Kolumne 1
ProtoSociology
An International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research
Volume 28, 2011
China’s Modernization I
Edited by Georg Peter and Reuß-Markus Krauße
www.protosociology.de
© ProtoSociology Volume 28/2011: China’s Modernization I
2 Contents
© 2011 Gerhard Preyer
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http://www.protosociology.de
peter@protosociology.de
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ISSN 1611–1281
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Volume 28/2011: China’s Modernization I © ProtoSociology
Kolumne 3
ProtoSociology
An International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research
Volume 28, 2011
China’s Modernization I
Contents
Changing China: Dealing with Diversity
Class, Citizenship and Individualization in China’s Modernization ........ 7
Björn Alpermann
Chinese NationBuilding as, Instead of, and Before Globalization .......... 25
Andrew Kipnis
Principles for Cosmopolitan Societies:
Values for Cosmopolitan Places .............................................................. 49
John R. Gibbins
On Modernization: Law, Business, and Economy in China
Modernizing Chinese Law:
The Protection of Private Property in China ........................................... 73
Sanzhu Zhu
Chinese Organizations as Groups of People – Towards a Chinese
Business Administration ......................................................................... 87
Peter J. Peverelli
Income Gaps in Economic Development: Differences among
Regions, Occupational Groups and Ethnic Groups ................................ 101
Ma Rong
© ProtoSociology Volume 28/2011: China’s Modernization I
4 Contents
Thinking Differentiations:
Chinese Origin and the Western Culture
Signs and Wonders: Christianity and Hybrid Modernity in China ......... 133
Richard Madsen
Confucianism, Puritanism, and the Transcendental:
China and America ................................................................................ 153
Thorsten Botz-Bornstein
China and the Town Square Test ........................................................... 173
Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom
Metaphor, Poetry and Cultural Implicature ............................................ 187
Ying Zhang
On Contemporary Philosophy
Can Science Change our Notion of Existence? ....................................... 201
Jody Azzouni
The Epistemological Significance of Practices ......................................... 213
Alan Millar
On Cappelen and Hawthrone’s “Relativism and Monadic Truth” ........... 231
J. Adam Carter
Contributors .......................................................................................... 243
Impressum ............................................................................................. 245
On ProtoSociology ................................................................................. 246
Published Volumes ................................................................................. 247
Digital Volumes available ....................................................................... 251
Bookpublications of the Project .............................................................. 252
Volume 28/2011: China’s Modernization I © ProtoSociology
Chinese Organizations as Groups of People 87
Chinese Organizations as Groups of People
– Towards a Chinese Business Administration
Peter J. Peverelli
Abstract
Business is booming in China and so are Business Administration courses. However, these
courses do not always seem to prepare their students for the job of managing Chinese orga-
nizations. In order to design better courses, we first need to look deeper into the nature of
Chinese organizations. A number of Chinese scholars have realized this and started looking
at Chinese intellectual traditions, in particular Confucian thought, to discern the diffe-
rences between Western organizations (for which most globally used MBA courses have been
designed) and their Chinese counterparts. This has already led to interesting new insights.
However, predicates like ‘Chinese’ or ‘Confucian’ make it difficult to apply the new finding,
more generally. This paper acknowledges the findings, but proposes an alternative organiza-
tion theory that can not only find and explain the Chinese-ness of Chinese organizations,
but can be applied globally, to determine local modes of organizing
Preamble
This is an exploratory paper. As someone who advises European companies in
their long term relations with Chinese partners in practice, and is simultane
ously involved in academic business administration programs in Europe and
China, or more precisely, adapting such courses developed in Europe for a Chi
nese audience, I am regularly exposed to the differences between European and
Chinese organizations and the consequences of those differences for academic
research and teaching of business processes.
In Europe, we have been debating the existence of an indigenous Euro
pean business administration, as opposed to the US dominated MBA type of
courses, and seem still quite far from drawing conclusions (Calori & de Woot
1994, Boone & van den Bosch 1997, Pudelko & Harzing 2007).
In fact, on the global level, the divergence—convergence debate, i.e. the
debate whether the trend in the global business world is towards the develop
ment of multiple local business models, or towards one unified global model,
is still going on as well (see Ohmae (1990) and Whitley (1993) as proponents
for the convergence and divergence points of view respectively, and Chan &
Peverelli (2010) for an alternative point of view).
