Abstract:
One of the motives of China's Economic Reform is to bring Western
management techniques to China to further economic development. The miraculous
success of the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Shenzhen, Guangdong has attracted
many foreign investors who gladly bring their management expertise. This thesis looks
at small, medium and large Chinese business organizations in SEZ and non-SEZ
locations and examines their traditions and changes under China's economic reform
policy.
I conducted semistructured interviews with managers in small and medium-size
private enterprises in Shenzhen and Xiamen SEZs and used unstructured interviews
with managers in large state-owned enterprises in Tianjin, a non-SEZ. Under China's
economic reform policy, I found Chinese business enterprises have undergone drastic
changes in the past few years. I found small family business organizations deeply
ingrained in and still very much retaining their Chinese cultural characteristics
familism, paternalism, and personalism. I found medium-size organizations in the
SEZs have changed the most. Medium-size enterprises were in transition, partially
retaining Chinese values and partially adopting Western values. I found large state-owned
enterprises had undergone a significant reduction in paternalism, but
substantially retained the value of personalism. No matter what the changes, I found
that personalism was pervasive among all Chinese organizations. Thus, it remained
unchanged under the policy of economic reform.
As China is opening up, I found economic reform driven by medium-size
enterprises because they were most free of cultural and bureaucratic constraints.
Thus, they achieved a revolutionary breakthrough. Chinese medium-size enterprises
are the types of enterprises that will eventually do the most to modernize the Chinese
economy.
