本人习作,第二稿,欢迎批评指正,

Managerial theory and practice, Chinese style
Although it has been years since China joint the WTO, business management in China, both in theory and practice, is still in a fledging phase compared to that of the developed nations. Managerial related business failures, most notably the recent fall of a large dairy manufacturer whose contaminated milk powder kills new born babies with kidney stones, may inadvertently help people to come up with a more realistic picture as to where China stands in regarding to business effectiveness. Quite often, business failures tend to be attributed to the lack of advanced technology or financial strength. However, the crux of the problem, as a close observation has shown, rests largely on the overall managerial mode and thinking, instead of technical aspects.

Unveiling this seemingly marvelous surface of an economic miracle, one finds in China a society which hasn’t yet totally shrugged off the burden of a long feudal agrarian society and a Soviet style planned economy. Capitalism and marketing economy, though hotly talked issues nowadays， are far from being fully understood and practiced in China. Undoubtedly, as a late runner, China has to condescend itself to learn from the West for management knowledge and practice. However, it takes more than crude and superficial imitations to qualify China as a world level competitor in terms of managerial efficiency and technical capacity. Could there be an appropriate mixture between the two cultures, which combines the strengths from both sides and yet avoids the weaknesses at the same time? Could there be a suitable managerial model that fits into the very nature of Chinese business environment?

In China, it might still be a challenge for people to fully accept the fact that management, not financial strengths or technology advantages, is the ultimate factor that defines success. Explicitly, managerial efficiency and effectiveness are everything that affects the overall performance of an organization, whether profit or nonprofit. A business should first consider doing the right things instead of making profit, because it knows very well if the one does the right things money will always be able to take care of itself. Doing the right things and doing it right should be the starting point for a business, but quite often, Chinese business seems to be more obsessed with those popular and yet meaningless shibboleths such as “profit maximization” and “maximizing shareholder’s value” than anything else. Evidently, this "getting rich quick" scenario and "materialistic aggrandizing” mentality prevailing in China today will hurt Chinese economy in the long run. What gives a well managed international company an upper hand in competition in most cases is not its technical advance, but a well disciplined management instead. The core value of an effective management rests on integrity and honesty, instead on the magic power and technical advances on which many people have this unflinching superstition. In other words, it is hardly about being “smart” or “strong” all the times but utterly about being “right” instead.

Close examination shows, most Chinese companies are still far from being able to put themselves on the same track as their Western counterparts in terms of managerial efficiency, even though the majority of their employees are trained in the so called “Western styled business education”.  Take for instance in human resource practices, most Chinese companies tend to focus more on reducing cost than building a team. I have read some job descriptions that are nothing but a welter of various fancy technical terms and phrases, making them positions suitable only for few geniuses, instead of ordinary people. They obviously did not start from what a person can do but only from what a job requires. This person might be the one they are looking for in terms of technical qualifications, but could he be a team member for the company? Is he only applying for a job or is he developing a career? Questions such as these rarely receive attention in Chinese human resources practice. Providing necessary training is not only for technical purpose but also for achieving a goal of having a team. If there is no team spirit to consolidate people together aiming at one goal, one tends to be careless and disloyal. He will shift job as soon as he sees a better place for what really matters is the money. In other words, he only has a job but a not a career. In Chinese this term is called “TiaoCao” or literally means a horse changing its stall. Too many “TiaoCao” is good neither for the workers themselves nor for the companies. One cuts corner on the money that should be spent would most likely pay more in the long run.

