This book features China’s newly emergent transnational management culture. It uses established and new methodologies to analyze how different types of Sino-foreign joint enterprises manage cultural differences and negotiate strategies that contain conflicts and frustrations. In doing so, the book suggests alternative pathways toward innovative business management in China.
This book brings together a group of scholars from diverse disciplines to interrogate everyday life events in various interpersonal and organizational contexts so as to answer an age-old question: what happens when (carriers of) cultures meet, or, when East meets West? The contributors to this volume argue that, rather than assume clashes of civilizations, assimilation, conversion and essentialism to be the expected outcomes of cultural encounters, we should focus our analytical attention on processes rather than outcomes; on emergence, dialectics, contradictions, ironies and paradoxes, and complexity. We should focus on attempting to learn and grow, to synthesize and integrate, to create and innovate, to change and transform, at personal, micro, macro and global levels. Or, in one word: hybridity. Contexts of cultural encounters analyzed in this book range from business organizations, through individual travels, to personal philosophies, and from mechanical models to complex systems as social imaginaries. This book is based on a special issue of World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution.
This book presents ground-breaking theoretical, and empirical knowledge to produce a fine-grained and encompassing understanding of the costs and benefits that different groups of Asian migrants, moving between different countries in Asia and in the West, experience. The contributors—all specialist scholars in anthropology, geography, history, political science, social psychology, and sociology—present new approaches to intersectionality analysis, focusing on the migrants’ performance of their identities as the core indicator to unravel the mutual constituitivity of cultural, social, political, and economic characteristics rooted in different places, which characterizes transnational lifestyles. The book answers one key question: What happens to people, communities, and societies under globalization, which is, among others, characterized by increasing cultural disidentification?
A new study of how Asian Pacific organizations and private enterprises are expanding into markets beyond their national bases by transforming themselves in multinational and transnational directions. It shows how multicultural relations are fundamental to such shifts. It explains the organizational processes that characterize economic restructuring and the transgression of state borders by organizations seeking economic opportunities. It shows how these ambitions require boundaries to be overcome both inside and outside of organizations. This study also details the trend towards fluidity and complexity of boundaries – both physical and symbolic – within and without of organizations due to the speeding up of key processes. This, however, does not imply that boundaries are disappearing. Organizational change always challenges identities and sets new targets for this very identification. Mergers, acquisitions and strategic alliances all generate new organizational forms and necessitate the redefinition and renegotiation of organizational boundaries. The manifold ways in which organizational boundaries are affected by economic restructuring and at the same time affect social processes within and between organizations, in particular in the context of the booming economies of the Asia Pacific area is the focus of this volume. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Asian Pacific Business Review.
This book explores the simultaneous Asianisation and feminisation of mid-level management in the financial services sector in world and global cities in the Asia-Pacific. Chan draws on 50 in-depth interviews with ethnically Chinese female professionals working in middle or upper management positions in Sydney, Hong Kong, Shanghai and four other cities in Australia and China. She analyses the interplay between geographical location, gender and career mobility. Growing numbers of transnational Chinese live and work in major cities in developed countries. In this context, a new social, economic ecosystem is being created for and by female professionals working in an elite sector of the service industry across the Asia-Pacific region. Chan examines the nature of this ecosystem through an examination of the lives and work of such women – their role in forming multinational networks in financial service firms, their collective work situation, their daily challenges, and their coping strategies in the workplace and at home. A compelling comparative study, which will be of great interest to scholars and students looking at the role of gender and ethnicity in globalisation.
This book tells you everything you need to know about international construction: the companies, their markets, the types of projects they build, how they compete and operate and how it affects us all. It paints a comprehensive portrait of an overlooked global business that generates a major portion of the GDP in every developed nation. As with any mature sector, countries make efforts to export their expertise, but the competition in construction is fierce, and the risks are many. Only the leanest and meanest survive. What, then, does it take to win? Most writing on construction focuses at the project-management level or even more narrowly at the level of technical performance. This book presents the big picture; it tells you what successful international construction companies do to stay in the game and thrive. The book examines international construction through three lenses. The first is theory. The body of existing knowledge on construction is here brought together, condensed and explained. The second are the actors. The companies that lead the way in global construction are showcased, and the features that make countries desirable hosts are appraised. Finally, what is it that firms actually do? This last part delves into the various strategic approaches taken by 60 construction firms in carving out and defending an overseas market niche. The insights provide guidance on how global construction companies develop competitive advantage and stay resilient in the face of a mercurial global economy. These lessons will be of interest to the student and manager alike.
In the past, as in the present, transnationalism has played a vital role in the development of wealth, technology and art in all societies touched by cultures other than their own. This timely book provides an introduction to the social and cultural aspects of transnationalism, particularly focusing on the modern world since 1500, with an emphasis on the past 200 years. Topics covered include the role of migration, the development of cities, the effect of transnationalism on marriage and families, the presence of transnational corporations, dress, religion and art. A key text for understanding our increasingly transnational world. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.
Entrepreneurship is hot. China is hot. Combining these two concepts could therefore be a dangerous act, as it may cause overheating. Chinese entrepreneurs are indeed the subject of a rapidly growing body of literature, academic and popular. However, the bulk of it tends to focus on a few aspects. There are the biographies of ‘famous’ entrepreneurs. While informative, these are usually of a non-academic nature. Academic studies tend to focus on the political and economic environment in which present day Chinese entrepreneurs have to operate. Both types of publications slight the entrepreneurial identity. This study aims at filling this gap with its core question: why do some people become entrepreneurs? The authors have analysed the life stories of a number of Chinese private entrepreneurs to reveal how the entrepreneurial identity of each of them has emerged at the cross section of an number of other identities. This book therefore contributes to a better understanding of Chinese entrepreneurship and the study of entrepreneurship in general.
Families are the cornerstone of Chinese society, whether in mainland China, in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, Singapore, Malaysia, or in the Chinese diaspora the world over. Handbook of the Chinese Family provides an overview of economics, politics, race, ethnicity, and culture within and external to the Chinese family as a social institution. While simultaneously evaluating its own methodological tools, this book will set current knowledge in the context of what has been previously studied as well as future research directions. It will examine inter-family relationships and politics as well as childrearing, education, and family economics to provide a rounded and in-depth view.
This book investigates the transnational experiences of Chinese Singaporeans who lived in one of four global cities: Hong Kong, London, New York, or Singapore. Plüss argues that these middle-class, well-educated, and often highly skilled migrants mostly experienced a sense of dis-embeddedness, and not cosmopolitanism, or hybridity, in their transnational lives. The author’s multi-sited study intersects the Chinese Singaporeans’ highly varied perceptions of these global cities and their biographies to show that these migrants—who often were repeat migrants—foremost experienced ruptures and disjuncture in their education, work, family, and/or friendships/lifestyle contexts. Transnational (dis)embeddedness is explained in terms of the Chinese Singaporeans’ access to resources and their views of self, others, places, and societies. Plüss recommends that research on these migrants should more fully account for the complexities of transnational processes, and contributes with such a knowledge to the scholarship on transnationalism, migration, race and ethnicity, and migrant non-integration.
