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by Donny Huang
Understanding Corporate Politics from a Chinese Prospective
Personally I believe that wherever there are human beings, there exist politics, for good or for bad. It is caused by human nature or maybe human foible. For example, the current World Bank President, Mr. Paul Wolfowitz, is resigning at the end of June. What he has done is beyond what the rules allowed in his organization. However, the same kind of deeds gendered in different organizations in different cultures may be considered legitimate. It is very important to understand where the limit stands.
Corporation consists of groups of people with very different gender, ages, backgrounds, and value systems. However, the corporation needs to achieve corporate objectives and goals, so there are many rules and policies set up to avoid uncertainty and increase efficiency. But rules and policies can not replace human emotion and feeling. Therefore, people like to interact with like-minded people. We like to go the extra mile for people we like and trust, like doing favors to those who are close to us. As long as the rules allow, it is fine, such as US president-elect has right to nominate Cabinet members, and most of these nominations are the President’s personal friends. Since those people have known the President for years, when States passes the nominations, those people will enhance the efficiency of US government. So politics can be good for organizations.
In cross-cultural terms, China is a group-oriented, hierarchical society, and China has a long history of being an agricultural society. China has a tradition of regulating people's behavior through Confucian ethics, which have become the Chinese orthodox school of thought for over 200 years. The essence of Confucian value is family-value, loyalty to friends, and respect to the elders. Confucianism lay down the foundation and rules for proper human interactions, and set up roles for people to follow. Relationship transcends the rule of law sometimes. There is an obvious line between insider and outsider. It is common for Chinese to treat people differently based on context and relationship, and people’s social status. Even today, Chinese organizations no matter where they are, still rely heavily on trusted relationships to achieve organization results instead a strong system and structure. Therefore, Chinese culture is a hotbed to develop alliance and trusted friends in organizations which will create strong “corporate politics”.
It is kind of healthy for western managers to develop closer personal relationships with their colleagues, clients, partners, or suppliers in China. The line between professional relationship and personal relationship is blur in Chinese society. Sometimes it is hard for western managers to do this, since it may violate their code of conduct in all of their countries. Remember, in China an organization achieves their maximum result through trusted and harmonious relationship with its people instead of system and structure.
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