Introduction to Chinese Culture: Confucianism

LITERATURE REVIEW

“To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.”

Henri Bergson (1927)

According to Posselt & Förstl (2012) previous research has shown that one main contributor to successful implementation of new services is a unique or superior service. Storey and Hull (2010) coincide and further explained that it is not possible to use a “one size fits all” approach when developing personal services. They conducted a study, which investigated the effect of different organizational knowledge management strategies on the process of service development. They stated that for organizations, which rely mainly on personalized information where services involve personal interactions and intangible factors, there is a need for the formation of cross-functional teams. Employee expertise and involvement have been identified as other important factors impacting employee performance in New Service Development (Posselt & Förstl, 2012).

This literature review is derived from scientific articles and books, exploring existing theories of the influence of the Chinese culture on organizations, empowerment and organizational learning and change within the implementation of a new service. These concepts will be explained in the following chapters.

2.1 INTRODUCTION TO THE CHINESE CULTURE

A very common and important concept in the Chinese culture is “face”. “Face” is central in social control, therefore, the Chinese place fundamental importance on it. The word “face” has acquired a meaning in English that approximates what “mianzi” means to the Chinese. “Saving face” can be defined as arranging a delicate social situation in such a manner that any negative critique of “face” is muted. “Losing face...

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...improve employee performance according to Carter (2009). The traditional Chinese culture might have conflicting influences on the success of programs that involve employees. For example, the strong top down hierarchy, which is ingrained in the ancient Chinese culture, features work situations were employees are told what to do. Furthermore, the impact of employees’ attitude towards a supervisor to employees’ performance, as stated by Chen, Tsui & Farh (2002), could have influence on the implementation of a new service. When empowering employees and providing them with control over the work process, employees could obtain feelings of organizational ownership, which would lead to a successful implementation of change with learning as a by-product, although companies should not expect organizational learning to show benefits in a short time period (Wenbin & Sun, 2009).