We have not yet seen many internationally recognized brand names cherished by Chinese companies. So far China’s strength still lies primarily in the fields of low cost manufacturing and assembling. Whether China is going to borrow, to rob, or to do whatever to get itself ahead in the world product supply chain may be a matter of consent. One thing seems to be certain: It demands a new way of doing things. This might be the toughest part of all since we were told that the power of habit is most difficult to change. A Japanese observer made a very good remark on the calling of China becoming “the factory of world”, a buzz word with rising momentum nowadays. By nature Chinese tend to be very shrewd businessmen but not craftsmen, though they obviously do not lack the caliber of performing a good work. In manufacturing fields, excellence demands a hierarchically organized cooperation in which every detail is paid with great attention and each of them must be linked together to aim at one single goal: Perfection.  At least that is the secret behind the so-called “Japanese miracle”. From Japanese perspective, Chinese businessmen are more suitable for trading than for making products. They usually are not satisfied with playing just a partial role in the whole production chain but mostly inclined to the dominating of the whole production instead. Chinese way of doing business therefore stretches itself in a more horizontally organized mode than a hierarchical one. Thus there might be numerous factories making virtually the same products but none of them with top quality. On the individual basis, a Chinese business might be a fierce competitor, but the industry as a whole is not fearsome at all because of the lack of discipline and coordination among its members who are not able to move and attack like an army. Eventually most of them will find themselves hard to survive in the face of a ferocious international competition. This overlapping mode of production and investment often proves to be a big waste in natural resources and man power. In reflection to the perspective mentioned above, the more appropriated title for China’s industrial miracle ought not to be “the factory of world”, but “the assembly factory of the world” instead. Giving the situation of what China is facing, the shortage of natural resources and a worsening ecological health, shifting to a new production mode has thus become more and more urgent as time goes on.

One crucial factor for a successful enterprise, intangible it may be, is the benefit associated with a solid brand name. A well established brand name reflects the core value of corporate culture that defines what the business is really about, what it stands for. It’s more of a belief system than anything else. Thus a brand name does not express itself only in a financial or marketing sense, although successful brand name does bring in good financial results. It is about a sense of value above anything else. In China, a traditional agricultural society in which commercialism had never gained any significant social status, brand name is a rather alien term. Craftsman is deemed mostly as an occupation unworthy of the talented minds. Viewed mainly as a greed driven conduct, commercialism never received sincere endowment from the dominating philosophy in Chinese culture: Confucianism, a moral value system which wholeheartedly emphasizes the importance of austerity.

When asked what makes Harley-Davidson such an unchallengeable icon in the motorcycle industry, its executive said: It is not the words or phrases from corporate mission statement or the images from advertisements. But a personal experience of riding on one of these rigs on the street, from the resounding noise of its rumbling engine there arrives the feeling that is nothing but that of the Harley-Davidson’s. This recognition of its own identity and nearly scrupulous emphasis on craftsmanship are the real substance which constitutes a great brand name, or a work of art. This feeling is yet being fully appreciated or understood, let alone practiced by most Chinese businesses. The absence of zeal in individualism may be one reason that hampers Chinese businesses to gain a strong foot in world market with solid brand names. The lack of a legal environment upon which a fair and honest business practice is based might be another. It is rather hard for a brand name to survive in a business environment which habitually does not respect intellectual property rights. If stealing and imitating are short cuts for success, why bother to spend millions on R&D? It is not as difficult to give birth to products as to help it grow free from the harms of its numerous imitators.   

Chinese government, facing an ever deteriorating business environment, is struggling hard for a solution, and is urging companies to engage more in innovative and value added activities. Clearly cheap imitation and sheer assembly work have no future as the resource and environmental factors being taken into account. China may no longer be able to get away with the easy works of duplicating and cloning any more, it must show more talents in creating value in order to survive and exult into a higher level in this ever changing business arena. Innovation has been a buzz word nowadays as Chinese government keeps intensifying its rhetoric campaign urging for a better business environment. The true solution, however, rests not on passionate rhetoric of an innovation in a technical sense, but on an innovation in brainpower instead.

