Business excellence in China: firms, territories, regions

Citation

Rubini, L. (2013), "Business excellence in China: firms, territories, regions", Measuring Business Excellence, Vol. 17 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/mbe.2013.26717baa.001

Business excellence in China: firms, territories, regions

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Measuring Business Excellence, Volume 17, Issue 2

The ongoing international crisis induces actors to rethink to their strategic choices and to find new ways to obtain, protect or increase their competitive advantage. Most of the current debate is on how to adjust the development trajectories and strategies in order to be able to face this critical period.

In some cases the reaction has been a run towards lower costs, and in the consequent decline in quality that might result in a loss, instead of a gain, of competitive positions. In other cases the strategy has been to invest in research and to enhance the value added of productions.

The case of China is emblematic. Not only because the country is undoubtedly among the leading economies in the world, but also because it is showing a great capacity to adjust to the changing scenario. For years it has been internationally renowned for having based its competitive advantage on low costs of labor and on the attraction of foreign firms. Now it is increasingly turning to higher value added productions, while at the same time favoring the emergence of “national champions”. In other words, the country seems to have been betting on excellence. We are not talking only about firms or entrepreneurs. We are also talking about territories and regions.

However, excellence is not equally spread within the country. They are more evident in some provinces, where the industrial development is more advanced. Guangdong is undoubtedly one of these. The province has been chosen as the launching pad and testing laboratory of the opening process of the economy for the whole country. Since the launch of the open-door policy at the end of the 1970s, it has proven to be among the most prominent areas not only of China but of the whole world in terms of growth rates, industrial development, FDI attraction and export capacity.

In this framework, this special issue sheds some light on the emergence (but also on the lack) of excellence at business, local and provincial level in Guangdong, which per se represents an excellence within the whole country.

After having briefly introduced the development path that led Guangdong to be fastest-growing provinces in China, the paper by Rubini and Barbieri identifies what are the specific types of firms and the specific areas where the industrial excellence of the province concentrates.

The analysis of Guangdong excellence continues with the article by Barbieri, Sarcina, Bazzucchi and Di Tommaso that passes then to consider the distribution of business excellence among the counties and districts of the province. Particular attention is devoted to the so-called specialized towns, i.e. local agglomerations of firms all operating in the same industrial sector. An empirical econometric investigation of the relationship between medium-large firms’ industrial performance, territorial characteristics and policies are provided.

The analysis of Guangdong industrial excellence would however be misleading without emphasizing some aspects that still need to be further developed, and where the province does not yet excel. In particular the third paper by Rubini, Motta and Di Tommaso goes into details in the connection between products and places of origin, underlining the role played by geographic indication and country of origin in quality signaling. In particular, two case studies on the beverage sector are compared: the case of the Italian Chianti Classico wine and the Guangdong tea sector.

The fourth paper by Barbieri, Huang, Di Tommaso and Lan goes back to the firm level by comparing two Guangdong companies that are relevant global players in their sector of specialization employing interesting internationalization and innovation strategies: Huawei Technology Co. Ltd (Huawei) and Jing-Hua Optical & Electronics Co. Ltd (JOC). By means of these two experiences the article paves the way for more general discussions on the emergence of champions of excellence in China.

Finally, last paper by Petti and Zhang deals with a very important aspect related to the excellence of firms, i.e. their absorptive capacity. This is the capacity to transform potentially viable technological opportunities into successful businesses. By means of a mediation analysis the relation between absorptive capacity, technological entrepreneurship and performance is investigated.

Lauretta Rubini