The influence of Chinese cultural tradition on modern business organization in China

The objective of this research is to provide relevant insights to understand the value orientation of Chinese workforce in business organizations in terms of Chinese cultural traditions. Hence the research restricts its target to the business organizations, which are classified into three categories: state-owned, private, or foreign-invested enterprises.;The current research intends to answer the following three general questions: first, whether Chinese cultural traditions still have substantial influences on today's society, especially on business organizations of China, and if so, second, what are the patterns - priority and structure of the influences, and third, what are the relationships between Chinese cultural traditions and established theoretical models of cultural values?;The core foundation of Chinese cultural tradition is Chinese philosophy. The current research defines its scope on cultural values from the original and fundamental schools of philosophical thought. Confucianism, Taoism, Legalism, Buddhism, and Art of War are included in the research, because over the centuries in China, these five schools of thought have had uninterrupted impacts on Chinese society, and constitute the basic pillars underpinning the Chinese cultural traditions.;The current research is a systematic investigation of the manifestation of the five schools of thought. A value system can be analyzed by two perspectives: priority and structure (Schwartz 1992). The current research intends to present a comprehensive picture of the influence of the five schools of thoughts, and focuses on both of the priority and the structure of the value system of Chinese people in business organizations.;The priority analyses demonstrate that Chinese cultural tradition have substantial influence on the modern business organizations of China. Through factor analyses, a four-factor structure is extracted, as a basic value constructs underlying the five schools of thought of Chinese cultural tradition. This structure is verified by cross validation analysis as a stable set of indices of value orientation of people in contemporary Chinese society. The structure expresses the dynamic interaction among the factors within it.;Schwartz Value Model and SYMLOG Theory are selected in this research to explore the relationships between Chinese cultural traditions and these two established theoretical models. The results of analyses indicate that the Chinese Culture Structure extracted from the five schools of thought can partially be explained by Schwartz Value Model and SYMLOG Theory. These two theoretical models conduce to understand Chinese cultural traditions. Nonetheless, it can be confirmed that there are no tight relations between the Chinese Culture Structure and Schwartz Value Model as well as SYMLOG Theory, and that the Chinese Culture Structure has its intrinsic merit as a unique value construct.