Australian Manager In Chinese Market: A Comparison Of Eastern And Western Managers

Comparison of Eastern and Western Managerial Styles based on Hofstede’s Six Dimensions

Discuss about the Australian Manager in Chinese Market.

The aim of the essay is to assess and compare the western mangers and the eastern managers against the six models by Hopstede. The managers from the eastern nations like China give a lot of importance to wellbeing of all. The managers from the western countries like Australia stress more on individual achievement and show of feelings. Hopstede calls this eastern attitude collectivism while the western outlook is called individualism. Firstly the easy contrasts between the western and the eastern managers on the grounds of individualism and collectivism. The next section will be assess the power of the Chinese collectivism in building long term relationships. The last section is to compare between the two groups of managers. The three paragraphs are three sections which are divided into three aspects. The first aspect deals with Chinese collectivism, the second aspect deals with individualism while the third aspects speak about the adoption of the collectivism by the Australian manager. The paragraphs have opinions which contradict on the grounds of the two aspects.

The manager from Australia is a member of the western society who wants to operate in China. The managers in the western countries stress more on individualism and on individual efforts. They pay a lot attention on individual effort in corporate spaces and want to measure results quantitatively. The eastern managers like the ones from China pay a lot importance to corporate loyalty and believe in unity of work. The eastern managers believe in collectivism and stress on quality of work and relationships (Sanders, 2014). Allen,  Diefendorff & Ma (2014) in their work show that the nations like the United States and Australia promote individualism in the work place. They look upon expressions as individual rights and encourage free personal communication. The eastern countries like China usually pay more importance to group emotions than individual emotions. Goodrich & De (2014) argue that the western countries in this give more freedom of expressions to their managers that then eastern counter. The Australian manager being a westerner will be able to express himself freely which will allow him to build relationship and make friends with people. Guan et al, (2015) in their work showed that the Chinese are better decision makers compared to their American counterparts owing to greater capacity to compromise and arrive at common points. Akkawanitcha  et al. (2015) in their work shows that the Australian manager need to develop skills and emotional intelligence to adopt the Chinese managerial tradition upholding collectivism. He must master the skill of compromising with other members in order to arrive at decisions. The Chinese managers are more successful because they pay more importance to the feelings of others. This minimizes the scope of inter person conflict. These collective skills provide ground for understanding the need of the corporate groups like the departments, work teams which comprise several individuals. The individualistic tendencies of the western managers encourage their employees to assert their personal needs and ambitions. These needs and ideas may contradict each other and create rift between the team members. The conflict will hamper the productivity and efficiency of the team members. The collectivism practiced by the Chinese helps the employees or team members to arrive at a decision. This culture of the Chinese respects the goal of the teams and departments. The Chinese managers pay more emphasis on achievement of group or organizational goals over individual ambitions. This minimizes egos and conflicts among the team members or departments. This increases the efficiency of the teams and departments which leads to achievement of organizational goals. The Chinese organizations are among the biggest organizations in the world today.  This collectivism of the Chinese have brought about economic boom in China and the nation is considered to be one among the future economic giants in the world.

Adoption of Collectivism by the Australian Manager

Hiew et al., (2015) point out in their work the difference between the mood  and emotions of the easterners like Chinese and the westerners like Americans. They point out that the Chinese follow collectivism while the Americans follow individualism. They have shown that the Chinese are more open to advices from their family members and consider them important. The participation of the family members forms the basis of strong marital and other relationship the Chinese share and cherish. Kato (2014) however in his work stated just the opposite about the two groups of people. The study showed that the Australian managers give more importance to individual emotions, comforts, pain and so on. This has led Australia to accept the people from the eastern countries like Taiwan into their population. The Australian managers owing to their short term relationship building capacity can work with people from diverse cultures. The individualistic culture of the Australians helps them to understand the emotions and moods of employees from several countries. This factor can be attributed for the success of the Australian companies entering emerging markets like Asia and Africa. Li & Nesbit (2014) in their work argue that the Chinese managers, compared to their western counterparts value human resource more. The Chinese managers who work in American or European multinational companies have profound effect on the HRM because they value long term relationship. Arpaci & Balo?lu (2016) in their work opine that considering the capability of the Chinese to build long trem relationship, the Australian managers should learn to accept and adopt collectivism. They as a result will be able to connect to their employees emotionally and building term relationship. The Australian manager will be able to build long term relationship with his subordinates. This will result in longer retention of the employees that will decrease the employee turnover in his departments. Thus Chinese collectivism will make the Australian manager accomplish the goals well ahead of deadline because he will be able to plan his strategies well ahead of time.

Haffar et al., (2016) in their work show that Western managers reveal masculine emotions whereas eastern managers show feminine qualities. This difference can be attributed to the fact that the western countries like Australia encourage personal show of feelings, success and achievement. The Chinese look down on personal assertment of feelings and achievement. Barry III (2015) in his work Journals of Cross Culture Psychology reveals that individualism and masculinity are closely related. The work proposed that Australians give a lot of importance to individualism. They encourage achievement, physical show of success and competitiveness. These traits by large are considered being masculine and the people following them pay more importance to their immediate family members and close realtives. Baptista & Oliveira, (2015) propose that the Chinese pay more respect to feelings like caring for family, concern for the weak, cooperation, modesty and quality of every life. The authors further emphasize that the Chinese are more concerned with the happiness of their families, relatives and even indirect relatives. These feminine feelings have helped the Chinese managers to build more long term relationships with their subordinates. Bain & Bongiorno, (2015) in their work opine that the Australian managers must exhibit feminine qualities like caring for others over themselves. The authors argue that the feminine emotions exhibited by the Chinese create strong bonds between people. The Australian manager will be able to create more lasting relationship with his employees based on trust, care and consideration.  Lack of care and concern for subordinates and the group goals result in conflict and lack of unity. The Chinese sentiments give more importance to group objectives over personal objectives. Thus, on embracing the Chinese sentiments the Australian manager will start caring for his relatives, the society and the nation. This will encourage him to make sustainable strategies to accomplish the corporate goals. The manager will be able to produce eco friendly goods which will help to reduce pollution in the environment. This will help him to benefit the society which will in turn win him social and customer support. Thus, feminine emotions can be adopted and used in the western and also in the eastern markets to accomplish business goals. The Chinese approach will also inspire the western world to care more about the society and the environment and operate in eco friendly ways. This will help the nations and companies to reduce their carbon foot prints on the erath. They will be able to conserve the precious natural resources of the nations that can be used in further economic development. Thus, managers using Chinese collectivism can conserve resources for the emerging markets.

Importance of Relationships and Emotional Intelligence in Chinese Collectivism

The first challenge the Australian manager faces is accepting Chinese system of collectivism and accepts qualities like compromising. The Chinese manager must accept feelings of care  and concern for the subordinates and even the society. The next challenge the Australian manager faces that he accepts Chinese virtues to build relationships with the employees. The final challenge makes the Australin manager accept feminist qualities like care to work in China. The assignment also shows that Chinese feelings for welfare of all helps to boost companies, take economies forwards and help markets emerge.

References:

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Allen, J. A., Diefendorff, J. M., & Ma, Y. (2014). Differences in emotional labor across cultures: A comparison of Chinese and US service workers. Journal of Business and Psychology, 29(1), 21-35.

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