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论文案例展示-Leadership of Chinese Small and Medium Entreprises [abstract]
Abstract
This thesis aims to explore the leadership implementation in China with a focus on Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Foshan City. Existing literature has already proven the importance of leadership in modern enterprises, and numerous researches and studies have indicated that Chinese leadership varies from the Western style on various aspects. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to find out whether the leadership adopted by those Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises from Foshan City has distinctive characteristics and styles; and if the answer is positive, the paper wants to investigate into factors that would have imposed influences on the leadership practice as well as mechanism of how such influences are generated. In order to be able to answer these questions, this paper uses a combination of both quantitative research and qualitative study, in the format of questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Then using a social constructionism approach, by utilizing well-accepted theories and models from existing literature, processing and analyzing the quantitative and qualitative data, and integrating all the results into our specific context, this paper does provide evidences that confirm the specialty of leadership behaviors and styles within our context, and interpretations that cultural factors influence the leadership practice in a complex way. Other key findings of this paper include that among different generations, leadership may be perceived and implemented differently, and it seems more reasonable to view leadership as adaptive and dynamic rather than static. Furthermore, since most of the influential factors have multiple dimensions and complexity, it is crucial for Chinese SMEs to promote effective leadership by identifying the advantageous sides of these factors and making good use of them.
Keywords
Leadership, China, SMEs, Culture, Context, Mixed-Methodology, Confucianism, Mianzi, Guanxi, Pragmatism, Changes, Dynamic.
CHAPTER ONE - INTRODUCTION
China’s economy has been experiencing a great deal of changes over the past decade. With the slowdown of the growth rate of GDP and the deepening of reform and opening up, local business in China is inevitably and increasingly exposed to both endogenous challenges and exogenous shock. Especially for small and medium-sized enterprises, also known as the SMEs, the globalization of recession and competition may have imposed devastating influences sooner or later. Several researches (EU SME Centre, 2015; Chen, 2011) conducted on the SMEs in China show some disparities of the challenges and obstacles faced by both local SMEs and foreign SMEs, and other researches (Brettel M. et al., 2012; Mikhailitchenko A. and Lundstrom WJ., 2013) attribute these disparities to different leadership approaches and management styles resulted from cultural influences. The purpose of this thesis is to examine whether leadership is a key element for successful business development, and how cultural factors – or any other factors – impact or even determine the leadership styles in a company. And accordingly, this paper will come up with suggestions for Chinese SMEs to promote effective leadership within their firms in order to survive and overcome the adversity.
Recently, China’s economy has entered a “new normal” phase, where businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, are confronting a mixed picture (EU SME Centre, 2016). On the one hand, the progress of reform and opening-up gives business participants more favorable opportunities and confidence with China’s long-term growth prospects; yet on the other hand, more and more firms are suffering from the soaring costs and stagnant markets, as well as challenges imposed by the upgrading and innovating of industry. In particular, despite the great potential for growth and development, most SMEs in China also face bottlenecks and obstacles in the process of translating opportunities into reality, including difficulties on manufacturing, financing, innovating, human resourcing, etc.
