Cross-Cultural Leadership: China, Britain, and Nigeria

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Introduction

The globalization that is being witnessed in the contemporary times presents opportunities, as well as challenges to the leadership of organizations. It is argued that the success of leading an organization in the contemporary era depends on the ability of a manager to understand the diverse cultures as embraced in diverse places across the globe. This paper argues that cultural adaptability is critical to the successful management of subsidiaries.

The paper explores literature on the attributes of cross-cultural leadership in three countries. China is taken to be the home country of a business that wants to set up in Britain and Nigeria. The paper also brings out the variations in leadership culture between China and Nigeria.

Overview of the three managerial destinations: China, Britain and Nigeria

According to the advocates of cross-cultural management, different destinations across the world exhibit different cultures of management. The establishment of subsidiary firms is a common exercise for firms with the continued adoption of the expansion strategy by firms.

China as a country is located in the Asia Pacific region. On the other hand, Britain is located in Western Europe. On the other hand, Nigeria is located in Africa. Therefore, the attributes of business management in these three regions vary due to the variations in conditions that affect business management in the three distinct regions.

Literature review

Littrell, Alon and Chan (2012) observed that there is a wide variation in the business culture of China. This disputes the work of researchers who have focused on the country as a whole while researching on the cultural attributes of management in China. The observation by Littrell, Alon and Chan (2012) has a close relation to the research by Fan (2000), who sought to identify the diverse attributes of culture in China and how they affect management.

Fan observed that China is a large country that is divided into different regions that portray some differences in the attributes of culture and management. The variations of business culture between the different regions of China are not quite distinct, especially when the country is placed in the foreign business environment.

Littrell, Alon and Chan (2012) observed that the prevailing variations in the culture in China are caused by the precedents of history and the rate of adoption to change by each region (Yuan & Chia 2011).

The attributes of leadership vary when they are applied within and between national cultures and have to be given attention by any organization that aims at managing successfully across cultures (Azolukwam & Perkins 2009; Fontaine 2007). Merritt (2000) observed that the attributes of cross-cultural management are quite elaborate. They touch on both the management of people and the structures of administration in a given destination.

According to Wang (2012), the past three decades have witnessed rigorous studies on leadership in China owing to the promising trends of economic growth in the country. These have led to the incorporation of China into the global economy. The studies have focused on the aspects of variations in the manner in which business practices are conducted in China compared to the factors of management in other regions in the world.

The focus is often directed on the real attributes on strategic business establishment and the factors that affect human resource management in a given business destination when looking at aspects of cross-cultural management. China has an active business environment that is characterized by an active industrial and commercial environment.

However, Yuan and Chia (2011) observed that the human resource environment is not highly developed, which implies the problems of managing people and performance by the Chinese managers.

Leung, Wang and Smith (2001) observed that expatriate managers often find it quite daunting to change the job attitudes in China as a result of the ill developed human resource culture. This is backed by Zheng and Lamond (2009) who observed that the human resource attributes of management that are embraced in China are greatly influenced by the style of governance embraced in the country.

According to Wang (2012), there is need for a manager from China who is venturing into another business destination to make use of the theory of adaptation selection-development. Use of this theory can aid in differentiating between the variations in aspects of business management in China and the culture of management that prevails in a foreign business destination.

China highly embraces a socialist structure of management, unlike the western countries. This emanates from the kind of political leadership in the country. Socialist structures of management imply intense interference and control of organizations and the business environment. This control is largely done by the government, but not by the macroeconomic and microeconomic forces. The labour markets are highly regulated by the government (Oakley 2002).

This is backed by Dahles and Wels (2002) who argued that the knowledge of the legal environment is critical in managing a firm in China due to the presence of a substantial number of centralized laws that have to be adhered to in enterprise management in China. However, the country has paved way to the principles of liberal markets as one way of helping its transnational firms to gain access into other markets in the world.

This can be likened to the research that was done by Goldman (1994), who ascertained the essence of making changes to the attributes of management in the dynamic environment. The continued interaction of Chinese managers in the foreign business environment has necessitated the adoption of a culture of quality in management, particularly in the developed markets of Europe and the United States (Dahles & Wels 2002).

One question that has formed the subject of discussion in the world today concerns the pace at which Chinese firms are gaining entry and expanding their operations in different regions. This is a question that focuses on culture and adaptability in management (Dahles & Wels 2002).

Zu et al. (2011) argued that the high pace of adjustment to the diverse culture of management has stood behind the contemporary pace at which firms from China are succeeding in entering and managing their operations in different regions of the world.

One critical aspect of management that is observed by Chinese firms and managers is the pure focus of managing relations in new business environments. This enables the firms to focus on the main attributes of management and business expansion in new regions.

