Beijing, 2010.
101
See Note 85.
102
Interview with an underground missionary, Henan, 2010; interview with a house church pastor, Beijing, 2010; interview with a
Christian academic, Shanghai, 2010.
103
See Note 85.
104
Interview with a house church leader, Zhejiang, 2012.
105
See Note 85.
106
See Note 104.
107
Interview with a TSPM official, Henan, 2010.
108
Interview with a former Party official, Beijing, 2010.
98
484
M.-E. RENY
leaders’ political caution. Some church leaders, in fact, anticipate that asking for more than informal
toleration would not only be counterproductive, but would also undermine their ability to run unregistered churches, which is a risk they are unwilling to face.109 Compliant defiance also draws unregistered
church leaders away from their dissident counterparts who disapprove of their strategic risk-averseness
and inclination to compromise with local authorities.110 Over time, the networks of compliant defiant
actors are less likely to involve highly sensitive individuals the regime views as possible agents of
political change.
Conclusion
This analysis builds upon recent studies of state–society relations that have looked into how societal
organizations and citizens have cautiously tested the authoritarian state’s boundaries of the admissible
by seeking to operate outside its reach.111 It brings attention to a form of resistance that has not yet
been studied in Chinese politics, which is called compliant defiance. Compliant defiance is the act of
resisting central policies while seeking informal protection from local authorities for rules bypassed.
House church leaders who have engaged in compliant defiance have done so for moral and/or pragmatic reasons. That is, perceptions that central government regulations are unjust or unsuited to their
contemporary needs have motivated their decision not to comply with such policies. Informality has
nevertheless placed church leaders in a situation of uncertainty whereby they may be subject to state
interference in their activities. Church leaders are survival-seeking actors and have sought to establish
cooperative relations with officials in the local state to minimize risks of interference. Compliant defiance
is not an overt form of challenge: it is practiced and communicated in the informal and non-public
spheres, rather than being readily observable. The study of Chinese politics and society has, over the
last 15 years, paid much attention to public forms of protests as they are observable. Those have been
the object of much attention in the media, and were anticipated to have possibly significant implications for CCP rule. Subtler forms of resistance are, for equal reasons, also essential to study. Non-public
forms of resistance have implications for regime resilience in China. Compliant defiance has sustained
an informal status quo between church leaders, who ideally would rather have their organizations
officially recognized as independent, and local officials who cannot change central regulations on
religious activities, may sense those policies have their limits, and yet are required to ensure stability,
including the absence of overt religious protests.
Compliant defiance may apply to other sensitive policy spheres the central government deems
essential to regime legitimacy and resilience. Like Protestant house churches, a significant number
of NGOs working on environmental protection, HIV aids prevention and LGBT rights are not formally
registered with the Ministry of Civil Affairs.112 This decision does not exclusively result from NGO leaders’
choice not to be co-opted into state institutions, but from regulations limiting the number of registered
NGOs in each locality.113 Beyond local states’ socio-economic incentives for tolerating these organizations, Hildebrandt shows how the leaders of unregistered NGOs working in sensitive policy spheres
are survival-seekers who have taken measures to avoid local state interference in their work. They have
minimized their differences with central government priorities, been prank with local authorities about
what they do, avoided criticizing sensitive government projects, refrained from building networks with
109
Interview with a house church leader, Yunnan, 2012; interview with a house church member, Beijing, 2010; interview with a house
church pastor, Beijing, 2010.
110
Interview with a house church leader, Henan, 2010.
111
Hildebrandt, Social Organizations and the Authoritarian State in China; Koesel, Religion and Authoritarianism; Jessica Teets,
Civil Society under Authoritarianism: The China Model (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Stern and Hassid,
‘Amplifying silence’.
112
Hildebrandt, Social Organizations and the Authoritarian State in China, p. 60.
