2008 Olympics and Chinese management studies

Citation

Teck Foo, C. (2008), "2008 Olympics and Chinese management studies", Chinese Management Studies, Vol. 2 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/cms.2008.32302caa.001

2008 Olympics and Chinese management studies

Article Type: Editorial From: Chinese Management Studies, Volume 2, Issue 3

2008 is a very special year for China and indeed for the Chinese people worldwide wherever they may be residing. And there is a well known saying, wherever the sun rises, you will find Chinese people. Why? The Olympics is an event that the global Chinese community shares in taking pride in. A Chinese may be of any nationality but if he or she is raised within a Chinese family, he partakes a unique set of cultural beliefs, values and philosophy. There is an underlying cognitive structure that differentiates him or her as a Chinese. Just as an Indian has his or her own ways of seeing the world different from other peoples.

Attempts by Tibetans to snuff out the Olympic flame across many cities in the different continents visited have been futile. Once the call is made to keep the flame burning, Chinese abroad in these cities will hasten to protect the burning flame of the 2008 Olympics. Now, the Han Chinese easily outnumber the Tibetan Chinese. The Olympic is an event that has so long been awaited for by the Chinese people, they simply will not let anyone disrupt it. Westerners accustomed to being the dominant powers in the last century – and achievers across many human endeavors – of the globe find it hard to fathom this ocean deep, often unconscious sense of pride the Chinese have in hosting the 2008 Olympics. Nothing beats the Olympics in telling the world, we the Chinese have too made the mark!

I am not exaggerating when I say that such pride goes deep down and embraces the souls of the Chinese people. To trace it, you have to go back to the declining years of the Empress Dowager or even earlier, into the late period of Qing rule over China. From my own living memory, I have experienced for myself the seeds of this sense of a lost pride. My own grandfather, who as a youth had to keep the Manchurian style pigtails, often lamented to us, “How we the Sons of the lofty Dragon, a civilization with more than 5,000 years of illustrious history could have befallen so far behind the European, American and Japanese powers!”

Just like the Russians have cognitively a very different concept of the Motherland from the American (http://jas.faximum.com/asg/room_6/mf_1968.html), the Chinese too have deep, cultural roots to their mother country, China, or more emotively, “Zhong Guo”: the Middle Kingdom. Hotly contested, market driven economies may transform the Chinese to looking to the west for technology, innovation and science. Yet the very basic psychological make-up of a true Chinese remains unchanged: he or she is adamant against any splitting up of China. A similar dwindling down of the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 1991) to what now remains of Russia will simply be unimaginable for China to the mind of almost every Chinese. Since the time of the Qin Emperor, China has been but one legal entity, one mega family of peoples from different ethnic backgrounds. Chinese recognize each other as sharing a common heritage: descendants of one common ancestor: the Yellow Emperor.

When I saw the riots erupting on home television, it was a shock to me. For only in 2007, I was personally in Lhasa and Xigatse. I was a witness to how Tibetan Chinese are so closely interwoven into the Beijing government’s efforts in administering the Himalayan region. The outbreak of riots despite the massive infrastructural improvements through investments by the Chinese Government (Foo, 2008) suggests there to be a far more deeply rooted problem. There is likely a gulf in understanding between the natives in Tibet and Beijing officials. Tibetan Chinese are raised on the Himalayan, with mountain beliefs, values and traditions. In contrast to the assignment-based, Beijing career mandarins, who are bent on being always political and are tightly control-minded and bureaucratic. This raises an interesting question for Chinese Management Studies:

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  Can we as scholars on management help to resolve the conflict?

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  Is the range of western theories on conflict resolution applicable here?

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  Can any research studies be designed to help to illuminate the roots of the problems?

I raised this matter even though it is very clear to me that in terms of disciplinary interests, the Tibetan problem is outside the focus of management studies. However, there is now a trend towards a more holistic approach to learning and education. Management itself is a multi-disciplinary subject. For this reason, it is here I venture to ask if management scholars may contribute some insights on this problem. Or is there scope for in the near distant future of say, a special issue or a conference issue on “Managing in Tibet”, for example? Or even Tibetan Chinese management?

Perhaps one of the ways for fostering better mutual, cross-ethnic (Himalayan Tibetan and Beijing Chinese) understanding is to take a cognitive approach in our research design. Just like what I am trying to do in my research paper utilizing textual analysis in “Cognitive strategy from the Romance of Three Kingdoms”. I tried through this paper to present how different the mind of a Chinese strategist may work as compared to an American. For within the cultural context of China, many Chinese are influenced from a young age by classical novels including the Water Margin, Journey to the West and A Dream of the Red Mansions. Such influences are very likely to shape cognitively how a Chinese thinks strategically. Through an in-depth analysis of a specially chosen episode in chapter 38, a Kong Ming (one of China’s most famous strategists) grounded model of cognitive strategy is derived and presented. Also there is discussion of how the model may be applied for corporate strategy.

I am especially delighted to present in this third issue, the paper by Professor Coen Heijes on “Culture, convenience or efficiency: customer behaviour in choosing local or foreign banks in China”. For this is at the heart of my own research interests: Chinese banking in post-WTO era. Aspects of possible scenarios, themes and competitions that I had painted in my 2001 keynote address at the Shanghai Banking Association Conference on the Future of Banking in China are now empirically investigated. Clearly his research demonstrates the growing sophistication of the Chinese customer in his search for better banking services. The competitive scenarios as painted deserve a careful reading by corporate banking strategists. The third paper in the selection is one on competitive strategy. A team of researchers led by Professor David A.S. Chew (Shigang Yan and Charles Y.J. Cheah) focuses on small and medium enterprises (SME) within the construction sector of the Chinese economy. China’s Great Wall (and likewise, the pyramids of Egypt) is a constant reminder to mankind of their great skills (though at incredibly huge sacrifices of human lives) in construction. David Chew’s team of researchers unveiled the crucial importance of aligning core competencies with competitive strategy in achieving superior performance. Finally, there is the equally important paper by Professor Wang Xiaohui. In this work he analyzes the attitudes of Chinese employees in private and state-owned, public sectors. Some interesting findings include the fact that better educated employees are less likely to find their jobs as satisfying. Clearly to enhance the overall working lives of the employed in China, the Chinese government ought to pursue at a faster pace, the transformation of SOE (State-owned Enterprises) into privately run enterprises. Why? For from Professor Wang’s research, those working in the privately run firms tend, firstly to be more satisfied with their jobs and secondly, they are also more committed. With these two prerequisites, we can reasonably expect to foster within private enterprises an even more productive, learning workforce.

I should mention in passing that during this period of editorship, I had to reject several otherwise promising papers. The papers are heavily oriented towards the quantitative and empirical but had failed to satisfy the stringent requirements of the referees. Besides this, it is necessary for authors to relate their research back to the art or science of Chinese management. A strictly technical or instrumentation paper will be more appropriate for specialist journals other than CMS. Again, I am calling for authors to submit papers that can relate psychologically, say cognitively for example, Romance of the Three Kingdoms or Water Margin, to Chinese management.

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