Overseas Chinese as expatriate managers in China : is their recruitment a solution to cross-cultural management problems for multinationals operating in China?

The rapid economic development has gravitated businesses into the Chinese market. It’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 made her an even more formidable player in the global economy and direct foreign investment surged. Yet it is acknowledged that for the foreign investor in China, cross-cultural issues create difficulty at every level, from the intercultural level relating to communication and negotiation, to the organizational level relating to decision making, human resource management practices, corporate legal institutions and dealing with governments. Western multinationals have considered the advantages of posting overseas Chinese, from Southeast Asian countries, Taiwan Hong Kong and etc. But has this policy been successful? In terms of language expertise and cultural literacy this would seem to be a good strategy, yet organizational case material contradicts this in reality. Overseas Chinese, while sharing some elements of Chinese culture with mainland Chinese, the Confucian heritage and other aspects such as language, diet, etc, nevertheless have different world views and values and behave differently from mainland Chinese in areas critical to business management. As a survival strategy, overseas Chinese often developed dual identities operating simultaneously. For many of them, for political and historical reasons, they have had to adapt to the local culture or even hide their own ethnicity in order to survive. On the other hand, the mainland Chinese are different in the sense that their behaviour has only had to be Chinese, but overlaid with this has been the experience of participating in a communist political environment for decades, which has left its mark on mainland Chinese culture. On the basis of this, in the current business environment in China confusion, difficulties and conflict may occur for the overseas Chinese. This paper aims to provide insights of the cultural differences between the overseas Chinese and mainland Chinese. It provides evidence that overseas Chinese are not often favoured by the local Chinese. This problem has yet to be researched in depth within international business and international management studies. It draws the attention to issues on how to manage the local Chinese.

Chinese construction industry performance after entry into the world trade organization

The Chinese construction industry has had significant activity in the international market in the last decade following the entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). However the degree of activity and the sector performance is still relatively uncertain. A review of the literature in this field indicates that there is very little rigor in relation to adoption of quantitative measurement and performance indicators for internationalization, in particular for the measurement of the degree of internationalization specifically related to the international construction sector at both firm and country level. In addition the estimation of the influence and status of a country's construction activity in the international market has not been considered. There are useful indicators that we can borrow and consider from mainstream economics literature, such as, Dunning's Eclectic Paradigm (based on the ownership (0), location (L) and internalization (1) advantages of a firm) and Low et al.'s OLI+S Model (based on the Ownership, Location, Internalization and Specialty). Through an analysis of the attributes of the Chinese construction industry and a discussion on trends for the last decade, this paper proposes to develop a new model by adapting the Dunning model and acknowledging the significance of "Specialty" to measure the degree of internationalization both at the firm and country level. The International Level and Status Index was generated to measure the level and status of a country's construction industry in the international market by adopting the Depth Index (revenue composition), Height Index (top enterprises) and Width Index (fields involved). The key finding is that the degree of internationalization of Chinese construction industry and the status and influence of Chinese construction industry in the international market has not increased quickly. Surprisingly even though China had expectations of high growth after entry to WTO it has in fact declined. Contrarily, both of them declined in the early years after the accession to WTO.

The impact of guanxi on export performance: A study of New Zealand firms exporting to China

Broadly defined as interpersonal relationship in Chinese society, guanxi embodies several intricate and unique Chinese cultural values. Although more and more western business people are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of guanxi in doing business in China, its potential impacts on the performance of business are still not well understood by western business people. This paper uses path analysis to assess the impacts of guanxi on export performance of a sample of New Zealand firms exporting to China. The results show that guanxi variables significantly facilitate trade partnering, business negotiating, and problem solving and generally contributes positively to the overall export performance of firms.

Doing business in China : getting ready for the Asian century

Although this book has a specific focus on Australian firms doing business in China, the important and unique contribution this book makes will help you and anyone in an organization that is considering doing business in China. China maintains a high growth economy and is currently the second largest in the world. This book, which includes results from research interviews conducted with business executives from 40 organizations, will assist in preparing to do business in China. This book takes you through the various elements associated with doing business in China, including the opportunities that are available and the obstacles that organizations can face, supported by data from real businesses internationalizing to China. It examines key areas including the foreign direct investment and trade framework, Chinese culture, political and legal frameworks, intellectual property regulations, motivations for internationalization, market entry strategy, and human resource management issues.

White cargo : Australian residents, trade and colonialism in Shanghai between the wars

This article follows Australians who went to treaty ports in China in the 1920s and 1930s to find work. By 1932 there were so many Australians in Shanghai that the British government asked Prime Minister Joseph Lyons to issue an official warning dissuading Australians from travelling there for employment. One result of this migration was the generation of files on Australians in the Special Branch’ surveillance files of the Shanghai Municipal Police (SMP) archives. Using these files, as well as Chinese language newspapers circulating in Shanghai at the time, this article examines links between Australians in Depression-era Shanghai and the development of Chinese anti-colonialism. It also suggests that reports on Australian behaviour in treaty port China in Australian newspapers recast the ways in which some Australians understood inter-colonial exchanges. Much is known about Australian attitudes to Asia in the first half of the twentieth century. Little, however, has been written about how Asian populations viewed Australians. The Shanghai Municipal Police files provide one register through which these viewpoints can be excavated.