113
On economic reasons for tolerating unregistered NGOs locally, see Timothy Hildebrandt, ‘The political economy of social organization registration in China’, The China Quarterly 208, (2011), pp. 970–989. On why NGOs choose not to register, see Hildebrandt,
Social Organizations and the Authoritarian State in China, pp. 64–66, 71–72.
JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY CHINA
485
other organizations, and assisted the authorities in delivering services to the local population.114 As
Hildebrandt maintains, These organisations ‘need to work harder to nurture their relationship with government officials, seeking out individual patrons, because of the precarious space that they occupy’.115
Compliant defiance may not exclusively apply to the leaders of unregistered organizations, but to
households having challenged China’s family planning policy. In the 1990s, a number of families in
rural areas bypassed the one-child policy to maximize their chances of having a boy, among other
reasons. White calls one such category of citizens ‘dependent evaders’, that is households breaking
centrally-imposed family planning rules with the informal approval of local state officials.116 Local states
bent rules for such households in various ways, imposing lower fines on families with more than one
child, preventing higher officials from getting access to comprehensive information on births, and
encouraging households to leave their village before inspection teams came in.117 Households breaking
family planning policy may have actively sought local governments’ informal protection, although White
leaves the process through which they may have done so aside. In any case, the broader applicability
of compliant defiance in Chinese society is worth exploring further.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for supporting my research. An earlier
draft was presented at the University of Chicago’s East Asia Workshop, and I thank participants, including Yang Dali, Dan
Slater and William Hurst, for their helpful feedback. I am also grateful to Richard Madsen and the Journal’s anonymous
reviewers for their comments and questions on the project.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Marie-Eve Reny is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Université de Montréal. Her subfield is
comparative politics, and her work centers on religion and politics, contention, and authoritarian regimes, with a focus
on China.
Hildebrandt, ‘The political economy of social organization registration in China’; Hildebrandt, Social Organizations and the
Authoritarian State in China, pp. 60–61, 77.
115
Hildebrandt, Social Organizations and the Authoritarian State in China, p. 62.
116
Tyrene White, ‘Domination, resistance and accommodation in China’s one-child campaign’, in Perry and Selden, eds, Chinese
Society, pp. 179, 181.
117
Ibid., p. 182.
114
Copyright of Journal of Contemporary China is the property of Routledge and its content may
not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder’s
express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for
individual use.
The Top Five
FMLA
Compliance
Mistakes
That Could Land You in Court
The Top Five FMLA Compliance Mistakes That Could Land You in Court
A slip of the tongue, a misplaced remark, the
wrong job assignment: managers make mistakes
every day. When the mistake involves FMLA, it can
cost your company big time in legal fees and land
you in court.
This report gives examples of common mistakes
your managers can make with FMLA decisions and
shows how to avoid them. Each section provides
examples of the problems your managers face with
FMLA regulations. Also included are lessons learned
that your managers can use to stop FMLA problems
before they start.
The Five FMLA Compliance Mistakes Line
Managers Make covers these common slip ups:
1) Taking “adverse action” against employees
returning from FMLA leave
2) Saying the wrong things when employees
request FMLA leave
3) Assuming that minor ailments don’t quality
for FMLA leave
4) Disclosing a worker’s private medical
information
5) Penalizing employees for unforeseeable
FMLA leave
Mistake # 1 – Taking ‘adverse
action’ against employees who
have taken FMLA leave
But that’s not always the case, is it? Sometimes
when workers return from extended leave, it’s hard to
work them back in. Sometimes you’d just as soon the
person never came back at all. It’s circumstances
such as these that lead to retaliation lawsuits. Let’s
look at a couple scenarios:
Scenario 1
Mary, the company’s accounts payables manager,
takes three months pregnancy leave. Jane, who
replaced Mary, ends up doing the job better. Dave,
her supervisor, is thinking, “Why did I put up with
Mary for so long? She was incompetent and I didn’t
even realize it. When Jane took over for her while
Mary was on leave, Jane completely reorganized the
department and it now runs like a clock. So what am
I supposed to do? Put Mary back in charge? That’s
not in the best interests of the company. I think I’ll
just put Mary in another role and hope she’s happy.”
