This is China! BLOG

The Organization’s the Thing

A Latin American friend of mine runs an American manufacturing facility in the Suzhou Industrial Park. The facility has about two hundred employees now, and will likely have another one hundred before year’s end.

We talked about a situation I had described in a previous entry in which another friend - an American - has at least one employee each month come into his office to cry out his or her woes to the General Manager (GM). The American has an HR manager to managed staff issues; however, staff with dramatic issues (or, at least, what the employee considers dramatic issues).

I asked my Latin American friend if he has the same problem at his company. He said no, he doesn’t. Maybe once a quarter someone comes into his office crying about one thing or another; he listens patiently, then says the issue is really out of his hands. HR would need to check on the policy or the employee would really need to work the issue out with his work group, and the like.

The point the Latin American (LA) GM was making to me was that Chinese employees expect and look to the leader as the individual who has ALL the power, ABSOLUTELY. The LA GM’s feels its his responsibility to have in place the company structure and controls and policies that normalize decision-making and the distribution of power. Then, he has to guide his employees - orient them, as it were - to the use of the structure.

In a sense, the LA GM told me, he was already acquainted with this sort of behaviour from his work in Mexico, his home country. There, staff is always probing for the actual power the leader wields, and are looking for the handles on that power. Immediately, when he took the assignment in China, he saw that Chinese behaved very much the same: for historical and cultural reasons they try to access power in the group coming in close to the leader of the group. Through such access comes a share in the power and protection, both historically important in China’s dynamic social environment.

But times are changing in China, and staff are adapting to the idea of Rule by Policy as opposed to Rule by Big Boss. After all, my friend’s company can boast an annual staff turnover rate amongst the lowest in China.

William Dodson
Suzhou, China
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