Understanding Chinese Interpersonal Norms and Effective Mangement of Sino-Western Joint Ventures
研究调查了574名中国专业人士和管理者的个人价值观，旨在为中西合资企业的人力资源管理提供指导，帮助理解文化差异以减少冲突。
An area frequently identified as a source of conflict and failure within Sino-Western joint ventures is a lack to true understanding of cultural differences between partners. A study of 574 professionals and managers from the People's Republic of China was conducted to examine the personal value systems of the respondents with the goal of providing insight and guidance in the development and operation of the human resource function of a Sino-Western joint venture. The study administered between 1989 and 1994 measured six values, Theoretical, Economic, Aesthetic, Social, Political, and Religious. Results were broken down and by gender and occupation. Introduction and Study The economy of the People's Republic of China grew at a spectacular rate of almost 13% in 1993, slowed to 11.9% in 1994, and expanded at 10.2% in 1995 (Roche 1996). The growth was driven by firms outside of the state owned sector primarily local cooperatives, Sino-foreign joint ventures and privately owned companies. Those firms, which account for more than half of China's industrial output, are thriving on exports and a domestic consumer boom. In the 1980's and 1990's, thousands of companies from more than thirty nations attempted to establish joint venture relationships with China (US-China Business Council 1995). More joint ventures were formed in China than any other nation in the decade of the eighties (US Department of Commerce 1991). Joint ventures offer foreign firm strategic means to gain access to China's domestic market, reduce costs, acquire legitimacy, learn about the Chinese environment, and gain power vis-a-vis their competitors. At the macro level equity joint ventures offer China a way to help develop its economy through the transfer of technology, acquisition of managerial skills, influx of capital, development of its infrastructure, and access to export markets that can provide foreign exchange. Indications are that the trend of foreign investment in China taking the form of joint ventures is likely to continue. International joint ventures in China have attracted the interest of researchers and consultants from a wide variety of disciplines and they have used a variety of frameworks to describe and analyze these ventures in China. Operational issues such as human resource management, are the focus of over half of the studies conducted to date (Osland 1993). One area frequently cited as a source of conflict and failure within a Sino-Western joint venture is a lack of true understanding of the cultural differences between partners (Habib 1987). Taken to a personal level, these differences create a challenge that American joint venture partners -- individuals or teams -- must address. Evidence suggests that divergent cultural variables significantly affect the success or failure of United States - Chinese ventures. Pye (1982) reports on interviews held with US managers in China and concludes that unquestionably the largest and possibly the most intractable category of problems in SinoAmerican business relations can be traced to cultural differences between the two countries. One reason for problems related to cultural differences can be found in a lack of understanding of the values held by the representative of the Chinese partner and the Chinese persons who are the work force. This paper presents the results of a primary study done on Chinese managers to determine their values. Davis and Rasool (1985) reported that differing values of managers have been considered as a factor in organizational conflict, particularly in multinational firms operating in a culture where incongruity exists between the values of the host country and expatriate personnel. Wright (1984) proposed that the values associated with a multinational way of doing business may be in direct conflict with those of the host country. Both Pye (1986) and Tung (1992, 1989) studied the negotiation process between US and Chinese companies and found a number of problems arising out of cultural misunderstanding. …