When it comes to managerial practice, Chinese business paid great attention to technical and financial sides but not enough to craftsmanship and spirit of cooperation. Technology advance and financial strength are important but not essential, since they alone are unproductive without the guidance of right strategy and management. It is said that Shanghai, after years of constructional frenzy, has finally surpassed New York City in the number of skyscrapers, which, for many Chinese, are viewed as an undeniable symbol of modernization.  Be that as it may, do more high buildings make Shanghai the world financial center? The answer is rather self evident, of course. What really matters is not the superficiality but the substance, the software, the people, the system, the practice, and the culture in general.

Anyone who is familiar with Chinese educational system must be utterly impressed by its emphasis on memorization and technical aspects of the subjects than practical knowledge that may be useful in real life. It habitually seldom encourages students to develop a mindset that leads to risk taking and proactive activities.

Chinese business education such as MBA program is still considered for the most part as a pure academic subject, whereas in fact it should be a mixture between practice and academy, or a cross functional field of study between art and science. The goal of managerial education is not to train good technicians or clerks. It is aimed at providing society with leaders and managers who could do right things and make things happen.  
It is hard to reach this goal if there is not a clear defined mission and right strategy. For Chinese business education to fulfill its duty, perhaps more thoughts should be given in its overall philosophy and direction rather than superficial aspects such as textbooks or language requirements etc.

The very notion of business executive, to a great extent, is still a rather new thing to the Chinese business world both in concept and in practice. It is not tricks or “being smart” that makes one a good business manager. It certainly has nothing to do with these Hollywood images of fabulously dressed people living in an extravagant life style and riding on limousines. What it takes is a mindset of discipline and consistency to allow one doing the right thing and doing it effectively.

Management theory and practice must be examined in the context of the necessary cultural environment in order to make a good sense. Whatever theories and practices in management that are intended to be implanted in Chinese business soil must be first digested and understood through this complicated Chinese cultural paradigm, or they won’t be fruiting at all. It is interesting to see how China, with all its cultural heritage and history, having experienced some of the most infernal ordeals world history could ever present, will once again transform itself in our time. Capitalism and marketing economy are obviously the only way to go, but how could this transition be a peaceful and productive one is the focal point of the attention for all Chinese watchers, business and political alike.Managerial theory and practice, Chinese style
Although it has been years since China joint the WTO, business management in China, both in theory and practice, is still in a fledging phase compared to that of the developed nations. Managerial related business failures, most notably the recent fall of a large dairy manufacturer whose contaminated milk powder kills new born babies with kidney stones, may inadvertently help people to come up with a more realistic picture as to where China stands in regarding to business effectiveness. Quite often, business failures tend to be attributed to the lack of advanced technology or financial strength. However, the crux of the problem, as a close observation has shown, rests largely on the overall managerial mode and thinking, instead of technical aspects.

Unveiling this seemingly marvelous surface of an economic miracle, one finds in China a society which hasn’t yet totally shrugged off the burden of a long feudal agrarian society and a Soviet style planned economy. Capitalism and marketing economy, though hotly talked issues nowadays， are far from being fully understood and practiced in China. Undoubtedly, as a late runner, China has to condescend itself to learn from the West for management knowledge and practice. However, it takes more than crude and superficial imitations to qualify China as a world level competitor in terms of managerial efficiency and technical capacity. Could there be an appropriate mixture between the two cultures, which combines the strengths from both sides and yet avoids the weaknesses at the same time? Could there be a suitable managerial model that fits into the very nature of Chinese business environment?

In China, it might still be a challenge for people to fully accept the fact that management, not financial strengths or technology advantages, is the ultimate factor that defines success. Explicitly, managerial efficiency and effectiveness are everything that affects the overall performance of an organization, whether profit or nonprofit. A business should first consider doing the right things instead of making profit, because it knows very well if the one does the right things money will always be able to take care of itself. Doing the right things and doing it right should be the starting point for a business, but quite often, Chinese business seems to be more obsessed with those popular and yet meaningless shibboleths such as “profit maximization” and “maximizing shareholder’s value” than anything else. Evidently, this "getting rich quick" scenario and "materialistic aggrandizing” mentality prevailing in China today will hurt Chinese economy in the long run. What gives a well managed international company an upper hand in competition in most cases is not its technical advance, but a well disciplined management instead. The core value of an effective management rests on integrity and honesty, instead on the magic power and technical advances on which many people have this unflinching superstition. In other words, it is hardly about being “smart” or “strong” all the times but utterly about being “right” instead.

