The Changing Face of Chinese Management

Chinese management has experienced a dramatic change in recent years. However, established ideas about Chinese management are often oversimplified or outdated. This book provides a much-needed, realistic and up-to-date portrait of Chinese business today and of how it has changed over the last decade. It is a portrait that reveals an intriguing mixture of the old and the new, for while certain features can be traced deep into China's past, others have changed beyond recognition. New forms of enterprise and new ways of conducting business have emerged. Jie Tang and Anthony Ward capture this complexity and present it in an accessible and wholly user-friendly format.
Alongside a discussion of the social and economic forces shaping management, Jie Tang and Anthony Ward provide a wide variety of interview material and case studies, much drawn from their own extensive interviews with managers and from observations within Chinese enterprises. The result is a fresh insight into the mind of the Chinese manager. With China representing a huge economy, and recently joining the World Trade Organisation, the country is now a topic of constant interest in the business world. This book will be of enormous practical help to practitioners and students alike.

Chinese management has experienced a dramatic change in recent years. In many areas, established ideas about how Chinese management operates are oversimplified and outdated. This book sets out to provide a more realistic portrait of Chinese management today, and how it has changed dramatically over the past ten years. The portrait of contemporary Chinese management draws on extensive interviews with Chinese managers conducted by the authors. These provide a wealth of concrete illustrations of how managers deal on a daily basis with the opportunities and threats they face.

Introduction 1. Of different minds, 2. Mandarins and managers, 3. Inside the enterprise: who decides what and when? 4. Emerging contenders: the changing patterns of enterprise, 5. Where the twain meet: joint ventures, 6. Conclusion: continuity and change

A native of Shanghai, Tang Jie was educated in China and England. She has lectured at Fudan University and at the School of Oriental and African Studies of London University. She has worked both in China and Britain helping major British companies establish themselves in China. She is currently engaged in research at the Judge Institute of Management Studies, Cambridge University, and serves as external examiner for the joint Sino-British MBA programme at the University of Wales. Anthony Ward taught Sociology at Lancaster University before spending ten years working at universities throughout China as a special advisor on curriculum development. He is currently working as editorial advisor to the Foreign Languages Press in Shanghai.