On one hand, this may make us less than ideal teachers for our Chinese
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88 Peter J. Peverelli
colleagues in designing indigenous business studies, but on the other hand it
enables us to share our own experience with seeking what it is that makes us
different and what we share with others, and how those findings can be em
ployed to define indigenous management studies.
Introduction
Only recently, Chinese researchers have started to look into what makes Chi
nese organizations ‘Chinese.’ The economic reforms that were launched in
the 1980s created a huge need for managers trained to perform in the new
economic environment. Such people were hardly available and to fill that gap,
management studies started booming in China. The vast majority of manage
ment courses established in China at that time were not using academic busi
ness administration programs as their models, but were set up according to the
relatively standard model of the MBA training programs popular all over the
world. The contents were very practical, including the typical MBA program,
with standard courses like: Organization Behaviour, Marketing, Management
Accounting, etc. The objectives were also identical to the Western models:
equipping people with a few years of practical work experience with the basic
academic skills in 1 year (full time) or 2 years (part time).
Apart from being short and very practical, most of the programs were also
very ‘foreign’ in nature. Textbooks were mainly of American and European
origin, the more expensive courses were taught by foreign instructors. For a
while, MBA, in Latin letters became the vernacular term for business studies
in Chinese.
These initial efforts in developing instruction in business administration in
China have been successful in their own terms. They have indeed created a
pool of people better equipped to deal with the challenges of the economic
reforms. A particularly interesting example is the story of Mr Niu Gensheng,
the founder and CEO of one of China’s top dairy companies, Mengniu. An
orphan, he was adopted and raised by a farmer. He made a career in Yili, a
state owned dairy company in Huhhot (the capital of Inner Mongolia), starting
out as a bottle washer all the way to member of the board. In the course of the
economic reforms, his fellow board members apparently deemed him too un
polished to be a member of their team. He was sent away with the strong advice
to get an education on the company’s expense. Mr Niu, probably unexpectedly,
took that advice literally and signed on to an MBA course at Peking University’s
Guanghua School of Management. After returning to his hometown, with his
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Chinese Organizations as Groups of People 89
fresh MBA diploma in his pocket, his old company did not take him back.
He then set up his own dairy company, attracting a considerable number of
his former colleagues. This company ranked among the top 3 dairy companies
within only a few years (Peverelli, 2005, 111–137). Obviously, Mr Niu’s success
is also based on his experience, and other skills, but the MBA course enabled
him to turn the experience and skills into business acumen.
Now that China has earned its place in the global market and has been
pronounced the world’s second largest economy, these Western style MBA
like courses are becoming less satisfactory for the Chinese academic world.
Moreover, the freshly trained Chinese MBA graduates soon found out that
putting everything they had learned into practice literally did not always do
the trick. When a prereform era ‘factory’ is reorganized into a ‘company.’ and
the leader has changed his title from ‘Director’ into ‘General Manager,’ as an
organization it is still a Chinese organization, with employees doing things in
a Chinese fashion.
Some Chinese scholars have started studying this Chineseness. A major
objective for these efforts is to adapt the Western concept of business studies
as taught in China and make it more ‘Chinese,’ thus more applicable to the
management of Chinese organizations.
An important source for these Chinese researchers is traditional Chinese
philosophy. Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, etc., have all been reanalysed
for aspects useful for management, but Confucianism with its emphasis on hi
erarchy and knowing your place in it, is cited most frequently as a major influ
ence on Chinese managerial behaviour. The website of the China International
Management Science Association (also incorporating the symbolic term MBA
in its URL: www.cnmba.org) has a special page on the influence of traditional
Chinese thinking. Visitors can choose between sections for: Daoism, Bud
dhism, Confucianism, the Legal School, The Master Sun School (the strategies
of Master Sun), etc. There is even a special section for ‘farmers’ wisdom,’ taking
into account that China is traditionally an agricultural nation.
The development of Western business administration is embedded in the
sociocultural history of Europe and its main excolonies. It therefore makes
sense that efforts to search for aspects of Chinese organizations and Chinese
management in Chinese sociocultural history as well. As this is a rather broad
theme, I would like to restrict this introductory paper to one research ques
tion: what are the differences between Western and Chinese organizations. A
derived question will be: do these difference mean that we need to let go of a
global standard for business studies, or does it call for rethinking that standard?
