Personal Connections as a Tool for Career Advancement in Russian and Chinese Organizations: A Comparative Analysis of the Evolving Meanings of Blat and Guanxi

The article examines differences in the role of informal personal connections in career development in Russian and Chinese organizations. The relevance of this topic stems from the fact that blat and guanxi – the concepts that describe the use of personal relationships in planned shortage economies. The article aims to establish how the transition to market economies affected the status of personal connections as either recognized or a covert tool for career advancement in China and Russia. It shows that, despite their similar origins and functions under the conditions of shortages, the two concepts diverged in their post-reform status: guanxi retained its role as a legitimate and empirically substantiated tool for career development, whereas blat in post-Soviet Russia largely lost its former role in the reciprocal exchange of favors and became more closely aligned with corrupt practices. The article argues that this divergence underlies how organizations in the two countries treat employees’ personal connections at the institutional level – viewing them either as a recognized career resource or as something that needs to be concealed.