The Changing Face of Chinese Management

The Changing Face of Chinese Management, by Jie Tang and Anthony Ward. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. xi + 234 pp. £19.99 (paperback). Economic reforms in China have transformed the management of business, yet how the values and practices of managers have changed remains relatively neglected in the research literature. Jie Tang and Anthony Ward's book is thus a most welcome addition. The book interweaves analyses based on recent research with their own immersion in interviewing Chinese managers at all levels and types of firms. They try to provide a feel for what it is like to manage an enterprise against the background of political, economic and institutional change. They do so wonderfully, especially through the boxed excerpts that provide fascinating vignettes of the day-to-day reality of management in China as expressed by Chinese managers in their own words. The book is organized into seven substantive chapters, plus an introduction and conclusion, beginning with a chapter on culture that explores the values that underpin managerial and organizational behaviour. Despite abundant evidence of changes in cultural outlook, many of these are superficial. The authors, while careful to avoid stereotypes, argue that deeper cultural values predating the People's Republic persist among Chinese managers, and that the reforms leave "the dragon free to don the three-piece suit while remaining much the same old dragon at heart" (p. 2). Collectivist and regionalist sentiments, along with a preference for family or network-connected parties, inform recruitment, organization and even investment strategies. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on the state enterprise sector: Chapter 2 on institutional change, which has already been much researched, and Chapter 3 on the less-researched practices of state-sector management. The past two decades have been challenging times for managers of state enterprises, with the winding back of the planned economy, deregulation, a new competitive environment populated by foreign-invested firms, township and village enterprises, and the rise of private firms. Their enterprises have been reformed repeatedly to become more market-attuned, reconfigured into joint stock companies or quasi-private enterprises, or recycled (sometimes pensioned off) via asset management companies. Nevertheless, some things do not change (much). As one interviewee sighed: "fewer fathers-in-law [line ministries], but still too many mothers-in-law [regulatory agencies]" (p. 49). In the world of the state enterprise it remains difficult to draw a distinction between officials and managers when so much of the economy is still controlled by the state: "Mandarins and managers merge, the captains of industry are simultaneously cadres of the Party-state. This intertwining means that business must attend to the concerns of government" (pp. 56-7). The continuing government-business nexus explains the peculiarities of management in state firms. They are constrained by local government priorities and a continuing emphasis on chasing output and increasing the work force, when the firms they manage would be better off (read, market-responsive) if they reduced output of non-saleable inventory and cut staff. …