I will begin with the emergence of the notion of ‘organization’ as an entity
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90 Peter J. Peverelli
separate from the people that interact in it, in Western thinking, and how this
was instrumental in the development of management science in the early 20th
century. I will then proceed showing that a different sociocultural develop
ment in China has resulted in different perception of the relationship between
organizations and their actors in China, requiring a different view on manage
ment. I will continue introducing recent Chinese research trying to find aspects
of an indigenous Chinese management by trying to find ‘management’ think
ing in traditional Chinese philosophy. Finally, I will point at a major problem
in following that indigenous route, and offer a research method that enables
researchers to identify local modes of organizing, but which can be employed
globally, without a need to ‘go back to ones roots’ for each region.
I thus hope that this preliminary study into the nature of Chinese organiza
tions can facilitate the development of organization studies without cultural
bias.
The Western Organization as Separate From the People
Looking back on the beginnings of human history using modern organization
theory, we cannot but conclude that Homo sapiens has been organizing since
the beginning of its existence. The ability to form groups of people to work
jointly towards the completion on a specific task, thus accomplishing that goal
in a more efficient way than all group members trying to do so individually
may very well be one of the most important traits defining Homo sapiens.
However, modern organization theory usually links the emergence of those
groups of people that we are used to refer to with the term organizations to
the rapid industrial development in Europe and North America in the 19th
century. ‘Organizations in the form that we know them emerged during the
19th century in Europe and America, during the period of economic expansion
by the industrial revolution’ (Scott, 2003: 4).
This development had a large impact on the role of the individual in the
industrial process. Goods that were previously produced by individual artisans,
who exercised total control over the production process, were now manufac
tured in factories, by a number of people specialised in a one particular step of
that process. As a result, an individual worker became less involved with the
final product. Jaffee, an organization theorist with a sociological background,
even speaks of the subordination of labour (Jaffee, 2001, 43), a perception akin
to Marx’s notion of alienation, the uncoupling of workers from the product
of their labour. The main difference between Jaffee’s term subordination and
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Marx’s alienation is that the former also refers to the relationship between the
workers and the factory owners. Jaffee continues his line of reasoning explain
ing that while this specialisation of labour considerably increased the efficiency
of the production process, it also created the need for the factory owners to
control this expanding workforce (op. cit, 45 ff).
The late 19th century and early 20th century then saw the appearance of a
number of theories on managing people in large organizations. As this history
can be found in most organization theory text books (see in particular Hatch &
Cunliffe (2006)), I will only mention a couple that are most significant for the
theme of this paper. French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1893) expanded the
notion of division of labour as set forth by Adam Smith in 1776 by adding the
concepts of hierarchy and the interrelatedness between various work tasks. He
also distinguished between informal and formal organization, i.e. the workers’
social needs versus their work related activities.
The second theory formative of modern Western organization theory was
that of the German sociologist Max Weber (1924). Weber enriched our vocabu
lary with the notion of bureaucracy. However, Weber never intended this word
to have the rather negative connotation it has in the current parlance. Major
themes in Weber’s theory of the bureaucracy were rationality and authority.
He saw the bureaucracy with its formalised rules as a way to ‘rationalize social
order in a manner similar to technology’s rationalizing of economic order’
(Hatch & Cunliffe, 2006, 31).
This is a good point in my discussion to summarise the emergence of the
Western notions of organization and management. In the course of what is
known as the Industrial Revolution, the manufacturing of many goods changed
from production by a single artisan in charge of the entire process to produc
tion in factories in which goods were manufactured by a number of people
specialised in one step of the process. From an economic point of view this
division of labour increased efficiency, but from a social perspective also cre
ated a discrepancy between the workers and the owners of the factories. Those
owners not only needed to control the technical process, but also became faced
with controlling the workforce. These needs were addressed by a number of
academics who introduced the notions of relationships between functions in
organizations in terms of hierarchy, authority, formal and informal organiza
tion, etc. By the beginning of the 1930s, organizations and the people working
in organizations were generally regarded as, linked, but different entities. The
activities of a person employed by a certain organization were divided into
actions related to that employment (formal organization) and other activities.
