Comparative Study Of Chinese Enterprises Organizational Structure And American’s

More and more enterprises or organizations are growing bigger and stronger in the21st century. It becomes popular and common that those enterprises and organizations setsubsidiaries in other countries for the sake of interests. The structural design oforganizations plays an important role in enterprises, and influences the performance oforganizations. The factors that affect the structure of organizations are organizationalstrategy, external environment, technology, the size of enterprise, the stage of developmentof enterprise, organizational culture. Many scholars have conducted researches of thesefactors and formed theoretical systems. With the increase of multinational enterprises, theresearch about the national culture’ influence on the structural design of organizationsbecomes more and more important. But this research is still rare. On the basis ofdifferences of the national culture and organizational structure between China and America,the national culture’s influence on the structure of organizations is analyzed in this article,and the relationship model between the national culture and the structure of organizationsis put forward in this paper.In the second part of the paper, the theories of national culture and characteristics ofthe organizational structure are reviewed. Culture is a profound and complex category.Culture includes belief, knowledge, art, moral, customs, etc. National culture is the sum ofethos that distinguishes a country from others. The scholar Hofstede divides nationalculture into five parts: Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, Individualism andCollectivism, Masculinity and Femininity, Confucian Dynamism and Long-termOrientation. The scholar trompenaars divides national culture into seven parts. The theoryabout the characteristics of the organizational structure is introduced next. Thecharacteristics of the organizational structure contain Centralization, Formalization, andComplexity. The relationship between national culture and organizational structure issummarized.In the third part of the paper, based on Hofstede’s theory of national culture, thediscrepancy between national culture in China and in America is expounded in detail. Inthe fourth part of the paper, on the basis of Robins’ theories of Centralization,Formalization, and Complexity, the characteristics of organizational structure of China andAmerica are compared.In the fifth part of the paper, with the references of other materials, the conclusionsdrawn from above passages are used to summarize the national culture’s influence on the structure of organization. Especially, the relationship model between national culture andorganizational structure is deduced.This paper is expected to make more scholars pay attention to the national culture’sinfluence in transnational enterprises and to help more enterprises to change the structureof organizations and improve organizational performance.