The Relevance of Our Management Theories for China

Last week I had the privilege of giving two and a half days of management education to HRM managers from China’s Customs Department.  What an amazingly part of the Chinese Government that must be, especially given the phenomenal growth of China’s trade during the last two decades.

My teaching philosophy has changed in recent years as I have reflected on my experiences living in China last year while teaching at a university in rural Henan Province, as well as having taken teaching visits to Guangzhou during 2000 and 2002.  I am now certain that our most popular theories of management and leadership must be taught cautiously and with qualification in the PRC, and perhaps with similar caution in other parts of Asia.

To start with, the Chinese culture is, for the most part, radically different to that of North America, the UK, much of Europe’s, and Australia’s.  To recall Hofstede’s influential studies of cultural difference, the Chinese are high in their long-term orientation (a value Hofstede referrred to as the “Confucian orientation”) and power distance (expressing an ongoing preference for centralised power), medium in uncertainty avoidance (that is, they prefer more certainty over less, but not as strongly as elsewhere), and low in individuality.

In contrast, Australians are extremely high in their focus on the individual (rather than the collective and group) but much lower than the Chinese in power distance (Australians consider themselves egalitarian), uncertainty avoidance, and in the possession of a long-term orientation (for most of us, a month is the long-term!).

So, consider a few examples.  Maslow’s hierachy of needs, for instance, starts with the assumption that individual needs are important.  Try telling that to someone who subsumes their own needs to those of their families, living in far-off cities and living as modestly as possible in order to send as much money home as may be spared.  The Maslow pyramid also suggests that our ultimate need is to “self-actualise”, or to truly fulfil our potential and desires.  As far as I can tell, there is no direct translation into Chinese for the concept of self-actualisation.  It’s focus on individual fulfilment as the ultimate end has historically found no basis for comparison in the Chinese culture.  While there may be exceptions as some aspects of Hollywood culture seep into the behaviour of young Chinese, the reality remains that meeting one’s own needs is a flow-on benefit from first meeting the needs of one’s family, not an end in itself.

Let’s consider another example.  A great deal of western leadership theory relies on notions of shared power and empowerment, as well as a distinct preference for a good dollop of decentralisation of authority and responsibility.  In the vast majority of Chinese organisations, you may as well be recommending that they trade sandwiches for rice in the lunchroom.  Deep within the Chinese culture, taking root over many centuries, the philosophy of knowing one’s place, doing one’s duty, and seeking to rise up from one level to the next on the basis of one’s seniority and loyalty to boss, organisation, and party, continue to take great predence over pursuing any of the perceived benefits that may arise in a less rigid approach.

Thus, while some movement towards western practise has been detected by organisational researchers, particularly in the offices of some multinational corporations, across-the-board evolution is sometimes slow, often patchy and, in many locations, non-existent.  Yet, the vast majority of MBA and similar programs in China use western textbooks translated directly into the local idiom.  While there may be the odd example of a Chinese company, theoretically the books reflect the view that western theories may be transplanted without reflection or adaptation.

I do hope that this changes in time, since to do otherwise does a disservice to the Chinese students of our programs and the fields of leadership and management more generally.