The former activities needed to be dealt with by the owners of the organization,
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92 Peter J. Peverelli
while the others were considered to be not of their concern, even though they
sometimes could influence the former activities (informal organization). As a
result, the function of the professional manager was created, a person specially
trained in business administration.
The Chinese Organization as a Group of People
This section of my paper heavily draws from Sun Jinghua (2005). Sun observes
that in China the separation of the organization and the people who are part of
that organization has never really taken place. China developed factories and
later modern corporations as well. However, the people in charge of the enter
prises still regard them as ‘groups of living people.’ rather than as inanimate
organizations (Sun, 2005, 3–5). As a result, managing an organization in China
equals managing a group of people. Managers themselves are people and as
such are people among their own people. A primary personal skill is appeasing
people (an ren). A condition for developing this skill is the ability to cultivate
oneself (xiu ji). Managers are first of all examples for their subordinates (Op.
cit., 5; a similar view is held by Zeng Shiqiang (Zeng, 2005, 3)). This perspective
on management is directly inspired on the Confucian belief in the beneficial
effects of education. People are good by nature, but this good nature needs to
be developed through education.
This by itself would not deviate principally from the Western definition of
management. However, Chinese have a propensity to form small groups of
people interacting around a specific topic, or a common property. Within the
larger ‘group of people’, which is the organization, there will smaller groups
of people. Whenever the interests of such a smaller group conflicts with the
interests of the larger group, the members of the smaller group will be inclined
to let those of the smaller group prevail. The bases for forming such smaller
groups are manifold; the more popular include: kinship, place of birth, marital
relationship, friendship, mutual benefits, etc. When a manager has a choice
to promote a family member among his employees to a certain position, or a
better qualified other person, who has no family relationship with the manager,
the manager will be faced with a difficult choice. In a Western organization,
the interests of the abstract organization will usually be given priority, but in
a Chinese situation the choice of the manager will be more complicated. His
family will pressure him to select the family member, but if the other candidate
is a member of an influential small group, the members of that group will in
turn pressure him to promote the nonfamily candidate. There is no convenient
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formula, or ‘decision tree,’ available to calculate the best choice. Small group
affiliation often links employees of Chinese organizations to the outside world.
A Chinese manager can be put under pressure from close relatives outside his
organization to create a position for a family member (Sun, 2005, 13).
This difference has far reaching consequences for virtually all aspects of the
operation of enterprises. In table 1, I have listed four aspects analysed by Sun.
The table is divided into columns for the aspect, the Western (organization
centred) view, the Chinese (person centred view) and the location in Sun for
easy reference.
Table 1: major differences between Western and Chinese organizations.
Aspect Western/ Chinese/ Sun
organization centred person centred
Source of Organizational ability to produce Personal ability to discern and use 45–47
profit goods/services that satisfy opportunities
customer needs
Base for ef- Division of labour; teamwork Harmonious relationship between 63–65
fectiveness combined with competition employees; everyone does his/her
between team members best; care for others
Continuity CEO is a temporary position; the Organizational continuity is based 81–83
continuity of the organization on the continuity of the CEO; CEO
prevails over that of the CEO as omniscient leader
Values Organizational values and Organizational values and perso- 105–110
personal values are separated; nal values are intertwined; perso-
organizational values prevail nal and small group values prevail
over personal values over organizational values
These are not absolute discrepancies. Person centred processes take place in
Western organizations as well, and vice versa. The difference between the or
ganization centred and the people centred approaches is the that in the first
perception the organization and its members are regarded as separate, while
in the latter they are considered to be essentially identical; the members ARE
the organization.
I have attempted to translate Sun’s ideas to the external relations of organiza
tions as well. Organizations are open systems. The are not systems operating
independently from their ennvironment, but but ‘collectives that depend on
and are influenced by environmental factors’ (Scott 2003, 23). We can expect
that the differences between the organization centred and people centred per
ceptions of organizations will have repercussions for the external relations of
organizations as well. To characterize the basic differences, I want to introduce
the term ‘legal person’ that is closely linked with the Western concept of the
organization as an entity separate from the people in it, and is also a product of
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94 Peter J. Peverelli
the industrial revolution (Dewey 1926). This term reinforces the independent
status of the organization in the Western perspective, and also points out legal
relationships (like those laid down in sign contracts) prevail over personal
relationships. I have placed my findings in table 2.
Table 2: main differences between the external relationships of Western and Chinese
organization.