That could be wishful thinking. In this case it
invited a retaliation lawsuit against the company.
Mary said: “When I left I had a position of authority
and responsibility; now they’ve put me out to pasture
in a low-level role. Sure, my pay is the same, but it’s
not a ‘similar or equivalent’ position. This is
retaliation and I’m going to sue.”
Could Mary win? Yes, in fact she did, because the
company had no evidence of poor performance prior
to her taking leave.
When an employee returns from FMLA leave,
FMLA regulations state that the returning employee
has to go back to the same job or one of equal pay,
responsibility, and benefits. Here are two scenarios
that show the potential pitfalls with returning
employees and “adverse action”.
How the supervisor slipped up: Dave didn’t have a
clear standard of excellence for Mary before she took
leave. She was doing a mediocre job and he didn’t
even know it. Mary had performance reviews stating
that she was meeting expectations all along; there
was no specific criticism of her work. Bottom line:
From the court’s perspective it appeared that at this
company the cost of having a baby is a demotion.
Sometimes it’s easy to reintegrate an employee
after a three- or six-month FMLA leave. The person
was a top performer and you were really suffering
while she was gone. You’re delighted to have her
back.
Remember, in court, companies almost always lose
“he said/she said” arguments. Employees get the
benefit of the doubt. No matter how sincere, or right,
Dave may have been, the lack of documentation left
the courts with no choice but to rule in Mary’s favor.
Copyright 2010 Rapid Learning Institute
Page 1
The Top Five FMLA Compliance Mistakes That Could Land You in Court
Lesson learned for Managers
When a person takes FMLA leave, you’re
extremely vulnerable to a retaliation lawsuit if you
don’t return an employee to the same position she had
before. Or at least an equivalent one. Effectively
demoting Mary was dangerous and this company paid
the price.
How careful do you have to be with someone
returning from FMLA leave? Very. But the courts do
not want to dictate how you run your business. You
can fire or demote a person if you can prove that you
would have taken the same action regardless of
whether or not she took leave.
If Dave had documented Mary’s poor performance
in the months prior to her taking leave, he could very
likely have demoted her when she returned from
leave. Here’s an example where the company played
its cards right:
The company appears cold, heartless and
opportunistic.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t fire people after
they take leave. We’ve seen many cases where
companies got away with it, but only when they
proved that the person would have been fired even if
he hadn’t taken FMLA leave.
In the case described above, the company won.
Why? Because the courts will not force a company to
employ a person who can’t physically perform a job.
And Jackie very carefully documented that Bill
wasn’t up to snuff. In the end, the courts believed that
the company would have transferred Bill whether or
not he took leave.
That’s the standard you need to meet. Would you
have taken the “adverse action” anyway? If so,
you’ve got a strong case in court.
As a measure of good faith, it didn’t hurt that
Jackie offered Bill another position.
Scenario 2
Bill was out on leave for six months for a major
health crisis. When he returned to work he was still
not 100%. He couldn’t lift things as well as before.
He wasn’t as focused, and he tired easily. Fact is, he
couldn’t perform his old job at the level he used to,
and others in the department wouldn’t tolerate sub-par
performance.
Bill’s boss, Jackie, carefully documented Bill’s
inability to handle the basic tasks of the job. She
talked many times with Bill about his deficiencies
and finally offered to transfer him to another position
that was much less demanding. He refused to take it.
So Jackie fired him. Bill then sued for violation of his
FMLA rights.
Bill’s argument to the judge was that, “They got
angry because I took leave and now they’re punishing
me.” In many cases, that argument wins a lot of
sympathy in court. After all, the person may have
been on leave due to a life-threatening illnesses or the
loss of a loved one; then they come back to work and
get fired.
Copyright 2010 Rapid Learning Institute
Mistake #2 – Saying the wrong
things when employees
request FMLA leave
Saying the wrong thing to an employee regarding
FMLA can be one of the quickest ways to a lawsuit.
