Everything is Rosy

Some of your Chinese colleagues, particularly those who hold subordinate positions, may prefer to tell you only about their success stories. For example, they are not keen to inform you of a contact they have made and then have to explain to you why there was no sale. They do not want to look incompetent in your eyes, and they do not want to have to answer for their actions if there has been an unsuccessful approach to a client.

Buck Passing

Similarly, a situation can quite easily be left to worsen on its own if nobody has been assigned direct responsibility for ensuring that issues in that particular area are resolved promptly. In the past, admitting guilt in breaking something, no matter how small its value or the age/condition of the item, often meant that the employee paid for the loss out of his or her own pocket.

Who’s Who in the Zoo

You may find yourself unable to straighten out what seems to be the most minor issue because subordinate managers and staff have not been given the authority and/or necessary information to deal with even relatively simple situations.

There can sometimes be a complete imbalance between the expectations placed upon an individual and his/her degree of power and authority within the organisation. Managers may therefore find themselves in the impossible position of being fully responsible for making a project successful but with little control over any of the resources necessary to do so.

Rapidly Changing Environment

Attitudes to responsibility have changed significantly as the pace of privatisation and foreign involvement in the Chinese economy has accelerated over the last 15-20 years, and it is now relatively easy to find smiling service people, earnest attempts to win your business, and real attention to detail that even as recently as the late 1990’s was virtually non-existent. Despite this progress, however, you may still encounter certain Chinese who have not been the beneficiaries of these new policies and/or prefer to remain in the era when reading the newspaper and sipping tea amounted to a good day’s work.