Guanxi and Business Strategy

Guanxi and Business Strategy
Author: Eike A. Langenberg
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2007-06-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3790819565

This book examines a topic of paramount importance to those doing business with China: the impact of personal relationships (guanxi) on business affairs. It shows that the commercial utilization of guanxi with suppliers, customers, competitors and authorities yields significant sustainable competitive advantages. Coverage also assesses guanxi-based business strategies in terms of compliance with legal and ethical standards.

Guanxi, How China Works

Guanxi, How China Works
Author: Yanjie Bian
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2019-03-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1509500421

How do social relations, or guanxi, matter in China today and how can this distinctive form of personal connection be better understood? In Guanxi: How China Works, Yanjie Bian analyzes the forms, dynamics, and impacts of guanxi relations in reform-era China, and shows them to be a crucial part of the puzzle of how Chinese society operates. Rich in original studies and insightful analyses, this concise book offers a critical synthesis of guanxi research, including its empirical controversies and theoretical debates. Bian skillfully illustrates the growing importance of guanxi in diverse areas such as personal network building, employment and labor markets, informal business relationships, and the broader political sphere, highlighting guanxi’s central value in China's contemporary social structure. A definitive statement on the topic from a top authority on the sociology of guanxi, this book is an excellent classroom introduction for courses on China, a useful reference for guanxi researchers, and ideal reading for anyone interested in Chinese culture and society.

Guanxi in the Western Context

Guanxi in the Western Context
Author: Barbara Xiaoyu Wang
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 149
Release: 2019-07-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3030240010

Deeply rooted in Chinese culture, the concept of guanxi has been widely researched from historical, cultural and political perspectives. As Chinese multinational corporations (MNCs) expand, expatriates are increasingly carrying guanxi with them to host countries, yet little has been written on how this indigenous construct is employed in the Western world. This book takes a theoretical approach to the examination of this phenomenon and proposes a conceptual framework for the ‘guanxi capitalism structure,’ illustrating its fundamental role as the invisible hand in China. Providing empirical analysis, the author demonstrates how guanxi affects intra-firm multicultural group dynamics involving Chinese expatriates and host-country natives in Chinese MNCs. With insights for scholars researching Asian business and globalisation, and practitioners working in Chinese MNCs, this book argues that guanxi significantly alters an expatriate’s adjustment, and offers practical suggestions for cross-cultural management and the process of initiating, building, and utilising guanxi in a Western context.

Guanxi

Guanxi
Author: Robert Buderi
Publisher: Century
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2006
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781905211227

Half a world away from the calm beauty of Puget Sound, there's a lab where Bill Gates's software dreams come trueaSo begins Guanxi, the compelling behind-the-scenes tale of the allure of China today - and a unique partnership between the world's most famous capitalist and the world's largest communist nation that showcases what it takes to compete in the age of global innovation. Guanxi (gwan-shee),the Chinese term for mutually beneficial relationships essential to success in the Middle Kingdom, tells the story of the juggernaut research lab that underpins Microsoft's relationship building in China. Unfurled through a gripping narrative that moves between Beijing and Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, WA, it follows the lab's emergence as a Mecca for Chinese computer-science talent - a place where 10,000 resumes arrive in a month, written exams are farmed out to 11 cities to screen applicants, and interns sleep on cots next to their cubicles. So far, the company has invested well over $100 million and hired more than 400 of China's best and brightest to turn the outpost into an important window on the future of computing and a training ground to uplift the state of Chinese computer science - creating dramatic payoffs for both Microsoft and its host country that are helping the company overcome many of the challenges of China. Guanxi traces the arc of the lab's stunning success from a memo by erstwhile Microsoft visionary Nathan Myhrvold to its early days under maverick speech recognition guru Kai-Fu Lee (since plucked away by Google for some $10 million) to its more recent tutelage under former child prodigies Ya-Qin Zhang and Harry Shum. The two China-born stars, who both attended college in their native country at the age of 12, have orchestrated the Beijing lab's recent emergence as an epicenter of Microsoft's intensifying battles against Google in the search wars, Nokia in the wireless arena, and Sony in graphics and entertainment. As pundits rail about the 'China threat' to US competitiveness and offer often-hackneyed arguments against outsourcing, Guanxi explores the true ramifications of China's high-tech buildup-and how it can be turned to competitive advantage, in part by 'insourcing' the untapped talent in the country's top universities. Sprinkled with telling observations, compelling characters, and lively anecdotes about the brilliant successes and sometimes painful stumbles of the world's most powerful software company, Guanxi is essential reading for business leaders, entrepreneurs, and technologists around the globe.

Gifts, Favors, and Banquets

Gifts, Favors, and Banquets
Author: Mayfair Mei-Hui Yang
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2016-12-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1501713043

An elaborate and pervasive set of practices, called guanxi, underlies everyday social relationships in contemporary China. Obtaining and changing job assignments, buying certain foods and consumer items, getting into good hospitals, buying train tickets, obtaining housing, even doing business—all such tasks call for the skillful and strategic giving of gifts and cultivating of obligation, indebtedness, and reciprocity. Mayfair Mei-hui Yang's close scrutiny of this phenomenon serves as a window to view facets of a much broader and more complex cultural, historical, and political formation. Using rich and varied ethnographic examples of guanxi stemming from her fieldwork in China in the 1980s and 1990s, the author shows how this "gift economy" operates in the larger context of the socialist state redistributive economy.

Guanxi, Social Capital and School Choice in China

Guanxi, Social Capital and School Choice in China
Author: Ji Ruan
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2016-11-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 3319407546

This book focuses on the use of guanxi (Chinese personal connections) in everyday urban life: in particular, how and why people develop different types of social capital in their guanxi networks and the role of guanxi in school choice. Guanxi takes on a special significance in Chinese societies, and is widely-discussed and intensely-studied phenomenon today. In recent years in China, the phenomenon of parents using guanxi to acquire school places for their children has been frequently reported by the media, against the background of the Chinese Communist Party’s crackdown on corruption. From a sociological perspective, this book reveals how and why parents manage to do so. Ritual capital refers to an individual's ability to use ritual to benefit and gain resources from guanxi.

Handbook of the Philosophical Foundations of Business Ethics

Handbook of the Philosophical Foundations of Business Ethics
Author: Christoph Luetge
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 1582
Release: 2012-10-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9789400714953

The Handbook of Business Ethics: Philosophical Foundations is a standard interdisciplinary reference handbook in the field of business ethics. Articles by notable philosophers and economists examine fundamental concepts, theories and questions of business ethics: Are morality and self-interest compatible? What is meant by a just price? What did the Scholastic philosophers think about business? The handbook will cover the entire philosophical basis of business ethics. Articles range from historical positions such as Aristotelianism, Kantianism and Marxism to systematic issues like justice, religious issues, rights and globalisation or gender. The book is intended as a reference work for academics, students (esp. graduate), and professionals.

Doing Business in China

Doing Business in China
Author: Tim Ambler
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2004
Genre: China
ISBN: 9780415310147

China may soon be the biggest economy in the world. This book is a practical guide to business practices, market conditions, negotiations, organizations, networks and the business environment in China. It is aimed specifically at Western and non-Chinese businesses and managers.

Myths About Doing Business in China

Myths About Doing Business in China
Author: H. Chee
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2004-10-20
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0230508863

China is rapidly becoming an economic superpower, yet has a very different business culture that is often misunderstood outside of China. This can result in costly financial and strategic errors. This book confronts the myths about China and Chinese business practice and gives the reader a clear understanding of the culture and how to engage with it successfully.