A Review Of Research On Chinese And Foreign Corporate Cultures In China From Intercultural Perspective

Corporate culture, ever since firstly put forward by the U.S.“Business Week” in1980,has boomed in the following period with scholars of diverse fields probing into it. It doesnot, however, attract much attention in China until the very beginning of the21st centuryas intercultural communication becomes much more frequent and unavoidable than everbefore. Corporate cultural construction and management has become pivotal for Chinesecorporations to complete, operate and survive in the global market.This research therefore aims on the one hand, to help attract more attention to andoffer suggestions to directions of future study on corporate culture, and on the other hand,to provide Chinese corporations with comprehensive and practical suggestions onconstructing and managing corporate culture through systematical analysis of existingresearch on Chinese and foreign corporate cultures from the perspective of interculturalcommunication. All together89pieces of degree papers and109pieces of core journalpapers were collected and analyzed by the author to demonstrate research trend and scope,to present research methods and theories, to find possible attributes to corporate culturaldifferences, and to summarize constructive suggestions proposed for corporate cultureconstruction and management as well.Based on data collected from sorting and analyzing, the author concludes thefollowing findings.(1) Research trend and scope: study on Chinese and foreign corporatecultures in china is unpredictable in quantity; countries or areas covered are overcentralized and only up to13and about30%is centering on America; less than30papersgive hints on industries involved, and banking, electronic manufacturing and automobileindustry are concerned a little more among the total19industries.(2) Theories andresearch methods: theories applied by the targeted research present an obvious emphasis,that is the theory of Hofstede’s five cultural dimensions is the most popular one, up toabout23%and Hall’s high and low cultural contexts the second by less than6%: empiricaland non-empirical methods implemented by the targeted researchers reach a rough balance,including both single and comprehensive ones, and among18kinds of methods, analysis&summary, case study and questionnaire are more frequently applied in targeted papersand take up respectively about46%,21%,17%.(3) Possible attributes to corporatecultural differences: national cultural differences, differences between two areas, anddifferences of corporation itself can all contribute to discrepancy in corporate culture, andnational cultural differences, especially differences in geography and history are the mostinfluential attributes to corporate cultural differences.(4) Suggestions proposed forcorporate culture construction and management: right attitudes towards cultural differences and cross-cultural training are essential and necessary for culture constructionand management within corporations; in the process of cultural integration, strategies suchas communication, making the best of diverse cultures, localization, people-orientedsystem, building common goal and core value and etc. can all be chosen and implemented;corporate culture construction and management is dynamic and time consuming, whichshould be developed step by step from everyday practice.