[School Post - BiMBA]

Again my apologies if I covered some of this in another post.


The school visit there made me see there are more similarities than differences between us and the Chinese students. One guy in my group, Galton, got elected class president that day. Congrats. He was the most outspoken one of the all the students that I met. Our professors were the ones that led the discussions. We are going to suggest that the next tour have 2 days at BiMBA and let their professors teach us on the second day.

A question was asked by the students in our group: "What does it take to be a good American manager?" We won't answer that here, but I can say that the differences between American and Chinese managers that these students have worked for in either a State Owned Enterprise (SOE) or Multi-national joint venture were, according to them, very noticeable. For instance, they felt more trust working for an American manager when it came to things like promises on compensation (performance bonuses, etc.) and HR related stuff. However, they felt that American expat managers could sometimes be not fully commited due to the fact that expatting can be hard, especially when a family is involved and the manager may just play out the 2 years and leave. Also, local managers can be more effective in that they know the local market and what can motivate local workes better than Americans. Kind of an academic comment I know. But, this is what the students told us.

They also told us that guan xi is used more for connections than actually transacting business. Very similar to the US. In other words, if you are liked by people, you hustle, and come through for people, you stand a good chance of operating successfully. This leads to the last point of guanxi. You need to excercise it well to find someone you trust. I would imagine that is very difficult. I am asking more about this from my new embassy friend and our travel company president: Linda. She does new-venture consulting for Americans in China as well as I'm sure getting good payoffs from all the tea,perl,silk museums we have been visiting with a full busload of American shoppers! :-)