ProtoSociology

Volume 28, 2011

China's Modenization I

Chinese Organizations as Groups of People
Towards a Chinese Business Administration

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 organizations. 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 differences 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 organiza­tion 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