Reflective Journal 2

Reflective Journal 2

The different styles of management reveal the different cultures and societies in the East and in the West.

Google’s way of management impressed me a lot. It is so open and gives its employees so much freedom. The site of the company looks like a tiny integrated city. At first, I wondered whether it is worth building luxurious facilities for employees and why. Now after analysing, I understand that Google provides its staff with a comfortable atmosphere and it is very wise. People can relax comfortably and then go to work with full passion. So it is a way to improve the company’s efficiency and these welfares build up the extrinsic motivation of employees. They are attractive to everybody including me because the comfort and richness of life is being pursued forever.

Besides this, I also appreciate its encouragement to innovation. The ‘20%’ rule as well as peer review gives employees a chance to explore the area beyond their assigned work and achieve something with potential abilities. I think it helps to foster good employees and make them faithful to the company. This reminds me of a company called foxconn from Taiwan. It is famous for manufacturing for Apple. However, it came to public sight because more than ten employees jumped off the building continuously in about half a year’s time because of great pressure and the boredom of repeating the same work thousands of times a day. On the other hand, the company only receives a very small amount of money for each product which is sold at a high price to consumers. There is a stark contrast between the two companies. Freedom and innovation makes business successful while restriction and copying only bring sweat and toil. In China, there is also a phenomenon called ‘shanzhai’, which means fake products. A lot of small companies imitate the make, the name, even the design of appearance of famous companies, but their products’ quality is very poor. Numerous of them appear and disappear all in a very short time. I feel really sorry for them. If they can put effort into creating their own design instead of thinking how to copy, maybe they will have a bright future. The culture of innovation and open mind decides the fate of a company in the fierce competition. There is a saying, ’Chinese are best at copying’. In the current situation, I have to accept this fact but I hope we Chinese can learn how to not only innovate based on what we have copied, but also create something for others to copy. It will make a great change.

Another company we talked about is Lenovo. I think there are two ways for it to survive and thrive: one way is to keep its Chinese style and the other is change itself to be real international. It should be easier to manage in Chinese style but more attractive to employees in Western style. It is reasonable for Lenovo to fail in the second style: it is based on China. Chinese have been used to being conservative and listening to superiors after thousands of years of feudalism. You may say feudalism suppresses people’s talent and freedom but the fact is that China kept a leading position in the world all the way before 19^th century. Similarly, Lenovo returned to be profitable after returning to the first style. Initially I wondered why it works, but after finding out so many new and popular products including the ThinkPad Edge I am using, I get some ideas. The Chinese style is a bit like meritocracy. My opinion is that the key is only talented people will be promoted to a higher position. This ensures that every employee can do the best of his or her ability at the current position. Different from the other style, ideas are often submitted to superiors and been discussed. In some ways, it is even more efficient because it avoids wasting time. This kind of management is almost the same as the Chinese society. The talented people who are selected rule and decide what to do for the whole country. I think the school system I have experienced for many years is like this, too. Students have to follow the form teacher or the monitor they have elected. Otherwise, they may be considered undisciplined. A resourceful and able monitor can usually organise the class well. Of course, it has a big defect that if superiors make a mistake, the consequence will be serious. For example, the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, which was started by a mistake of the leaders, caused great damage to Chinese society. But I think this style’s advantage of concentration overweighs its disadvantage because the probability to make the right decision should always be greater.

Overall, if I have a company to run and manage in the future, I will choose combine the two styles together. In 80% of the time, I will use the Chinese style to maintain an ordered and efficient system in the company. In the other 20% of the time, I will leave it to employees, giving them space to innovate and devote their passion to things they love. In this way, I can keep a balance between the interest of my company and the development of my employees.