A Research On The Strategic Elements On Cross-cultural Management Of Joint Ventures In China

As the increasing amount of trade in the world, people from different countries with various cultural backgrounds have more and more connections. Meanwhile, many international companies are trying to explore markets out of its own country and look for cheaper manufacturing materials in order to be more competitive. Cross-national management results in the co-existence as well as conflicts among different cultures. It has become a fatal point in business management these days. The famous expert Peter F. Drucker thinks that the business management in multi-cultural enterprises is the unification of the diversification of their politics and cultures. Even it is said that it is the culture that is managed in transnational business operations. Joint ventures with different national backgrounds, different culture types and different development stages should adopt proper ways in their cross-cultural management. They should make analysis on how to get rid of the cultural conflicts and establish the corporate culture with their own characteristics, so that effective management can be achieved.This paper chooses joint ventures as its research target. It emphasizes on the strategic elements in cross-cultural management and make clear how they are influencing the cultural management in joint ventures. First of all, the paper analyzes the background, the significance, current research situations and research methods of this subject. On the basis of the existing classic theories both from home and abroad, the managerial models of joint ventures as well as the measurement of cross-cultural management, the paper analyzes on several aspects of the joint ventures in China, such as the current development, the managerial characteristics, the appearance and reasons for the cultural differences. After that, the paper applies the ways of questionnaire, expert interviews and so on to analyze the degrees of influence of different strategic elements on different managerial levels in cross-cultural management.The research shows that the cross-cultural management in joint ventures can be classified into three levels, namely, spiritual level, managerial level and material level. The spiritual level is the core level among the three and occupies the most important position. It is regarded as the soul in cross-cultural management. The strategic elements in the managerial level are the support of all the activities in joint ventures and are guided by the elements in spiritual level. The strategic elements in material level are the foundation of cross-cultural management. It is the material guarantee of the former two levels. Accounting for the characteristics of cross-cultural management, joint ventures in China should treat the strategic elements in spiritual levels as its core elements, those in material level as the foundation and those in managerial level as the support, based on which the effective cross-cultural management can be achieved and the harmonious and long-lasting growth of the joint ventures can be promoted.