A question raised by Strategic Management Consultant Muhammad AbuLaban, MBA,B.Eng. in the LinkedIn group: STRATEGY PROFESSIONALS NETWORK (http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=134530&trk=anet_ug_hm):
“What are the main differences
between Western and Chinese Business Strategic Thinking?
All MBA books that we have studied in graduate school of management in Malaysia were from Western point of view of strategy.
I wonder How Chinese business thinkers differentiate in their strategic thinking..
Do you have any idea?”
All MBA books that we have studied in graduate school of management in Malaysia were from Western point of view of strategy.
I wonder How Chinese business thinkers differentiate in their strategic thinking..
Do you have any idea?”
Well, good question;
and we all know this attribute translates to “hard to answer” - like it seems
to be always the case with simple questions.
Of course nearly
all strategy books and most popular management recipes are created with a specific
western, US in particular, view in mind. Some US based practices fail already when
attempts are made to apply them to “Europeans”. Surprisingly this strange human
species turns out to behave different from what the US mainstream culture may
predict. And – even worse – they are by no means homogeneous.
This rift
even widens at least tenfold when going further to the east: the differences
become more profound as does the heterogeneity. A considerable number of attempts
has been made figure out their very nature. However it turned out, that even
the dimensions alongside which you could detect different values and attitudes
are determined by cultural preconceptions. To put it plainly: To get the right
answers we often even ask the wrong questions.
But the good
news is that we are not alone. And we are not the first ones to ask these
questions. A rather well-known name which is traded in the culture scene in
this context is Geert Hofstede, whom I once called the grand old man of inter-cultural
research (http://corporate-culture-institute2.blogspot.de/2008/03/what-silly-question.html).
Geert devoted a major part of his life to find quantitative evidence that
culture between nations differs.
So there is a
simple answer to your question as well - at least when you are willing to accept
the underlying statistical research methodology.
e.g here …
Remarkable
differences may be found between countries, which might look so similar from
some more remote viewpoint, like …
- Denmark: http://geert-hofstede.com/denmark.html
- Netherlands: http://geert-hofstede.com/netherlands.html
- Germany: http://geert-hofstede.com/germany.html
Here Denmark
dominates in ‘Long-Term-Orientation’, the Netherlands in ‘Individualism’ and
Germany differs in its strong focus on ‘Uncertainty avoidance’ and ‘Masculinity’.
You may go
on comparing e.g Japan (high ‘Masculinity’) and India (high ‘Power distance’)
In case of irresistible
profound interest, I recommend to work yourself through the 500 pages of Geert Hofstede’s,
"Cultures and Organizations".
I did it –
and at least for me it was worth the effort.
Comments are
welcome
