Haier Corporate Culture, Structure, Functional Analysis And Revelation

Over the past twenty years, Haier has changed into a world-famous company from a small collective factory on the verge of collapse: Haier has been list as one of the world top 500 companies (in 2004) and a global top 500 brand (in 2005). It has been well documented that Haier's organizational culture is a necessary condition for its success. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the uniqueness and universal significance of Haier's organizational culture by analyzing its structure and functions. The conceptual framework was based on sociology and anthropology theory. Main research methods employed was case study and second data analysis. This study suggests two key factors that determined the success and uniqueness of Haier's corporate culture. The first is addressing the conflict between the Confucian Ren-oriented norm and the modern western management norm "putting people first." The second is emphasizing the interactive relationship between management system's innovation and workers' psychological adaptation.It provides the following managerial implications for Chinese companies: (1)More attention should be paid to the conflict of humanism and Ren-oriented norm; (2) Cultural management is vital to the growth of Chinese enterprises;(3) the establishment and development of the organizational culture should consider the effects of these traditional internalized social norms.The new term "Mutualism" is proposed to explain Confucian Ren-oriented norm. Another contribution of this study is the summation of Chinese nationality on which corporate culture built. The third contribution is to point out the conflict between Ren-oriented norm and humanism.