Close examination shows, most Chinese companies are still far from being able to put themselves on the same track as their Western counterparts in terms of managerial efficiency, even though the majority of their employees are trained in the so called “Western styled business education”.  Take for instance in human resource practices, most Chinese companies tend to focus more on reducing cost than building a team. I have read some job descriptions that are nothing but a welter of various fancy technical terms and phrases, making them positions suitable only for few geniuses, instead of ordinary people. They obviously did not start from what a person can do but only from what a job requires. This person might be the one they are looking for in terms of technical qualifications, but could he be a team member for the company? Is he only applying for a job or is he developing a career? Questions such as these rarely receive attention in Chinese human resources practice. Providing necessary training is not only for technical purpose but also for achieving a goal of having a team. If there is no team spirit to consolidate people together aiming at one goal, one tends to be careless and disloyal. He will shift job as soon as he sees a better place for what really matters is the money. In other words, he only has a job but a not a career. In Chinese this term is called “TiaoCao” or literally means a horse changing its stall. Too many “TiaoCao” is good neither for the workers themselves nor for the companies. One cuts corner on the money that should be spent would most likely pay more in the long run.

We have not yet seen many internationally recognized brand names cherished by Chinese companies. So far China’s strength still lies primarily in the fields of low cost manufacturing and assembling. Whether China is going to borrow, to rob, or to do whatever to get itself ahead in the world product supply chain may be a matter of consent. One thing seems to be certain: It demands a new way of doing things. This might be the toughest part of all since we were told that the power of habit is most difficult to change. A Japanese observer made a very good remark on the calling of China becoming “the factory of world”, a buzz word with rising momentum nowadays. By nature Chinese tend to be very shrewd businessmen but not craftsmen, though they obviously do not lack the caliber of performing a good work. In manufacturing fields, excellence demands a hierarchically organized cooperation in which every detail is paid with great attention and each of them must be linked together to aim at one single goal: Perfection.  At least that is the secret behind the so-called “Japanese miracle”. From Japanese perspective, Chinese businessmen are more suitable for trading than for making products. They usually are not satisfied with playing just a partial role in the whole production chain but mostly inclined to the dominating of the whole production instead. Chinese way of doing business therefore stretches itself in a more horizontally organized mode than a hierarchical one. Thus there might be numerous factories making virtually the same products but none of them with top quality. On the individual basis, a Chinese business might be a fierce competitor, but the industry as a whole is not fearsome at all because of the lack of discipline and coordination among its members who are not able to move and attack like an army. Eventually most of them will find themselves hard to survive in the face of a ferocious international competition. This overlapping mode of production and investment often proves to be a big waste in natural resources and man power. In reflection to the perspective mentioned above, the more appropriated title for China’s industrial miracle ought not to be “the factory of world”, but “the assembly factory of the world” instead. Giving the situation of what China is facing, the shortage of natural resources and a worsening ecological health, shifting to a new production mode has thus become more and more urgent as time goes on.

One crucial factor for a successful enterprise, intangible it may be, is the benefit associated with a solid brand name. A well established brand name reflects the core value of corporate culture that defines what the business is really about, what it stands for. It’s more of a belief system than anything else. Thus a brand name does not express itself only in a financial or marketing sense, although successful brand name does bring in good financial results. It is about a sense of value above anything else. In China, a traditional agricultural society in which commercialism had never gained any significant social status, brand name is a rather alien term. Craftsman is deemed mostly as an occupation unworthy of the talented minds. Viewed mainly as a greed driven conduct, commercialism never received sincere endowment from the dominating philosophy in Chinese culture: Confucianism, a moral value system which wholeheartedly emphasizes the importance of austerity.

