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Organizational Culture in China: An Analysis of Culture Dimensions and Culture Types

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2015

Anne S. Tsui ,
Hui Wang  and
Katherine R. Xin
Translated by
徐淑英 ,
王辉  and
忻榕
Anne S. Tsui
Affiliation:
Arizona State University, USA, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, China
Hui Wang
Affiliation:
Peking University, China
Katherine R. Xin
Affiliation:
China Europe International Business School, China
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Abstradct

The economic and market reforms in China have given rise to firms with three distinct types of ownership: state-owned enterprises, private domestic enterprises, and foreign-invested firms. The three studies reported in this paper addressed the questions of whether organizational culture varies among firms with different ownership structures and whether it relates to firm performance or employee attitudes as it has been observed in US firms. The first study employed an inductive approach to identify culture dimensions and found five common dimensions across these different types of firms. In the second study, we derived an empirical taxonomy of four organizational culture types involving different configurations of the five organizational culture dimensions, and found a systematic relationship between these culture types and a measure of perceived firm performance. The third study confirmed the relationship between organizational culture types and middle manager attitudes. Suggestions are offered for future research building on the organizational culture dimensions and culture types introduced in these studies.

Keywords

Chinese contextorganizational cultureorganizational culture configurationorganizational culture type中国组织环境组织文化组织文化维度组织文化类型
Type
Articles
Information
Management and Organization Review , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , November 2006 , pp. 345 - 376
Copyright
Copyright © International Association for Chinese Management Research 2006

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