Aspect Western/ Chinese/
Law based Relationship based
Trust based on Universally applied laws Good personal relations bet-
ween the managers
Nature of relations Interorganizational relations based on Interorganizational relations
agreements between organizations based on personal relations
between managers
Continuity Managers have a temporary position; The continuity of a relations is
the continuity of a relation prevails based on the continuity of the
over that of managers relevant manager
Primary value Protecting the interests of the own Maintaining relations with
organization other organizations
Competition Matter of life and death Never let a competitor go
down completely
Chinese Organizing in Practice
Although the core theme of this paper is establishing a model of Chinese or
ganizations, it will be useful to apply them to a few examples. Westerners are
often confused by the propensity for small group affiliation by their Chinese
counterparts; as is witnessed by the following example (from my own consult
ing practice):
A Belgian company started contacts with a company in Guangzhou to
explore possibilities for setting up a joint venture. The Chinese team
consisted of three people, one from the Finance and Production de
partments each, and one from the General Manager’s Office, with the
person from Production as the main contact. The first discussion in
Guangzhou seemed very productive, but for some reason no progress
was made afterwards. It was later found out that all three members of
the Chinese negotiation team were from Hunan province. The Belgians
were recommended to that company by a contact in Hunan. Their Hu
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Chinese Organizations as Groups of People 95
nan friend had introduced them to a Hunan group in the organization.
Apparently this group was unable to win the interest of other people in
their organization in cooperation with the Belgians. While the Belgians
believed that they were negotiating with the company (the organiza
tion), they were in fact talking to a group within the organization.
Although Chinese are used to live and work in a society based on multiple small
group membership, this does not preclude that they as well can be occasionally
annoyed by the behaviour of groups of which they are not members themselves.
The following example originates from a field study conducted in Shenzhen
by researchers of the Hong Kong Baptist University (private communication):
A Taiwanese company has set up a joint venture in Shenzhen for the
production of electronic appliances. To ensure the quality of the prod
ucts, the company tries to buy its components from the same Taiwanese
suppliers as it does in its home region. The Purchasing Department of
the joint venture is headed by a person from Taiwan. The Taiwanese
suppliers directly contact him for all aspects of their business. The local
employees of the Purchasing Department feel a little detached from
their work. They regard the daytoday operation of their department
‘a matter that is handled between the Taiwanese.’
In the organization of this case, the joint venture, we can observe a small group
of Taiwanese. They are expatriates sent to the venture for a number of years.
They all have management functions. They use their continue inclusions origi
nating from their work in the Taiwanese mother company in their work in the
joint venture. Within the Purchasing Department, there is a small group of
local employees who feel alienated from much of the typical purchasing activi
ties, because the Taiwanese do not allow them access to their group.
In the first example, we can observe a small group formed on the basis of a
shared home province. This group included members who were still living in
that home province. The latter introduced a potential foreign partner to the
organization using their Hunan group membership as channel. The introduc
tion was successful, but the formation of a partnership between the foreign
company and the organization failed, apparently because the Hunan group was
unable to achieve a sufficient critical mass.
In the second example, the small group of Taiwanese managers is again based
on a common descent. This group has considerable influence on the opera
tion of the organization, as all group members hold management positions.
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96 Peter J. Peverelli
The problem in this case is that they exclude local employees from some of
the basic processes in the company (this is the case in at least the Purchasing
Department). This exclusion causes a feeling of alienation among the local
employees. If this feeling is not contained in time, it can lead to a decrease
in loyalty towards the organization and in turn strengthen the loyalty for the
small group (local employees).
Rethinking Organization Theory
The above discussion of discrepancies between Western and Chinese organiz
ing processes is not meant to prove that ‘east is east and west is west and never
the twain will meet.’ Instead, we need to formulate an organization theory that
can account for both (and possible other) types of organizing. Here I propose
to use Social Integration (SI) theory as such an alternative model.
SI theory has been developed on the basis of Weick’s organization theory
(1979, 1995), enriched with concepts from postmodern philosophy and psy
cholinguistics (Peverelli, 2000; Peverelli & Verduyn, 2010). In this theory, or
ganizing is defined as ‘the reduction of equivocality in ongoing social interac
tion between actors to couple their behavior to perform a certain task more
efficiently’ (Peverelli & Verduyn, 2010, p. 5). One consequence of this process
is the emergence of groups of actors who frequently interact around a specific
theme and therefore make sense of that topic in a more or less similar way.
