Research
Question
How do the characteristics of Chinese
culture affect relationships between a multinational companies with its Chinese
audiences?
The Method
As Dr. Flora Hung acknowledges, the study
focuses on interpersonal relationships and discusses how relationships are
maintained and what makes them desirable.
·
theory-based sampling,
·
convenience sampling
·
snowball sampling
These three tactics were used in order to
recruit representatives of Fortune world 500 companies. Through these sampling
techniques, Dr. Hung was able to conduct 20 interviews with people from 18 organizations.
These interviewees were contacted by telephone and through email. Some of the
people being interviewed were CEOs and public relations managers of the
companies.
To analyze the qualitative data, a
collaborative social research approach was used. The intent was to build and
construct meanings by working with the participants. Dr. Hung took extensive
notes while interviewing participants. There was a significant emphasis on
getting detailed explanations from the participants that sometimes needed to be
clarified or elaborated upon.
Flora compartmentalized data into multiple
categories, which made it far easier to organize the collected data and in turn
made it easier to come to conclusions based on different aspects of the
information.
Results
At the heart of the reasoning behind these
interviews was to study the organization’s relationship-building processes with
their audiences, which is what is mainly learned from Hung’s overall thesis.
Within the analysis of these relationships are many factors, including how
organizations are able to make their audiences (the general public) more
comfortable in regards to the relationship between the two parties.
Many factors were identified when examining
the relationship between cultural influence and multinational companies.
·
Detailed greatly was family
orientation, the concept of self-Other—which refers to collectivistic cultures
that put needs and goals of the in-group before beliefs of the individual - and
other concepts such as role formalization and reciprocity.
·
Among the findings was that
Chinese people tend to try to maintain relational harmony, no matter if they
are talking to their superior or an equal.
·
Hung puts a great deal of
emphasis on “yuan” in public relations. Yuan is considered to be a calming
mechanism when a bad relationship takes place.
·
This concept tends to shape how
people in this culture define relationship types and decide how long the
relationships will last.
·
Guanxi is another concept that
is incorporated into Hung’s research, though it was discovered in a previous
study. Guanxi refers to an outsider company that intends to be accepted as an
insider, but in order to be considered as such it often has to find someone
within the group to form a relationship with.
·
Overall, multinational
companies believed relationships with governmental officials were vital in
maintaining networks and to ultimately being efficient in the workplace.
Limitations
A limitation was the sole usage of
qualitative interviewing. The types of people who were interviewed were
limited, as only CEOs, vice presidents, and public relations managers were able
to participate.
Therefore, as a result there was another
limitation: the inability to interview the companies’ publics. It was desired
that a co-orientation method would be used, which would analyze the topics at hand
from both the organizational and public points of view. Time constraints and a
small budget prevented this.