Global Mobility Handbook Project: Characteristics of Chinese Culture

The Global Mobility Handbook Project
MGTS3606 Managing in a Global Workplace
Presented by
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Semester 1 2019

Chapter Assessed: Chapter 5 (Dowling)
Theme: Determining the Talent Pool
Due: Week 12 24th May 2pm
Global Mobility Handbook
Project
Description and Elaboration of Emerging Market Country Characteristic
Response Length: 150-200 words
Insert your answer here.
Chinese Culture
The Chinese culture is one that is characterized by a kind of interaction between an
individual and organization in a high power distance characteristic. Individuals or employees
in the Chinese culture are most of the time, expected to obey and receive the restrictions
made by the top management in the organization, and the top orders sent by the superiors in
an unconditional way. The Chinese cultural environment is majorly characterized by
collectivism (Guo & Cionea, 2017). This type of Chinese social structure promotes or has the
tendency to influence the aims, ambitions and goals of individuals to promote the goals of the
top level management.
The employees are therefore forced to follow and bear orders. Challenging authority is an
unacceptable and abnormal practice (Hu, Schaufeli & Taris, 2016). In that case, managers
would not have the opportunity to understand the employees well. In the process, that will
limit the chances for developing the individual talent of employees. Managers will not have a
good understanding on the strength, weaknesses and potentials of employees and employees
will not understand their managers well (JIANG, 2018). Expatriates will then have the chance
to identify, develop and strengthen their talents in such a working environment.
Evaluation and Application of Emerging Market Country Characteristic to
International Human Resource Management Function
Response Length: 300-350 words
Insert your answer here.
The ability of employees to follow orders from superiors and have less tendency to be
open and free present a lot of challenges to the human resource management function. For
one, it hampers the process of setting up a common employee working culture. Normally, a
multinational organization would want to have a diverse but uniform and common culture of
working, where employees can handle tasks in a diverse yet harmonious ways. Unfortunately,
that would be hard with the system of the superiority in China. The human resource would
struggle to develop a culture of freedom that is adopted by all the employees. That is because
it will be accepted in theory but not in practice (Cooke & Bartram, 2015). Other employees
who are from the western countries will find it hard to form teams with a group that bears the
Chinese culture.
Another challenge would be the fact that it would be hard to make the expatriates from
cultures that are different from the Chinese to work under such a culture. One of the functions
of the human resource is to recruit and provide a favourable working condition for
employees. That would be hard to achieve in the case of an expatriate who is from the
western world, in a Chinese working environment. For instance, an expatriate from the USA
would realize that his boss is wrong in the instructions for achieving a task.

In that case, he/she will try to do things on his own way and achieve the best result. Unlike
in the US where he would receive applause, motivation and praise, his/her bosses would be
on his/her neck and would quarrel the worker to desperation and frustration (Noe et al.,
2017). Such a worker would either hope to quit or withdraw his/her dedication to working for
the best interest of the organization. The human resource therefore has an uphill task and
struggles a lot to develop a balance of a favourable working condition for expatriates in a
Chinese cultural working environment.
Reflection of Evaluation and Application
Response Length: 100-150 words
Insert your answer here.
References
Cooke, F. L., & Bartram, T. (2015). Guest editors’ introduction: human resource
management in health care and elderly care: current challenges and toward a research
agenda. Human Resource Management, 54(5), 711-735.
Guo, Y., & Cionea, I. A. (2017). “Do it this way, not that way”: An exploration of Chinese
workplace conflicts. International Journal of Conflict Management, 28(2), 202-221.
Hu, Q., Schaufeli, W. B., & Taris, T. W. (2016). The effect of a nation-specific stressor on
well-being: Guanxi in Chinese workplace. In Psychosocial Factors at Work in the
Asia Pacific(pp. 325-340). Springer, Cham.
JIANG, X. (2018). Representations and Origins of the Cultural Differences Regarding
Hierarchy Between Chinese and Japanese Employees in the Workplace. International
Business and Management, 16(1), 1-8.
Noe, R. A., Hollenbeck, J. R., Gerhart, B., & Wright, P. M. (2017). Human resource
management: Gaining a competitive advantage. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill
Education.
Total of 3-5 references minimum
Insert your answer here.