Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine the dual influence of traditional Chinese and national Singaporean cultural values on the attitude towards skin beauty and the purchase intention relating to skin care cosmetics among Chinese Singaporean women. It aims is to investigate how ethnic and national cultures might interact to influence the attitude towards skin beauty and hence the willingness to buy skin care products.

A survey of 370 Chinese Singaporean women was conducted to test the proposed links. The study adopts an empirical approach using structural equation modelling.

Both traditional Chinese and national Singaporean cultural values impact the attitude of Chinese Singaporean women towards skin beauty and their willingness to buy skin care cosmetics. The components of the traditional Chinese values (Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism) and national Singaporean values were found to have differing impact on the attitude towards skin beauty and the purchase intention of skin care cosmetics among Singaporean women. Confucianism was found to have a very strong impact on skin fairness and whitening, national Singaporeans' values were found to have a strong impact on skin anti‐ageing, and Buddhist values were found to have moderate impact on attitude towards skin smoothness and skin fairness and on the willingness to buy skin smoothening and skin whitening cosmetics.

Even though the sample can be considered large, given the number of variables in the model, it would be wise to rely on a larger sample. In addition, the research was about specific cosmetics products, namely those related to skin care. It is judicious to extend the analysis to other categories and types of products. For expatriate ethnic groups, it is recommended that marketers think about the interaction between their traditional values and the values of the host country, as these have dual effects on their attitudes and hence on their buying intention. The interaction between these values is not static across products. It varies in size and combination across types of attitudes and products.

Traditional ethnic and national cultural values have differing impact in terms of significance and size on the attitude towards face beauty. Hence, marketing actions such as positioning and advertising should be customized accordingly, to target at these values in an attempt to influence attitude, and hence purchase behavior. Attitude plays a mediating role between cultural values and purchase intention. Influencing consumers' willingness to buy involves influencing their attitudes.

Few works have surveyed the dual influence of national and ethnic values on a specific ethnic subgroup in Asia. To the authors' knowledge, there no previous research has been conducted for Singapore. This paper demonstrates that it is important for the marketer to take into account Singaporeans' national and ethnic values while marketing to them.

This paper aims to examine the attractiveness of the Tong Ren Tang (TRT) as a Chinese corporate heritage tourism brand and consider the significance of TRT for Chinese national identity. The study considers the saliency of Balmer’s augmented role identity notion vis-à-vis corporate heritage institutions/corporate brands. Insights are made from and for corporate heritage, heritage tourism and national identity literature.

A conceptual model comprising five hypotheses was developed and this informed a survey-based questionnaire administered to domestic tourists/customers visiting Tong Ren Tang’s flagship shop in Beijing.

The attractiveness to domestic Chinese tourists/customers of the TRT corporate heritage tourism brand was found to be attributable to its multiple role identities: national, corporate, temporal, familial and imperial. As such, this study lends credence to Balmer’s augmented role identity notion. Chinese domestic tourists/customers – as members of an ethnic Chinese community – in visiting TRT not only consume an extant corporate heritage by tangible and intangible means but can also be seen to express, and reaffirm, their sense of Chinese national identity.

For TRT’s managers, there should be an appreciation that the attractiveness of TRT as a corporate heritage tourism brand rests not only on what it sells but also in what it symbolises in national and cultural terms. This finding is applicable to the managers of many other corporate heritage/corporate heritage tourism brands.

Adopting a primordial perspective, the TRT pharmacy was found to be of singular significance to China’s national identity. Traditional Chinese Medicine, Confucian and Daoist religious/philosophical and China’s erstwhile Imperial polity are significant and enduring precepts of Chinese national identity. As such the TRT flagship shop/brand is of singular importance, as China has eviscerated much of its cultural heritage – particularly in relation to its corporate heritage brands.

This is the first empirical study to focus on corporate heritage tourism brands and one of the first studies to examine a Chinese corporate heritage/corporate heritage tourism brand. Also significant in focussing on the TRT corporate heritage brand. Established in 1669, TRT’s history spans five centuries: a corporate provenance which is exceptional within the People’s Republic of China. The study links the corporate brand notion with the nascent corporate heritage brand domain and the established area of heritage tourism.

