Ben Knapen about China

In today's NRC Handelsblad Knapen writes in his column about the nature of 'Authoritarian Capitalism' in China, referring to recent labour unrest and how the government deals with it. I agree with him that the rather flexible way the government handles recent cases of unrest does not imply a process of democratization in Western terms. Autoritarian capitalism may be hard to undestand for us, but it is a reality with a logic of its own. Personally I think it is deeply rooted in a culture that is not only authoritarian, but also highly materialistic and pragmatic. As long as the government can ensure material improvement, I see no reason why its position would be threatened. Most Chinese people accept a strong government that educates and corrects the people and keeps chaos away.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reflections on Yemeni culture

Image
Ten days of teaching Organisational Behaviour in Yemen provided me with a lot of impressions that were in some way related to 'Arab' or 'Yemeni' culture. If we look at Hofstede's dimensions, the Arab world is often seen as - high power distance - low individualism - high uncertainty avoiding - rather masculin. These easy labels do not tell too much about the culture though. China, for example, has comparable scores. Yet, teaching in Yemen was much easier for me than in China. Why? There are at least two reasons. First, Chinese culture and Arab culture differ on dimensions not accounted for in the Hofstede model. Second, the same dimension means different things in different cultures, so similarity of scores does not tell us the whole story. Let us begin with a dimension that we do not see in Hofstede's model, expressive versus reserved , also called neutral versus emotional or affective versus neutral . Looking at the data of Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, w...
Read more

Hofstede and China: Limitations

Image
Characterizing Chinese Culture: the Poverty of Hofstede’s Dimensions Dr. Huibert de Man Open University of the Netherlands/Maastricht School of Management (Originally written in 2005, adapted in 2009) In many publications on Chinese organizations and management, some attention is given to the influence of the specific business culture in China, which significantly differs, from North American or European culture. The most cited author in this respect is no doubt Hofstede. His analysis of work attitudes of IBM marketing professionals in 40 countries, by means of survey research in 1968 and 1972, formed the basis for a framework for the analysis of cultural differences, which was published in his book ‘ Culture’s Consequences’ in 1980 (Hofstede, 1980). This framework now belongs to the standard view of culture in management. Uncertainty avoidance, collectivism (-individualism), power distance and masculinity (-feminity) have become the standard dimensions in which cultural differences b...
Read more
Wie liever niets verandert, moet een cultuurproject beginnen Aantekeningen naar aanleiding van berichten over de Belastingdienst [*] Huibert de Man [†] , Geldrop Media horen de klok luiden De media waren er vol van. Van artikelen in Trouw tot in het programma van Lubach ging het over de ‘cultuur’ van de Belastingdienst. Een onderzoek van de FNV liet zien dat vrijwel iedereen die geantwoord had op de enquête, ontevreden was. Het woord ‘angstcultuur’ werd veel gebruikt. De onthullingen van een klokkenluider over de manier waarop medewerkers door hun superieuren waren aangespoord om in strijd met de wet te handelen, waren een belangrijke achtergrond voor het FNV-rapport, dat niet voor niets de titel kreeg ‘Hoor de klok luiden’. Maar daarin ging het ook over heel andere dingen, zoals werkomstandigheden, inrichting van kantoren, slecht functionerende computersystemen en inadequate scholing. De algemene noemer was echter de ‘cultuur’ die niet deugde; daarbij sloo...
Read more