Fear makes people look compliant. China’s discipline drive shows what it costs

Compliance as a performance 

Ben Hillman, who directs the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University, has an answer. With co-author Tan Zhao, he drew on field research in six provinces for a study published in The China Journal in January. They examined county and township officials, the people who turn Beijing’s directives into results, after a decade of stricter discipline, heavier reporting and elaborate performance reviews. 

Many of those officials, they found, have responded “for the purposes of self-preservation” with what Chinese policy writers call formalism: shirking, feigned compliance, falsified results and work that favors process over outcomes. Beijing has made rooting out formalism a priority. The authors argue the effort is failing and making the problem worse. 

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A cycle HR could have seen already 

The Communist Party is not a company. Still, most HR leaders have watched a smaller version of the same cycle. Leaders start to doubt that people are committed, so they add check-ins, reports and monitoring. People learn what the checks reward. The reports get better, the results don’t, and the doubt grows. 

Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety, beginning with a 1999 study of work teams, helps explain why. People take the risks that learning depends on, such as admitting a mistake or asking for help, only when they believe they won’t be punished for it.