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International Opinion

By Harold Chee (July 2006 Issue)
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Harold Chee shares some of his personal experiences

As China’s economic growth continues unabated, there is an increasing demand for a professional layer of managers with the competences relevant to operating in a global economy. The use of Western management education as a tool to attain managerial effectiveness and efficiency has become popular in China. It is perceived, by both multinational joint venture companies (JVs) and Chinese State Owned Enterprises (SOEs), to be the cure-all or quick fix needed to develop their human capital and transform their businesses.

No extensive research has been conducted on the questions regarding such training in the Chinese market, such as how effective Western management knowledge has been transferred, or how relevant the programme content of some of the management courses – being taught by literally thousands of Western trainers – is to the Chinese market. Chinese managers make a distinction between hard and soft management skills. Many feel that hard skills are more relevant and open to implementation in the Chinese market. This could be explained by the fact that soft skills are more influenced by cultural settings, and hard skills can be applied without much adaptation and are not subject to the same degree of cultural influences.

Chinese managers often feel that Western courses are not customised to the Chinese cultural environment. Although they understood the content and context of Western models and ideas such as teamwork, assertiveness, empowering leadership, and so on, many felt that the soft skill subjects were not appropriate for the Chinese context. These ideas and theories were based on Western values and assumptions embedded in a post-industrial society. Some of these techniques may not be compatible with Chinese society. Take, for example, the Western concept of shared leadership and teamwork. In China, the prevailing attitude is that managers should know their roles, and should have the answers to problems; otherwise they should not be managers in the first place.

The notion of sharing problems and finding solutions together is contrary to current values operating in the China. Even, if a manager accepts the notion of empowerment, the organisational culture is likely to be steeped in the traditional Chinese leadership style of ‘command and control’. Chinese managers feel that many western trainers implicitly present an idealised version of Western organisations and their processes. Perhaps a degree of unlearning is required on the part of the western trainers. They could, for example, include some critical comparative analysis of companies in the west who face similar problems to those encountered in China.

Although western management technology has been accepted by many in China, there is an urgent need to adapt western management technology to Chinese values. This is perhaps the greatest challenge facing providers of western management ideas in the Chinese market.

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