Those actors are said to be ‘included’ in such groups. Each actor is involved in
a large number of such groups, which is referred to as ‘multiple inclusion.’ Two
or more groups are connected by actors with inclusions in each of the groups.
As soon as two or more actors start interacting about a certain theme, they will
create a configuration consisting of the actors and the cognitive matter they
share (typical language, symbols, ways to do things, etc.).
We can tentatively formulate ‘culture’ as ‘the way to cope with multiple
inclusions’. People are always included in a large number of social groups and
even when interacting about a specific issue, the key persons involved will make
sense of that issue from the point of view of different inclusions. People can
adopt different strategies to deal with this. One way is fixing oneself on the
perspective of a specific inclusion; another is trying to act in accordance with
(reconcile) the perspectives of at least a number of the most essential inclusions
(the other extreme of the scale). Westerners (that is, people from Northwest
Europe and AngloSaxon nations; people of different European regions seems
to vary as well in this respect) seem to position themselves on the first extreme
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Chinese Organizations as Groups of People 97
of the scale, while Chinese end up at the latter end (Peverelli (2000, 52–61,
83–85 and 123–126), Chan & Peverelli (2010, 221).
The above mentioned case of the Chinese manager faced with the task to
promote a family member or a more qualified alternative candidate is a good
example of a situation in which the average Western manager would find the
task easy and promote the most qualified person. The Chinese counterpart
would be facing a lengthy deliberation of the most relevant inclusions of the
candidates, as well as his own group memberships. Even if the Chinese man
ager would select the relative, he would be inclined to make up to (the groups
of ) the other candidate as well, lest he would lose their support in future issues.
The case of the founding of Mengniu Dairy by Mr Niu Gensheng intro
duced in the beginning of this paper can also be better understood using the
SI model. Mr Niu had formed a large configuration of friends when he was a
manager at Yili. As soon as he registered Mengniu, that entire configuration
moved from Yili to the new company, while more or less continuing there
what they use to be doing at Yili. Moreover, according to SI theory, although
the relationship between Niu’s people an their former employer Yili changed,
they still remained to be included in Yili. Inclusions are cognitive in nature,
and the cognitive ties with former colleagues do not sever instantly after people
change jobs. The shared inclusion of so many key people in Mengniu with Yili
is still affecting the competition between these two companies (Peverelli, 2005,
111–137).
Applying SI theory to the Belgian minicase, we can see that the Hunan peo
ple in the company formed a configuration of ‘Hunan people in the company’.
This configuration was part of a larger group that also included people still
actually living in Hunan. The Belgian investor got first introduced (through
another shared inclusion) to the person in Hunan, who further introduced
him to his Hunan friends in the company. So far, that was a natural process
of surfing through social networks using people with multiple inclusions as
channels. However, the Belgian failed to assess the limited nature of the group
of people he was talking to, even though the three introduced themselves as a
group of people within the company sharing the same home region. The first
discussion was conducted smoothly, forming a new configuration including
the Belgian investor. However, for reasons unknown, the people in the Hu
nan configuration failed to attract other colleagues into the negotiation. That
blocked further access to the company for the Belgian. The Belgian on the
other hand, also failed to try to access the potential partner company through
other channels. This can be explained by the fact that the Belgian, socialized
in Western culture, focused too much on one single inclusion. From a Western
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98 Peter J. Peverelli
point of view, e.g., it would have been deemed inappropriate to simultaneously
contact other managers of the company.
In the second example we see that the Taiwanese investors are trying to
continue an external configuration with a trusted supplier in their venture on
the Mainland. This is in accordance with what has been hypothesized in table
2: trust with external parties is based on good relationships. This explains why
the company prefers to let the Taiwanese manager of the Purchasing Depart
ment handle the contacts with Taiwanese suppliers, even those who are also
producing on the Mainland. This is deemed to be the best guarantee that the
good relationship with those suppliers is continued. What the management
fails to see is that this practice de facto creates two purchasing departments,
one for the Taiwanese suppliers and one for the local suppliers.
An interesting aspect of the point made in the previous paragraph is that
the Taiwanese managers, while not Mainland Chinese, still born and raised in
Chinese culture, were also unable to see all the consequences of their decisions.