When asked what makes Harley-Davidson such an unchallengeable icon in the motorcycle industry, its executive said: It is not the words or phrases from corporate mission statement or the images from advertisements. But a personal experience of riding on one of these rigs on the street, from the resounding noise of its rumbling engine there arrives the feeling that is nothing but that of the Harley-Davidson’s. This recognition of its own identity and nearly scrupulous emphasis on craftsmanship are the real substance which constitutes a great brand name, or a work of art. This feeling is yet being fully appreciated or understood, let alone practiced by most Chinese businesses. The absence of zeal in individualism may be one reason that hampers Chinese businesses to gain a strong foot in world market with solid brand names. The lack of a legal environment upon which a fair and honest business practice is based might be another. It is rather hard for a brand name to survive in a business environment which habitually does not respect intellectual property rights. If stealing and imitating are short cuts for success, why bother to spend millions on R&D? It is not as difficult to give birth to products as to help it grow free from the harms of its numerous imitators.   

Chinese government, facing an ever deteriorating business environment, is struggling hard for a solution, and is urging companies to engage more in innovative and value added activities. Clearly cheap imitation and sheer assembly work have no future as the resource and environmental factors being taken into account. China may no longer be able to get away with the easy works of duplicating and cloning any more, it must show more talents in creating value in order to survive and exult into a higher level in this ever changing business arena. Innovation has been a buzz word nowadays as Chinese government keeps intensifying its rhetoric campaign urging for a better business environment. The true solution, however, rests not on passionate rhetoric of an innovation in a technical sense, but on an innovation in brainpower instead.

When it comes to managerial practice, Chinese business paid great attention to technical and financial sides but not enough to craftsmanship and spirit of cooperation. Technology advance and financial strength are important but not essential, since they alone are unproductive without the guidance of right strategy and management. It is said that Shanghai, after years of constructional frenzy, has finally surpassed New York City in the number of skyscrapers, which, for many Chinese, are viewed as an undeniable symbol of modernization.  Be that as it may, do more high buildings make Shanghai the world financial center? The answer is rather self evident, of course. What really matters is not the superficiality but the substance, the software, the people, the system, the practice, and the culture in general.

Anyone who is familiar with Chinese educational system must be utterly impressed by its emphasis on memorization and technical aspects of the subjects than practical knowledge that may be useful in real life. It habitually seldom encourages students to develop a mindset that leads to risk taking and proactive activities.

Chinese business education such as MBA program is still considered for the most part as a pure academic subject, whereas in fact it should be a mixture between practice and academy, or a cross functional field of study between art and science. The goal of managerial education is not to train good technicians or clerks. It is aimed at providing society with leaders and managers who could do right things and make things happen.  
It is hard to reach this goal if there is not a clear defined mission and right strategy. For Chinese business education to fulfill its duty, perhaps more thoughts should be given in its overall philosophy and direction rather than superficial aspects such as textbooks or language requirements etc.

The very notion of business executive, to a great extent, is still a rather new thing to the Chinese business world both in concept and in practice. It is not tricks or “being smart” that makes one a good business manager. It certainly has nothing to do with these Hollywood images of fabulously dressed people living in an extravagant life style and riding on limousines. What it takes is a mindset of discipline and consistency to allow one doing the right thing and doing it effectively.

Management theory and practice must be examined in the context of the necessary cultural environment in order to make a good sense. Whatever theories and practices in management that are intended to be implanted in Chinese business soil must be first digested and understood through this complicated Chinese cultural paradigm, or they won’t be fruiting at all. It is interesting to see how China, with all its cultural heritage and history, having experienced some of the most infernal ordeals world history could ever present, will once again transform itself in our time. Capitalism and marketing economy are obviously the only way to go, but how could this transition be a peaceful and productive one is the focal point of the attention for all Chinese watchers, business and political alike.