Comparing the Anglo and Asian Confucian
The Unites States is part of the Anglo culture cluster while China is the main player in the Confucian Asia cluster, according to the GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness). As expected, the two countries differ in many ways due to such factors like political inclination (where the United States is inclined towards democratic legitimacy while China lies on the end of performance legitimacy), community settings and religious beliefs. This part of the paper will concentrate on the differences between the Anglo and Asian Confucian clusters to create a backdrop of what a manager is moving from America to China should consider if she or he has wanted to succeed in the new environment (Ashkanasy, 2002).
Regarding power distance, or the extent with which the lower cadre workers accept inequality in power distribution, the Asians find it more important as compared to the people in the Anglo cluster, in the ‘should be culture scores.' It means that people in China appreciate the gaps between the different levels of management as compared to the people in the Unites States of America. Business managers in China will expect more loyalty as compared to the ones in the United States, as the respect to business leaders is higher in China than in the United States.
People in the Confucian Asian cluster accord a lot of importance on uncertainty avoidance with a score of five on a scale of seven, where seven presents the greatest importance, and one represents the consideration that the factor is not important. For the people in the Anglo cluster, the avoidance of certainty is still considered as very important, but not as much as it is imperative to the people of the places like China. The study shows that periods of stability and economic predictability have conditioned the people of places like the United States to be wary about the future. On the other hand, the Chinese people like to control their destinies, and they do not want to face a future that is completely unpredictable.
As expected, the subject of gender is more pronounced in the Anglo countries than it is revisited in the Confucian Asia countries. In a scale of seven, the Anglo cluster countries rate gender equality at a measure of four while the Confucian Asia cluster measures it at the rate of 3.5 out 7, meaning that it just crosses their mind. In practical terms, there is a bigger chance for gender-based discrimination in China than in the United States, and employees may not be highly respectful of female bosses. However, due to the high levels of power distance, people respect the positions of power more than they do respect the people in those positions, as they already accept power gaps as part of the corporate ‘way of doing things.'
In-group collectivism is more valued by the Anglo cultures despite the focus on individuality. In Asian Confucian cluster, people are not wholly committed to the team goals. It is a little bit interesting how these factors play out this way, because, essentially, the Chinese would be expected to value collectivism more than anyone else. Perhaps, just to try to make sense of the results, the level of competitiveness for opportunities in the Confucian Asian countries makes people focus on their individual goals in tandem with the classic aphorism of the survival for the fittest. On the other hand, the people in Anglo cultures have been bombarded with the idea of teamwork such that they have come to consider it as more important than individual goals.
Both clusters consider future orientation as important to their lives. There is a very small difference between the scores for the Anglo and Confucian Asian clusters regarding the how they value future orientation as an integral part of their working cultures. Normally, future orientated people make decisions with one eye in the future, and they always question the status quo, or the activities they are doing in the present moment, and their effect on the future. It is not surprising that this is an area where the two societies agree completely, as the rise of technology and the need to keep up with changes prompts people to set themselves for the future.
Norms for conducting business in China
China is a communist country that differs from the western countries in many ways, and this has the effect of complicating the business environment, especially for foreigners. As noted in the previous section, Chinese people are very hierarchical, so a foreign manager should expect a business playing ground that has an umbrella power format, with the top management having control of most of the business operations. Normally, the idea of a staircase kind of leadership is not highly coveted in the United States, especially with the rise of technology and modern firms that have changed the way people view organizational culture. To attract the top talent, in the United States, for instance, one needs to create a working environment that is easy and inclusive, with diminished signs of power or authority (Lam, 2009).
One of the most stressful areas for any business executive in China is the limited availability of government support for multinationals. In the area of intellectual property, for example, the Chinese government has not installed bottlenecks to stop the reproduction of similar products that are of lower quality. Almost every big brand in the world has some trouble with the Chinese government for its failure to stem the massive copying of products that washes away the potential of the original producers to make adequate profits. In the mobile phone manufacturing industry, for instance, every smartphone has its copy on the market, mostly manufactured in China and selling at many times less the original price (Mercurio, 2012).
The legal system in China is very different from the one in the United States. Conflicts take long to be solved in the courts and sometimes there are back forces influencing the decisions of the judges. Normally, there are no legal or regulative loopholes in China; rather the biggest problem is the interpretation and the implementation of the law, as challenged by such factors like corruption, weak jurisdiction, and government protectionism that sets the advantage on the side of Chinese companies. However, some multinationals like Procter & Gamble have succeeded in pushing the government and other stakeholders to protect the interests of the foreign companies, even though there are still challenges (Kriz & Keating, 2009).
China is a large territory with some parts of the country having completely different approaches to doing business compared to Beijing. That means a company can find itself caught up in conflicting cultures, as the Beijing government decentralizes power to different regions in an experimental approach that aims at gaining first-hand insight into what works and that does not. This empowers local governments and leaderships to institute completely independent approaches to doing business, with the check from the national government and a focus on creating home based solutions. At the end of the day, a multinational company may find itself sandwiched between Beijing and the countryside, without any part of China taking responsibility for the glitch (McKay, 2012).