This chapter outlines the philosophic underpinnings of the self-management paradigm developed over the past three decades by China’s Haier Group, a global leader in white goods. The successful transformation of Haier from a small resource-poor firm to a dominant global giant is often attributed to the self-management culture established in the company by its legendary leader Zhang Ruimin. This management paradigm is a function of the humbleness displayed by Mr. Zhang Ruimin and rooted in his strong belief in the traditional Chinese philosophy of I-Ching and Daoism. We show how the hexagram of Qian (“qian”: humbleness, modesty) from I-Ching is linked to Mr. Zhang’s humble approach and analyze how the six parts of the hexagram of Qian are related to the six development stages of the Haier Group. These insights are used to give some thoughts to the leadership challenge associated with the creation of a dynamic and responsive global organization.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate women managers’ work values in the Chinese sociocultural context and to explain how these work values affect their career success. This paper also explores how social and cultural factors affect Chinese women’s work value formation process.

Using a grounded theory approach, the authors collected and analyzed data through in-depth interviews with 12 women managers in the banking industry in northeast China.

The analysis identified eight dimensions of Chinese women’s work values and how they affect women’s career success in the Chinese context. The authors also found that although both social and cultural factors affect women’s work values, the effect of traditional Chinese culture is still profound.

The study extends the literature on Chinese women’s work values and provides a better understanding of traditional Chinese culture’s effect on contemporary Chinese women, particularly in developing cities.

This paper aims to provide an overview of this special issue.

The guest editorial introduces the papers in this special issue, focusing on practical wisdom for management from the Chinese classical traditions.

Chinese culture increasingly will permeate international culture and move from peripheral to mainstream status. To ignore this in management education would be a grave oversight.

The issue offers insights into the value of practical wisdom from Confucianism, the origins of Chinese classical trditions and Daoism, and the various streams of thought within the classical Chinese traditions and their contemporary relevance.

This article examines the influence of Daoist nothingness on leadership in growing Chinese small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Daoism is based on a “letting-go” approach through maintaining inherent openness, which challenges goal-oriented and hierarchical approaches typical of Western and Confucian leadership theories. This facilitates the cross-fertilization of ideas related to the effective management of smaller firms.

This study focuses on SME leaders in a group of 12 growing SMEs in the Shanghai logistics industry in China. Narrative and semi-structured interviews explored emerging aspects beyond the established model of leadership associated with reputation-building. This led to in-depth, thick descriptions, broadening our understanding of leadership and reputation-building.

SME leaders follow nothingness by continuously adopting a letting-go approach which spontaneously fosters reputation-building. By maintaining inherent openness, nothingness functions as an enabling principle that mobilizes multi-beings leading to reputation-building in unintended ways.

A greater plurality of empirical and methodological contexts in Western and non-Western countries helps to understand the dynamics and intersection of Daoist nothingness, leadership and reputation-building.

SME leaders recounted how they discursively practised nothingness for extended periods in their everyday practice. The study shows the significance of nothingness for SME leaders who aspire to grow their businesses by reputation-building among salient stakeholders.

Daoist nothingness provides insights into the distinctive approach of Chinese SME leaders and their relationships with local and distant stakeholders. By engaging in active non-action they relax pre-determined intentions and immerse themselves in the process of leading, where the connections between goals and processes are automatically animated. Such an approach differs from the top-down and goal-oriented approach to leadership adopted in many Western SMEs.

This paper makes two theoretical contributions. First, it indicates the powerful influence of Daoist nothingness on leadership by drawing on the broader context of entrepreneurship in Chinese SMEs. Secondly, it enriches existing concepts such as reputation by endowment and reputation borrowing by demonstrating how Daoist nothingness silently fosters both local reputation and generalized reputation.

This paper aims to present the evolution of Chinese business ethics and CSR policy. China currently has business ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) concerns primarily because its economy is in evolution. As the Chinese economy is in transition from the late 1970s from a command–Communist economy to a more hybrid system Beijing model (a system based on a capitalist market controlled through bureaucracy), much has to be understood if one wants to participate in its vast economic potential.

The study is based on the building of a model that depicts the evolution of business ethics in China as a base for further research.

With the rapid development of the Chinese economy, opportunities are opening up to Chinese entrepreneurs and connected officials. This has led to money worship and, in some cases, thorough unethical behavior. The uncertain and ever-changing rules of the game generate opportunity for business ethics and CSR problems. This wealth creates temptation and incentives to cut corners to get rich fast. Much research has tried to explain business ethics in China through the understanding of Guanxi (Chinese social network of reciprocal business relations common in Confucian cultures), but in my view, the evolutionary aspect of it is missing to explain the present and future situation. Whereas considerable research has dealt with the growth of Chinese industries in recent years, the key relationship between changes in its economy and shifts in Chinese business ethics has been neglected. This paper presents the evolution of Chinese business ethics and CSR policy.

The paper illustrates the evolution of Chinese business ethics and how one has to adapt if one wants to succeed in its ever evolving and maturing market. A model is presented that can assist in future research in the area.