In the Belgian case, we can still attribute the mistakes made to cultural differ
ences, but the cultural differences between Taiwan and Mainland Chinese are
not large enough to use as an excuse for their management problems. It seems
that there is a need to adapt the teaching of business administration, to train
mangers better equipped to manage Chinese organizations.
However, there is also no need for a ‘Chinese business administration’, or a
theory of ‘Confucian management’. This would deny the possibility that we
could formulate a general model of human organizing that can analyze organiz
ing processing anywhere in the world. With a theory of Chinese management,
we could do not much more in Brazil than investigate the Chineseness of
Brazilian organization, etc.
What really seems to be needed is rethinking the standard business adminis
tration program taught all over the world today, in which most courses centre
on the notion of ‘management.’ When we redesign such programs with ‘or
ganizing’, the company as organization, as the core notion, we should be able
to eliminate that need. The notion of management as currently used globally
in Business Administration programs is based on the Western presumption of
the separation of the organization and the people operating in its context. The
concept of organizing as defined in SI theory deals with people, their social
interaction and the consequences of that interacting. Management is but one
of those consequences. We can start using organization theory to understand
Chinese, or Brazilian, organizations and then formulate ways to manage orga
nizations in those, and other, regions.
Volume 28/2011: China’s Modernization I © ProtoSociology
Chinese Organizations as Groups of People 99
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to the research team of Prof Chan Kwok Bun of Hong Kong
Baptist University for their fieldwork notes quoted in this paper.
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Volume 28/2011: China’s Modernization I © ProtoSociology
Contributors 243
Contributors
Prof. Jody Azzouni, Department of Philosophy , Tufts University, Medford,
MA, United States of America.
Prof. Dr. Björn Alpermann, Department of Chinese Studies, Würzburg Uni
versity, Germany.
Prof. Dr. Thorsten BotzBornstein, Humanities and Social Science Depart
ment, Gulf University for Science and Technology, Kuwait.
Dr. J. Adam Carter, Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Dr. John R. Gibbins, Wolfson College, Cambridge, United States of America.
Prof. Dr. Andrew Kipnis, Senior Fellow, Department of Political & Social
Change, School of International, Political & Strategic Studies; Department
of Anthropology, School of Culture, History & Language, ANU College of
Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
Prof. Dr. Richard Madsen, Department of Sociology, University of California,
San Diego, USA.
Prof. Alan Millar, Department of Philosophy, University of Stirling, Stirling
Scotland, United Kingdom.
Dr. Peter J. Peverelli, Deptartment of Economics & Business Administration
VU University, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Prof. Dr. Ma Rong, Department of Sociology; Institute of Sociology and An
thropology, Peking University, Beijing, China.
Prof. Dr. Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, History Department, University of Califor
nia, Irvine, USA.
© ProtoSociology Volume 28/2011: China’s Modernization I
244
Dr. Ying Zhang, Center, Institute of Logic and Cognition, Sun Yatsen Uni
versity, Guangzhou, China.
Prof. Dr. Sanzhu Zhu, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of
London, London, GB.
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Contributors 245
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Contextualism in Philosophy:
Knowledge, Meaning, and Truth
Gerhard Preyer, Georg Peter (eds.)
In epistemology and in philosophy of language there is fierce debate about the role
of context in knowledge, understanding, and meaning. Many contemporary episte-
mologists take seriously the thesis that epistemic vocabulary is context-sensitive. This
thesis is of course a semantic claim, so it has brought epistemologists into contact with
work on context in semantics by philosophers of language. This volume brings together
the debates, in a set of twelve specially written essays representing the latest work
by leading figures in the two fields. All future work on contextualism will start here.
