A Cultural Study Of Chinese Employees Working In American-funded IT Companies In China

This paper is a cultural study of Chinese employees working in American-funded ITcompanies. It aims to find out potential cultural variations of Chinese employees who workin cross-cultural environment, by making a cultural comparison between Chineseemployees working in American-funded IT companies and domestic-funded IT companies,and then try to figure out reasons of the distinctions and processes of the cultural variations.The comparison is carried out under the framework of Hofstede’s cultural dimensionaltheory. Twenty two questions are needed to calculate the five dimensions in Hofstede’sresearch. So questionnaires including the22questions are distributed to Chinese employeesin American-funded and domestic-funded IT companies. Data collected from thequestionnaires is then calculated to look for potential cultural distinctions on thedimensional level, and meanwhile related questions in the questionnaire which areresponsible for the distinctions are further analyzed to find out reasons. Meme theory isused to study the types and processes of cultural variations and transmissions. In thisresearch,3American-funded IT companies are selected as target companies including IBM,Google and Microsoft, and correspondingly,3domestic-funded IT companies are chosen asthe comparison.92valid questionnaires are collected from the former group and96arefrom the latter group. Data collected shows that there is not significant distinction betweenthe two groups on Power Distance Index, Masculinity/Femininity Index andIndividualism/Collectivism Index. However, employees in domestic-funded IT companiesshow stronger uncertainty avoidance orientation and long-term orientation. When analyzinganswers of specific questions, contradictive thoughts are found out that both of the twogroups of employees attach great importance to employment stability while plan to leavethe current companies in a short time. Memetic theories are then used to find out thereasons of this contradiction. Scores of the5dimensions in this research are dramaticallydifferent from those in Hofstede’s research in1970s, and reasons of the differences are notclear yet. Only if scores of Chinese national culture are updated can we find out whether itis because of the uniqueness of IT industry or the fact that Chinese national culture haschanged in the past decades.