Culture and Communication

Culture and Communication

Introduction

China could be termed as focus of the business world, but for most Western executives, China is still a mystery. There is no doubt that the Chinese culture is different, as everyone knows. The real question is how different Chinese culture with the outside world has been perceived to be differing materially. No matter how hard it is for China to get developed so well, the West is still puzzling.

Culture and Management in Chinese companies

It is pretty evident that there have been drastic changes into the HR management and labor management, particularly for the Chinese companies. How could this changing pattern be understood? One of the most effective ways for capturing the precise nature of Chinese people management for business context is they are trying to deeply understand the rooted societal issues and problems (Hofstede, 2002). The influence of the societal norms over the management is considered as the major issue in the science of organizations, nowadays. The main aim of this research paper is to find out the various characteristics and factors associated with the Chinese culture that is leading to success in business.

The Chinese economy has been dominated by state-owned enterprises because of the nature of the political regime after the Chinese Communist party came into power in 1949. Since late 1980s, China's economic profile has been changed because of introduction of foreign-invested companies and private companies. Since the early 1990s, China has employed more ambitious market mechanisms in revitalizing its economy. Private companies and foreign-invested companies have played bigger roles in the process of economic development. Institutional theory shows that the historical embeddedness of social structures and processes has complex causal and recursive relations with economic development. Morris (1999) points out those institutions are composed of cultural-cognitive, normative and regulative elements. Together with associated activities and resources, these elements provide stability and meaning to social life, In China, the social foundations of respect for authority and the family-centered social collective activity remain key functional roles in social life. This 'socio- logic' has shaped Chinese society in the direction of doing businesses on the basis of obligations and reciprocity.

The World Labor Organization first introduced the concept of human resource management into China in 1988. Before that, the terms used in Chinese business contexts are personnel management. After 1996, HRM have been widely spread and used in Chinese businesses. This is a critical year in Chinese economy: the scarce economy has been changed into consumer-oriented economy. Thus the enterprises in China have begun to realize the importance of human potentials and skills in achieving competitive competence.

In China, there are three major types of enterprises, State-owned enterprises (SoEs), private-owned enterprises and foreign-owned enterprises (Au 2001). For the SoEs, the biggest HRM problem is to make the transformation, helping the employees to realize their relations with the organizations are not life-long employment. For foreign-owned enterprises, the major issue is to be aware of the role played by the relevant factors in the host ...