Below are the two responses you shouldn’t use and
the correct response.
An employee comes to you and says she needs to
take FMLA leave because she has a back condition.
What should you say?
Correct: I’m sorry to hear you’re not feeling well. I
suggest you go to the doctor and get yourself treated.
And get me a note from your doctor, including a
diagnosis. I’ll pass that on to the HR department.
Not correct: You know, your timing couldn’t be
worse. Your colleagues are really counting on you
right now. Are you sure you can’t stay on a few more
days?
Page 2
The Top Five FMLA Compliance Mistakes That Could Land You in Court
Not correct: I saw you lifting boxes just yesterday.
You didn’t seem to be having any problems. Are you
sure you’re really ailing?
The last two responses set you up for a retaliation
lawsuit. The FMLA gives employees the right to
make their own health and well-being a higher
priority than the productivity goals of their company.
Sure, it’s very hard when an employee takes time off
during a crunch. It’s also true that you’ll occasionally
have a malingerer who will exaggerate a minor injury
and let you down.
But you’re in no position to decide whether an
illness is real or not. Only a doctor can do that. The
minute you, as a manager or supervisor, make
judgments about whether a person’s ailments are real
or not, you’ve given the employee ammunition in a
retaliation lawsuit should you ever take an adverse
action against the person.
The “correct” response is dispassionate,
compassionate and non-judgmental. It treats the
employee with dignity and respect. And it will never
come back to haunt you.
Mistake #3 – Assuming that
‘minor ailments’ don’t qualify
for FMLA leave
Don’t make your own call about what constitutes
an illness? FMLA regulations have done that for you.
Surely a case of the flu wouldn’t qualify a worker
for FMLA leave, would it?
It could. The law says that a “serious health
condition” is one that requires three consecutive days,
72 hours or more, of leave, and at least two in-person
treatments by a health care professional. A number of
courts have ruled that an ailment like the flu can be
considered severe.
Scenario
Dave has the flu and stays out two days, then
Copyright 2010 Rapid Learning Institute
returns to work on the third day. Two days later he
calls in sick again for another day. During the two
weeks that follow he comes in late and leaves work
early several times without providing notice. When
questioned, Dave says he was attending doctor’s
appointments to treat his condition. Dave’s boss,
Rick, thinks Dave is malingering and fires him for
violating the company’s strict attendance policy. Dave
sues, claiming that because he was out for three days,
he qualifies for FMLA leave and the company can’t
fire him.
Dave lost this case because his absences weren’t
consecutive, which means his illness didn’t qualify as
a “serious health condition.”
Lesson learned for Supervisors and
Managers
Don’t let employees try and tell you that they
qualify for FMLA leave because their ailment
required three days of leave that weren’t consecutive.
Mistake #4 – Disclosing private
medical information about an
employee
Never disclose confidential medical information to
anyone but the HR department or your direct report in
the chain of command
Supervisors who handle FMLA leave requests learn
about employees’ medical problems. This information
is private and you’re expected to keep it that way.
Scenario
Ed had been Bruce’s manager for several years,
and it pained him to learn that Bruce was HIVpositive. While Bruce was out on leave, Ed
mentioned Bruce’s condition to another senior
colleague, whom he expected to be discreet about it.
But the day Bruce returned to work he stormed into
Ed’s office and complained that “everyone in the
Page 3
The Top Five FMLA Compliance Mistakes That Could Land You in Court
company knows I’ve got AIDS.” Bruce ended up
suing the company for violating his privacy. He won.
How the supervisor slipped up
Pure and simple, Ed blabbed. The company tried to
argue that as a result of the news becoming public,
people rallied around Bruce and there wasn’t a single
incident of bias or negativity. The courts weren’t
impressed. The company also argued that Bruce
disclosed the information “voluntarily” on his request
for FMLA leave. But, it turned out, Ed had told him if
he didn’t put the reason for the leave on the request,
he’d be subject to discipline.