Azolukwam and Perkins (2009) observed that entering and managing business in Nigeria is quite easy for Chinese managers because of the low focus on total quality management in Nigeria. This backs the research by Hopkins, Nie and Hopkins (2004), who concluded that emphasis on quality management in the western countries like Britain remains to be a critical impediment to the entry and success of Chinese subsidiaries in the regions.

However, Chinese firms have realized the need for dynamism as an aspect of gaining entry into different markets as observed by Zu et al. (2011). One aspect of diversity in the culture of management is the expansion of the capacity of Chinese firms to deliver quality products and services to their customers. However, total quality management depends on the ability of the market to sustain the nature of services and products that are produced and marketed by a firm.

As such, emphasis on total quality management is used as a feature of management by Chinese subsidiaries in the western world, including Britain (Chin & Pun 2002). Aspects of total quality management that are emphasized include: process management, product design, quality information, workforce management, customer/supplier relationship management, and management support.

These attributes of quality management depict the culture of management in established markets. Adherence to these factors easily results in the success of a firm in such markets (Zhou, Zhu & Yao 2011).

Another attribute of cultural adaptability that is embraced by the Chinese firms is the utilization of a hybrid system of management (Zhu, Warner & Rowley 2007).

This helps in bridging the cultural boundaries in foreign business destinations. Unlike in the past, most Chinese firms in the contemporary foreign business culture limit the number of expatriates and embrace language learning as a way of promoting communication and interaction between expatriate staffs and local staffs in their subsidiaries (Azolukwam & Perkins 2009).

Conclusion

Cultural variations are critical factors in international management. This paper has explored the critical aspects of cross cultural management in three main economic regions that denote the variation in the culture of management.

From the discussion, it can be concluded that the ability of a manager from China to adapt to the business environments in Nigeria and Britain depends on the manager’s ability to capture both the technical aspects of variation in management, as well as the human resource landscape in the regions.

This observation is based on the rationale that Britain depicts a highly developed business environment that emphasizes on quality and adherence to processes and legislations for successful management. On the other hand, Nigeria depicts a developing market that is still faced with technical and logistical challenges of management.

Reference List

Azolukwam, VA & Perkins, SJ 2009, ‘Managerial perspectives on HRM in Nigeria: evolving hybridization?’, Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, vol. 16 no.1, pp. 62-82.

Chin, KS & Pun, KF 2002, ‘A proposed framework for implementing TQM in Chinese organizations’, International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, vol. 19 no. 3, pp. 272-94.

Dahles, H & Wels, H 2002, Culture, organization and management in East Asia: Doing business in China, Nova Science Publishers, New York, NY

Fan, Y 2000, ‘A classification of Chinese culture’, Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 3-10.

Fontaine, R 2007, ‘Cross-cultural management: six perspectives’, Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 125-135.

Goldman, A 1994, ‘The central role of national culture in cross-cultural management: proxemic conflicts in the Internationalization of TQM’, Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 4-10.

Hopkins, SA, Nie, W & Hopkins, WE 2004, ‘A comparative study of quality management in Taiwan’s and China’s electronics industry’, International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, vol. 21, no.4, pp. 362-76.

Leung, K, Wang, Z & Smith, PB 2001, ‘Job attitudes and organizational justice in joint venture hotels in China: the role of expatriate managers’, International Journal of Human Resource Management, vol. 12, pp. 926-45.

Littrell, RF, Alon, I & Chan, KW 2012, ‘Regional differences in managerial leader behaviour preferences in China’, Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 315-335.

Merritt, A 2000, ‘Culture in the cockpit: Do Hofstede’s dimensions replicate?’, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 283-301.

Oakley, S 2002, Labor relations in China’s socialist market economy: Adapting to the global market, Quorum Books, Westport, CT.

Wang, Z 2012, Developing global roles for Chinese leadership: An ASD theory of organizational change, in William H. Mobley, Ying Wang, Ming Li (ed.) Advances in global leadership (Advances in global leadership, Volume 7), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Bingley, pp.375-388.

Yuan, L & Chia, R 2011, ‘The effect of traditional Chinese fuzzy thinking on human resource practices in mainland China’, Chinese Management Studies, vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 431-449.

Yuan, L & Chia, R 2011, ‘The effect of traditional Chinese fuzzy thinking on human resource practices in mainland China’, Chinese Management Studies, vol. 5 no. 4, pp. 431-449.

Zheng, C & Lamond, D 2009, ‘A Chinese style of HRM: exploring the ancient texts’, Chinese Management Studies, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 258-71.

Zhu, Y, Warner, M & Rowley, C 2007, ‘Human resource management with ‘Asian’ characteristics: a hybrid people-management system in East Asia’, The International Journal of Human Resource Management, vol. 18, no. 5, pp. 745-68.

Zu, X, Zhou, H, Zhu, X & Yao, D 2011, ‘Quality management in China: the effects of firm characteristics and cultural profile’, International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, vol. 28, no. 8, pp. 800-821.

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