The management of small and medium-sized Chinese family-owned businesses: A comparative study of mainland CFOBs and overseas CFOBs.

摘要

Mainland China implemented major economic reforms in 1978 and created an open-door policy. Since then, the Chinese economy has shifted from a centrally planned economy to a market-based socialist economy. This policy legalized private small business ownership in mainland China and encouraged private small business owners to supplement the socialist economy. Over the last two decades, millions of private enterprises have been established, and many are family-owned and managed enterprises. Although the extraordinary growth of these Chinese family-owned businesses (CFOBs) and the role that they have played in the transition of China's economy have attracted the interest of many researchers, the knowledge of their management model is still limited. This study examines the management practices of CFOBs in order to explore the management characteristics of CFOBs and to identify whether or not they follow the same principles that have been described in overseas CFOBs in previous literature.;Initially, a literature review was conducted of family businesses and overseas CFOBs management practices in order to establish a theoretical research model. The emphasis of this study is on the main aspects of enterprise management, which are the ownership, organizational structure, leadership style, general management, production management, financial management, marketing management, human resource management and influence of Chinese culture on the management style of CFOBs. Owing to the exploratory and descriptive nature of this study, case studies were used as the research method. Six case studies were conducted with mainland CFOBs. Each enterprise is a small or medium-sized business in the manufacturing sector. A one-hour interview was conducted with at least one manager from each enterprise. A total of ten managers from these six enterprises were interviewed; most are owner-managers of their enterprises. The interviews concentrated on the main aspects of enterprise management as described above.;The results show that, in general, the six mainland CFOBs interviewed adopt a patriarch-based management style, which is similar to that of overseas CFOBs. They follow many of the traditional management practices associated with overseas CFOBs as described in the literature. However, seven major differences were discovered between the management model of the six mainland CFOBs and that of the overseas CFOBs. These differences show that there is a tendency towards introducing professional management practices into the six mainland CFOBs and that managerial innovations have begun to appear. Based on the results of this study, it is suggested that the entrepreneurs of these six enterprises decentralize decision-making and provide more opportunities to outside professional personnel in order to implement professional management practices in their enterprises and to achieve sustainable business development.