Lesson learned for Managers
Mum’s the word when it comes to any information
you may have about an employee’s medical or
psychological condition.
foreseeable leave. Diane’s absence will throw your
entire department into chaos because you have no one
to replace her, and you’re angry. So you tell Diane
that if she takes the leave on such short notice, you’ll
have to fire her.
Can she sue you for FMLA retaliation? Sure, but
she probably won’t win. The courts will likely rule
that her leave was foreseeable and she violated your
policy. Barring other circumstances, she has no case.
Scenario 2 – unforeseeable leave
John gets in a car accident and suffers a head
injury. His wife calls you the same day to report
John’s condition and tells you he’ll likely be out at
least two weeks. She calls you continually during the
following days to report on John’s progress. In a case
like this John is fully protected by the FMLA.
Scenario 3 – ‘gray area’
Mistake #5 – Not recognizing
the nature of ‘unforeseeable
leave’
Events happen in our lives that we can’t control.
But knowing the dividing line what is or isn’t
foreseeable with FMLA issues can help your
company avoid problems and lawsuits.
Most companies have policies that require
employees to give reasonable notice when they intend
to take family or medical leave. The FMLA
recognizes that this is only fair to employers, who
need to make adjustments when employees are absent.
Steve’s wife is a few days past her due date to
deliver her first child. So Steve calls Will, his
supervisor, to request FMLA leave to care for his
pregnant wife. Will says no. Steve misses nine
consecutive shifts and Will fires him. Steve sues the
company for denying his legitimate FMLA leave,
claiming that his leave was “unforeseeable” because
his wife was unexpectedly overdue and he couldn’t
predict when she was going to deliver. How do you
think the court ruled?
The court found that Steve violated the company’s
attendance policy and deserved to be fired. His wife,
though she was a couple weeks late delivering, had a
normal pregnancy with no complications. There was
no unforeseeable medical emergency. Steve was
trying to bend the rules.
Scenario 1 – foreseeable leave
Diane walks into your office and tells you she
intends to have elective surgery the next day, and that
she’ll be out of work for a week recovering. You
recognize that this is a violation of your company
policy, which requires two weeks’ advance notice for
Copyright 2010 Rapid Learning Institute
Lesson learned for Managers
Knowing the dividing line is between “foreseeable”
and “unforeseeable” FMLA leave means the
difference between winning and losing in court.
Page 4
Journal of Business Ethics (2020) 162:835–855
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-019-04364-9
ORIGINAL PAPER
From Preaching to Behavioral Change: Fostering Ethics
and Compliance Learning in the Workplace
Christian Hauser1
Received: 4 April 2018 / Accepted: 13 November 2019 / Published online: 28 November 2019
© Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract
Despite the increasing inclusion of ethics and compliance issues in corporate training, the business world remains rife with
breaches of responsible management conduct. This situation indicates a knowledge–practice gap among professionals, i.e.,
a discrepancy between their knowledge of responsible management principles and their behavior in day-to-day business life.
With this in mind, this paper addresses the formative, developmental question of how companies’ ethics and compliance
training programs should be organized in a manner that enhances their potential to be effective. Drawing on both the qualitative analysis of existing ethics and compliance training and the conceptual literature on behavioral ethics, a framework is
proposed that consecutively aligns various types of training into a comprehensive ethics and compliance training program.
The strengths and limitations of the suggested framework are discussed.
Keywords Business ethics · Responsible management learning · Ethics training · Employee training · Ethical employee
behavior · Compliance
JEL Classification A13 · D73 · K4 · L2 · M14 · M53
Introduction
In recent years, an increasing number of companies have
been training their executives and employees in the field
of ethics and compliance (Weber and Wasieleski 2013;
Weber 2015). In particular, companies that have previously
Christian Hauser is Professor of Business Economics and
International Management at the University of Applied Sciences
of the Grisons and Fellow at the Digital Society Initiative of the
University of Zurich, Switzerland. He is a member of the topical
platform Ethics of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences
(SATW), member of the United Nations Principles for Responsible
Management Education (PRME) Working Group on AntiCorruption and head of the first PRME Business Integrity Action
Center in Europe. His research interests include international
entrepreneurship, SME and private sector development, corporate
responsibility and business integrity.