Contents
Gerhard Preyer, Georg Peter
Introduction: The Limitation of
Contextualism
I Contextualism in Epistemology II Compositionality, Meaning and
Context
Contextualism and the New Linguistic
Turn in Epistemology Literalism and Contextualism: Some
Peter Ludlow Varieties
François Recanati
The Emperor‘s ‚New Knows‘
Kent Bach A Tall Tale In Defense of Semantic Mini-
malism and Speech Act Pluralism
Knowledge, Context and the Agent‘s Point
Herman Cappelen and Ernie Lepore
of View
Timothy Williamson Semantics in Context
Jason Stanley
What Shifts? Thresholds, Standards, or
Alternatives? Meaning before Truth
Jonathan Schaffer Paul M. Pietroski
Epistemic Modals in Context Compositionality and Context
Andy Egan, John Hawthorne, Brian Weath- Peter Pagin
erson
Presuppositions, Truth Values, and Ex-
pressing Propositions
Michael Glanzberg
Index
Oxford University Press: Oxford 2005, 410 pages
Volume 28/2011: China’s Modernization I © ProtoSociology
257
Context-Sensitivity and Semantic Minimalism
Essays on Semantics and Pragmatics
Gerhard Preyer and Georg Peter (eds.)
Preface
Introduction: Semantics and
Pragmatics: The Central Issues
Herman Cappelen
Part I Part II
The Defence of Moderate On Critiques of Semantic
Contextualism Minimalism
Content, Context and Composition Meanings, Propositions, Context, and
Peter Pagin, Francis Jeffry Pelletier Semantical Underdeterminacy
Jay Atlas
A Little Sensitivity goes a Long Way.
Kenneth A. Taylor Semantic Minimalism and Nonindexical
Contextualism
Radical Minimalism, Moderate Contextu- John MacFarlane
alism
Kepa Korta and John Perry Minimal (Disagreement about) Semantics
Lenny Clapp
How and Why to Be a Moderate Contex-
tualist Minimal Propositions, Cognitive Safety
Ishani Maitra Mechanisms, and Psychological Reality
Reinaldo Elugardo
Moderatly Insensitive Semantics
Sarah-Jane Leslie Minimalism and Modularity
Philip Robbins
Sense and Insensitivity: Or where Minimal-
ism meets Contextualism Minimalism, Psychological Reality, Mean-
Eros Corazza and Jerome Dokic ing and Use
Henry Jackman
Prudent Semantics Meets Wanton Speech
Act Pluralism
Back to Semantic Minimalism
Elisabeth Camp
Minimalism versus Contextualism in
Semantics
Emma Borg
Oxford University Press: Oxford 2007
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258
NewBooks
ontos This book continues Rescher’s longstanding practice of
Nicholas Rescher
publishing groups of philosophical essays. Notwithstanding
their thematic diversity, these discussions exhibit a uniformi-
ty of method in addressing philosophical issues via a mix-
Nicholas Rescher
ture of historical contextualization, analytical scrutiny, and
On the Nature of Philosophy common-sensical concern. Their interest, such as it is, lies
And Other Philosophical Essays not just in what they do but in how they do it.
ISBN 978-3-86838-137-5 .
129pp., Hardcover, EUR 69,00
ontos The book seeks to characterize reflexive conceptual struc-
Nicholas Rescher tures more thoroughly and more precisely than has been
done before, making explicit the structure of paradox and
the clear connections to major logical results. The goal is to
Patrick Grim, Nicholas Rescher trace the structure of reflexivity in sentences, sets, and sys-
Reflexivity tems, but also as it appears in propositional attitudes, men-
From Paradox to Consciousness tal states, perspectives and processes. What an under-
ISBN 978-3-86838-135-1 standing of patterns of reflexivity offers is a deeper and de-
189pp., Hardcover, EUR 79,00 mystified understanding of issues of semantics, free will,
and the nature of consciousness.
ontos Issues of subjectivity and consciousness are dealt with in
Philosophical Analysis 47
very different ways in the analytic tradition and in the idealis-
tic–phenomenological tradition central to continental philos-
ophy. This book brings together analytically inspired philos-
Sofia Miguens,
ophers working on the continent with English-speaking phi-
Gerhard Preyer (Eds.) losophers to address specific issues regarding subjectivity
Consciousness and consciousness. The issues range from acquaintance
and Subjectivity and immediacy in perception and apperception, to the role
ISBN 978-3-86838-136-8 of agency in bodily ‘mine-ness’, to self-determination
363pp., Hardcover, EUR 98,00 (Selbstbestimmung) through (free) action. Thus involving
philosophers of different traditions should yield a deeper
vision of consciousness and subjectivity; one relating the
mind not only to nature, or to first-person authority in linguis-
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sometimes treated as exhausting the topic–but also to many
other aspects of mind’s understanding of itself in ways which
disrupt classic inner/outer boundaries.
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