We Can’t Copy The Chinese
I was very interested to hear an item on the BBC World service last week on a proposal that the West should try to replicate the culture of Chinese Business within our own work environment in order to increase competitiveness.
Japanese “customer care“
It struck me that similar proposals had been made some twelve to fifteen years ago when so many businesses tried to copy the “Demming Productivity and Customer Care System” used in Japan immediately after the war in 1945. Certainly the Japanese business community thrived on the process and became one of the worlds economic powerhouses but improving “customer care” be emulating the Japanese method became a management fad.
Companies spent huge resources trying to identify what worked in Japan and trying to implement similar systems and on on training courses. However, in most cases, the process was costly and produced marginal success. Partly because the West didn’t have to start a manufacturing processes from scratch, as did Japan in 1945. Secondly, because our business management is different. Over the last few years the Japanese economy has stagnated and emulating the “Japanese way of doing things” has become unfashionable.
Lessons should be learned to avoid falling into another management fad. Trying to understand and emulate 2000 years of the Chinese way of doing things would be likely to follow a similat pattern to the Japanese and with similar results.
Chinese Growth can’t be replicated
The West doesn’t follow, nor understand the teachings of Confucious or of Shen Dao,(mentioned in the BBC programme) who proposed that authority arises and is sustained due to the nature of actual circumstances and even Zhang Zai who said that facts can explain everything and more lately Deng Xiaoping who set the current Chinese economic growth and expansion in motion.
Business needs to understand how to sell into China
I accept that to work and sell into China it’s vital that western business studies culture, etiquette and even how Chinese business functions work but to try, as proposed by the BBC, to emulate and become more “like the Chinese” is bound to fail simply because the West has a different business culture.
Certainly the Chinese and other Dragon Economies have begun to succeed because they understand how Western Business works but they have done this without taking on its methodology.