* Christian Hauser
christian.hauser@fhgr.ch
www.fhgr.ch/en_integrity
1
PRME Business Integrity Action Center, University
of Applied Sciences of the Grisons, Comercialstrasse 22,
7000 Chur, Switzerland
experienced corrupt practices are recognizing the need to
integrate responsible management principles into their corporate training activities (Hauser and Hogenacker 2014).
The sentencing guidelines of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act create a further incentive for companies to introduce ethics and compliance training; such programs can
help mitigate fines or even result in deferred prosecution
(Kaplan and Walker 2008; United States Sentencing Commission 2016). Moreover, the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention procedure, according to which signatories perform peer
review of countries’ anti-corruption performance, provides a
governance structure to further promote the implementation
of ethics and compliance training programs in companies
domiciled in OECD countries (OECD 2010). Furthermore,
multistakeholder initiatives such as the United Nations
Global Compact encourage companies to implement such
training programs (UN Global Compact 2009). The aim of
these training programs is to enable practicing professionals
to lead and act responsibly and to avoid getting involved in
corrupt business practices (Gentile 2013; Nonet et al. 2016).
Despite the increasing inclusion of ethics and compliance issues in corporate training, empirical research into
the effectiveness of said training is still in its infancy and
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
836
yields varying results (Maesschalck and de Schrijver 2016).
Some empirical works, such as those by Delaney and Sockell
(1992), West and Berman (2004), Valentine and Fleischman
(2004), Verma et al. (2016), Remišová et al. (2018), and
Hauser (2019a), conclude that ethics and compliance training is positively linked to the respective intended outcome
under scrutiny. Conversely, other studies, including those by
Ritter (2006), Mayhew and Murphy (2009), van Montfort
et al. (2013), Warren et al. (2014), and Jonson et al. (2016),
find that their research does not conform to the aforementioned correlation due to inconclusive findings.
Furthermore, despite the increasing number of companies
implementing ethics and compliance training, the corporate
world continues to be rife with breaches of responsible management conduct, ethical failures and scandals (Hauser and
Kronthaler 2013; Schembera and Scherer 2017). This situation indicates a knowledge–practice gap among professionals, meaning that discrepancies might exist between professionals’ knowledge of responsible management principles
and their behavior in day-to-day business life (Hibbert and
Cunliffe 2015; Nonet et al. 2016). In this context, the findings of behavioral ethics research suggest that incorporating
the principles of responsible management into training does
not automatically lead to behavioral change among practicing professionals because cognitive growth alone does not
produce the ability and readiness to act responsibly at work
(Fiol and Lyles 1985; Hibbert and Cunliffe 2015). Against
this background, the aim of the present paper is to propose a
multidimensional conceptual framework for how companies’
ethics and compliance training programs should be organized in a manner that enhances their potential to effectively
trigger behavior in accordance with the principles of responsible management. To this end, the developed framework
integrates various training approaches and the different role
profiles of instructors, arranging them in a consecutive order
whereby the training progresses from more content-oriented
and instructor-centered training methods to a practice-oriented and trainee-centered style, with each training stage
building upon what executives and employees learned in an
earlier stage.
The outline of the present paper is as follows: following
this introduction, the next section briefly summarizes the
relevant literature on responsible management learning, ethics and compliance training, and behavioral ethics as well as
pedagogical approaches and role profiles of instructors. The
subsequent sections explain the methodology and present the
results of the qualitative data analysis. Building on the extant
literature and the qualitative findings, a multidimensional
conceptual framework will be developed, indicating how
various types of training and the roles of instructors should
be integrated into a comprehensive ethics and compliance
training program. Finally, the strengths and limitations of the
13
C. Hauser
proposed framework are discussed, and concluding remarks
are made.
