| The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine the extent to which foreign companies' strategic orientation in the Miles and Snow typology predicted the desire to do business in China, controlling for the intermediate variables of industry, revenue size, number of employees, and primary markets served. The analysis was designed to cast light on general strategic motivations for wishing to do business in China.;The main findings of the study were as follows. First, based on an ANCOVA, there was not a statistically significant relationship between a non-Chinese company's strategic orientation in the Miles and Snow typology and a decision to get into business in China (p = .139, F = 1.546). Second, industry played a significant role (p = .011, F = 6.743) as a covariate between strategic typology and desire to get into business in China. Third, companies that had a higher interest in doing business in China also had a higher mean percentage of revenue from Asia (M = 24.79%, s = 4.788%) than companies with only some interest in doing business in China (M = 22.25%, s = 4.539%); the difference between means was statistically significant (p = .083, F = .403).;From these findings, one can conclude that China is an increasingly strategic destination for doing business, one that is attracting attention from foreign companies of all strategic orientations. This finding has a number of important implications for the topic of organizational development. Given that companies from each of the four strategic typologies are equally interested in doing business in China, some companies will have to adjust their organizational development strategies in order to succeed in this market. In particular, the organizational development literature suggests that defenders and reactors might not be suitably positioned to perform well in China; hence, companies that fit these two typologies would do well to accumulate the kinds of organizational expertise necessary to thrive in the Chinese market. Even prospectors and analyzers that possess the strategic flexibility to do well in China will have to further develop organization- and personnel-specific expertise in order to realize the goal of penetrating the Chinese market. |