Occupational safety in China: safety climate and its influence on safety-related behavior

The improvement of health and safety standards within the organizational context is an important issue of global concern. China’s occupational health and safety (OHS) has increasingly drawn national and international attention as it has not kept pace with its globalization of production and trade. The traditional approach to managing workplace safety in China has focused on the technical aspects of engineering systems and processes, and it has attributed the majority of workplace accidents and injuries to unsafe working conditions instead of the unsafe work practices of employees. However, there has been a fundamental shift in the safety management research carried out in many countries and across diverse industries, which aims to measure the impact of attitudinal, organizational, cultural, and social dimensions on occupational safety. This article examines the relationship between safety climate and safety-related behavior in the Chinese context and draws implications for the management of occupational safety in China.

Coal - the black gold of economic growth in China: empirical evidence and the role of cleaner coal technologies in recent time

Coal comprises 70 per cent of China’s primary energy source and 80 per cent of China's electricity generation. This study investigates the long-run relationship between coal consumption-economic growth nexus considering both supply and demand side models in a multivariate framework over the period of 1978 and 2010. Our innovation in this paper is to include a coal-to-electricity efficiency indicator into the economic growth model ; and trade exposure in coal demand. Using Autoregressive Distributed Lag bounds testing approach, we find improvement in coal-to-efficiency indicator causes almost 35 per cent increase in real GDP in the long-run. The Toda-Yamamoto approach of causality test indicates unidirectional causality from coal consumption to economic growth; feedback effect both for coal-to-electricity efficiency indicator to economic growth and openness to coal consumption. For robustness check, using the generalised forecast error variance decomposition method we forecast the validity of causal relationships beyond the sample horizon. The paper suggests the role of advanced coal technologies will play a significant role along with other environmental and energy policies in maintaining sustainable economic growth in China .

Call auction transparency and market liquidity: Evidence from China

This paper uses the natural experiment offered by the Shanghai Stock Exchange to investigate the impact of opening call auction transparency on market liquidity. We find that the dissemination of indicative trade information during the pre-open call auction session leads to an overall improvement in stock liquidity in the continuous trading session. Bid-ask spreads narrow in the first trading hour because adverse selection risk fell significantly and there is less price volatility in the continuous market. This effect is greater for actively traded securities than illiquid securities. Our findings are robust for different lengths of sample period, different lengths of trading hours after market open, and stocks that had (and had not) reformed the share split structure during our research period.

An explanation of capital structure of China's listed property firms

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of the capital structure of listed property firms in China.Design/methodology/approach– The study is based on quantitative methods such as dynamic panel data models and a panel data set containing financial and accounting data for all listed property companies from 2006 to 2010 in China.Findings– The findings confirm that the state-own shares, the fixed asset values, the total size of assets and profitability have a positive and significant impact on the leverage ratio of listed property firms in China. The negative impact of the tax shields and the currency ratio, and significant impact of state-own shares on capital structure cannot be explained by existing capital structure theory but the unique property market regulation environment and market conditions in China.Research limitations/implications– The findings confirm the applicability of trade-off theory (except for the correlation between leverage and the tax shield) on property companies in China. They also highlight the importance of government policies and special market conditions in explaining the financing behaviour of property companies in transaction countries like China.Practical implications– Complimentary policies should be established along with property market restriction policies to offset their unequal negative effect on property companies with less state-owned shares. Furthermore, government should invest efforts to eliminate the discrimination credit treatment of banks against property companies with non-existent or few state-owned shares.Originality/value– The special financial behaviour of China's property firms and the unique financial and property market conditions highlight the necessity of researching the capital structure of listed property firms in China. However, most of the existing literature focuses on the company financial behaviour in developed countries, and very few studies have been done concerning property firms’ financing behaviour in emerging economies such as China, and this research prospects to fill this blank.

Miscommunication in Australia-China relations: the Stern Hu Affair

This paper explores communication and miscommunication in international business relations by studying the case of former RIO Tinto executive Stern Hu who was prosecuted for stealing trade secrets and taking bribes in kickbacks from Chinese steel firms. Using newspaper articles about the case that were published in Australia, China and other countries via Internet in either Chinese or English from July 2009 to April 2010, a series of differences in the way the Chinese and Australian protagonists were framed both in terms of relevant facts and value judgments. Apart from various obvious stereotypes, more subtle differences in the perspectives of the two nations emerge in my reading of their presses regarding the nature of trust, the role of corporations, government and how morality and business intermesh in two culturally distinct systems. Using this case, this paper illustrates the nature and types of misunderstandings that emerge over time and across locations within each cultural setting.

The role of endowments, technology and size in international trade: new evidence from product-level data

Using product-level trade data, we empirically investigate the export patterns of more than 150 countries in their exports to the USA, Brazil, India, and Japan. We document strong evidence that exporters specialize according to their relative factor endowments, technology, and economic size. More developed, capital abundant countries are found to export products of higher unit values and a wider range of products to developed, emerging and developing markets. More developed, economically larger, and technologically advanced countries are also the major exporters of new products, spanninga wide range of product categories with high unit values. Our findings provide important insights into the macro phenomenon that a large proportion of the global trade takes place among developed economies, and that the latter are also major exporters to developing markets.