Literature Review
Responsible Management Learning
Against the background of a series of prominent corporate
scandals that have attracted attention in recent years, companies are increasingly acknowledging the importance of
responsible business practices to increase their legitimacy
and their subsequent chances of survival (Antonacopoulou
and Sheaffer 2014; Wesselink et al. 2015). In contemporary research, this development has been accompanied by
a growing debate about responsible management and its
enactment in day-to-day business life (e.g., Abrams 1951;
Hilliard 2013; Ennals 2014; Laasch and Conaway 2015;
Nonet et al. 2016). Originating in the academic debate on
the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management
Education (PRME), responsible management education and
learning are an expanding and evolving academic endeavor
in the field of management studies. These efforts have a
central focus on education and learning related to environmental sustainability, social responsibility, and ethics-andcompliance-related issues (Laasch and Moosmayer 2015).
Responsible management education and learning take place
either in an academic context or at work, respectively. In the
case of education, students—as future professionals—learn
about responsible management through both explicit university education and implicit ‘hidden’ curricula (Waples et al.
2009; Blasco 2012; Becker et al. 2013; Borges et al. 2017;
Goodpaster et al. 2018; Hauser 2019b). In the case of learning, both practicing executives and employees (Verkerk et al.
2001) learn about responsible management in the workplace.
Here, learning can occur in formal spaces, such as explicit
training programs, and also arises from more implicit socialization processes (Antonacopoulou and Pesqueux 2010;
Verma et al. 2016).
To date, despite the increasing magnitude of studies on
the topic of responsible management education in the academic context, relatively little is known about on-the-job
learning among practicing executives and employees (Benn
et al. 2013). This lacuna is emphasized by the present lack of
research on responsible management learning in the workplace. According to Laasch (2018), as of early 2017, 73 academic articles had an explicit focus on responsible management education, and only one on responsible management
learning. Against this background, the present paper aims to
address the research gap regarding responsible management
learning at work by focusing on explicit training programs
implemented by companies, with a particular focus on one
From Preaching to Behavioral Change: Fostering Ethics and Compliance Learning in the Workplace
of the three main areas of responsible management learning:
ethics and compliance learning.
Ethics and Compliance Learning in the Workplace
Regular staff training is seen as an essential tool to deter
illegal and unethical behavior in organizations (Hauser and
Hogenacker 2014; Schembera and Scherer 2017; Hauser
2019a). Effective training should establish executive and
employee knowledge and understanding regarding the ethics and compliance policies of the company and also raise
awareness of the employer’s expectations of compliance
with such policies, thus leading employees to behave in an
appropriate manner. Hence, ethics and compliance training should, in theory, help minimize the risk of companies
becoming involved in undue business practices (Adam and
Rachman-Moore 2004; Bryane 2005).
Limitations of Current Ethics and Compliance Training
Regarding the existing training programs of companies,
Gentile (2013) identifies five major barriers to ethics and
compliance learning in the workplace, including time,
relevance, consistency, source, and impact. First, Gentile
observes that a prime deterrent to successful implementation of ethics and compliance training is time. The author
notes that enterprises usually dedicate only very limited time
to training their executives and employees in this field. At
the same time, executives and employees often feel that the
time spent on ethics and compliance training is wasted, as
they seldom see any relevance of such training to their working lives; in fact, they view it as merely a futile and hypocritical exercise. This attitude is due to the often-observed
lack of consistency between how employees are instructed
to behave in training and the messages they receive in dayto-day business life. In training, executives and employees
are taught that they should, under all circumstances, adhere
to legal and ethical standards, yet in practice, they are often
under pressure from the company to maximize short-term
economic gains, which causes them to behave in a manner
opposite to what was taught. Furthermore, the legitimacy of
the source delivering the trai…