Chinese people are cynics, generally, according to Greene Hofstede research. That means the children grow up in conserved environments, and they are not adequately socialized. For a multinational, the need to develop a working capital that is equipped with global perspectives comes as the most important goal in operating in China. However, this does not mean that the Chinese people are short of skill, they just have a different way of doing things, and this helps them to make decisions differently compared to businesses in other regions. The restrained nature of the people makes it hard for the managers to construct social relationships with the employees and limits the amount of play within work.
Lastly, language is a fundamental impediment between China and the rest of the world. Despite the Chinese language been the most widely spoken in the world, its structural difference with other languages in the western world makes it difficult for outsiders to learn within a very short time. That has increased the need to learn the Chinese language at an early age due to the increased importance of China in the world economy, and the role the country plays in ensuring a steady flow of goods from manufacturing. The other advantage of learning the Chinese language is the appreciation of the culture of the Chinese people, as the process of learning a language provides a very important source of information regarding the culture of the people who speak that language.
Part 3
The new manager in China
The issues discussed above on the Anglo and Confucian Asia as well as norms of doing business in China provides great insight into the expectations of a manager who is moving to China. First, the manager will need to adopt cultural diversity as a key element in her new job, a factor that will mean dropping some of her strongly held opinions about people and the workplace (Adler & Gundersen, 2007). That calls for the introduction of synergies in the institution to ensure that everyone is involved in the business of the company, and leverage on the cultural differences to make the necessary contributions that would offer the company a competitive advantage over peers and competitors in the country.
Ensuring that the employees are motivated is a very integral factor to achieving the goals of the company in the Chinese market. While it sounds so easy when said, motivating employees in China is very different from motivating the ones in the United States. First, the low levels of indulgence or the restrained culture of the Chinese people make them very suspicious of handouts and favors were given by foreign companies. Therefore, the new manager should avoid introducing American routines to the Chinese workplace, because it might appear as a form of colonization to the Chinese people. Being straightforward and direct will help in winning the hearts of the employees in the Chinese subsidiary, as they will appreciate the lack of mind games and simulative leadership.
The Chinese employees are less inclined to collectivism compared to their American counterparts, and that means individual projects, or highly specialized roles suit them better than team setups that involve regular meetings and role plays. Understanding such trivialities might be the biggest winning point on the part of the managers as it empowers the employees to do what they like, and become very effective in delivering results. As noted earlier, these approaches entangle with the necessity of developing human capital, by offering them training programs that refocus their objectives from the local setting to a global perspective. More often than not, adjusting to the ways of the people in the foreign country leads to better results that implementing the practices of the source country.
Creating links with authority helps the company in getting protection from the government. This is true for all business cases, whether in China or America. While the legal and regulations landscape is perfectly set in America, the Chinese systems have some pronounced loopholes that limit the implementation of the law and a postponement of justice. Instead of whining at the reduced space of operation and innovation as compared to the United States, the manager will rather encourage perfection and optimization of the available space to achieve maximum returns (Northouse, 2003). That would include the adoption of prevention measures more than allowing the company to be wired in conflicts with consumers, government or the tax authorities. Of course, there is a boundary to what is right, and that boundary gets stretched in different situations and countries. It would mean that the manager studies the boundaries to establish where the company would perfectly position itself, without running a risk of conflict with the authorities.
Adopting modern models of leadership can also be a way to influencing the behaviors of the employees in the new working station. For the manager, an attachment with the employees through inclusion and encouragement of innovative behaviors can help them to feel appreciated and give their best. For instance, the garbage can model would suit the employees very well as they chase personal perfection and success in the organization. The garbage can model positions an organization as a set of choices looking for problems to solve, and the ability of a company to solve problems determines the chances of delivering cutting edge solutions that defeat competitors and improve the overall standing of the company in the industry (Daft & Armstrong, 2012).
References
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Ashkanasy, N. (2002). LEADERSHIP IN THE ASIAN CENTURY: LESSONS FROM GLOBE. International Journal of Organizational Behavior, 5(3), 150–163.
Daft, R. L., & Armstrong, A. (2012). Organization theory and design (2nd ed.). Toronto: Nelson Education.
Kriz, A. & Keating, B. (2009). Doing business in China: tips for an outsider (lǎo wài). China Review International, 16(1), 1-17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/cri.2009.0008
Lam, M. L.-L. (2009). Beyond credibility of doing business in China: Strategies for improving corporate citizenship of foreign multinational enterprises in China. Journal of Business Ethics, 87, 137–146. doi:10.2307/40294958
McKay, Z. (2012, March 6). The Ten principles for doing business in China. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/insead/2012/03/06/the-ten-principles-for-doing- business-in-china/2/#2aa68a037924
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