[quote=“mikehs”] My biggest frustration here in Taiwan is although it is a very high tech business selling almost exclusively to the big semiconductor fabs still business is mostly based upon good local friends or relatives.
[/quote]
I recently read “The Disney Wars” Eisner and cohorts did the friends network thing to death. I wonder if this is just normal business. Dealing with people you know as a comfort zone.
[quote=“Mother Theresa”][quote=“AWOL”]This is terrible - you poor people with bad experiences. I guess I have been lucky.
Would be interested to hear the flip side of all the great experiences the west has offered you? Or is it, as I suggested, bosses are bosses… they just suck everywhere? 
[/quote]
Sounds like you still don’t believe there is such a thing as Chinese management style.
Do you agree that Chinese culture is confucian or authoritarian or patriarchal? Do you agree that in Chinese culture children have less right to question their parents and students have less right to question their bosses?
Do you agree that Chinese culture emphasizes math, science and “rational” doctrines more than emotional, intuitive and people-oriented doctrines?
If so, wouldn’t one expect such cultural traits to have an effect on the management of Chinese/Taiwanese companies?[/quote]
I am saying I havent experienced a m’ment ‘style’ here that would make me think its a cutural/Chinese thing verus m’ment ‘style’ outside Asia.
Fucked m’ment = fucked m’ment… its quite simple.
Using your arguement above… all western m’ment ‘styles’ should be these worderful fluid things resultant from years of free(er) thinking and schooling, team building, social science loving, emotional folk? Certainly not my experience with western m’ment. They can be as autocratic and authoritarian as anywhere. In fact, the most irrational, facist bosses I have had have been western.
AWOL were you the poster who said “I go to work to wind down”?
Somebody did.
Sounds like you enjoy your work and are in a good environment. Either that or you like to take up the difficult side on the debating team.
Either way works for me.
Certainly wasnt me. The whole team here works their respective asses off.
I am simply trying to stress a point that I try not to pigeon hole m’ment style in a cultural phenom slot. Its easier to find solutions to bad m’ment techniques than it is to analyse cultural issues.
Really? How does one find solutions if many of the problems stem from the managers having been born and raised in a confucian society, where people are assigned to their respective levels (parent/child, teacher/student, older brother/younger brother, husband/wife, boss/worker) as superior or subordinate, everyone is supposed to know their place and to whom they must defer, and any comments, suggestions or questions from inferiors would be seen as gross insubordination, for having stepped out of line and causing the superior to lose face?
According to the summary of a study I posted earlier by a Taiwanese business student in the UK, problems in Taiwan enterprises are:
[quote] often related to attempts to over-control. Western owned companies were believed to be more concerned with respect for the individual and do not tolerate humiliation of individuals and insulting behaviour by managers. . .
Taiwanese managers were seen to be very harsh in their treatment of subordinates. There is a lack of training for Chinese senior managers which causes problems. Firstly, many senior managers were spoken of as being insecure and feeling threatened by their subordinates. This results in poor treatment of subordinates and low morale among the workforce. . .[/quote]
THe above rings very true in my experience.
But in China things may be even worse than Taiwan, because during the Cultural Revolution, from the mid-60’s to the mid-70’s, all institutions of higher learning were closed, so the people in top management positions there tend to be poorly educated. And based on their communist roots, they are used to taking orders and may have difficulty making decisions, accepting responsibility and taking initiative.
So, I agree it would be great if one can work out solutions to such problems, but if they are truly deeply entrenched problems resulting from the entire upbringing and collective mentality of the culture and those in control, good luck trying to change things. 
[quote=“Mother Theresa”] Western owned companies were believed to be more concerned with respect for the individual and do not tolerate humiliation of individuals and insulting behaviour by managers. . .
Taiwanese managers were seen to be very harsh in their treatment of subordinates. [/quote]
Lets go to first hand experience.
I was only in Taiwan for 2 weeks when I got to witness a Taiwanese sales manager at work on the sales girl.
1st day: “You have to get new customers or we will be firing you right after this show”.
2nd day: “When you smile at Western customers you look like a snake”.
(This seemed to me to conflict with the goals set on the first day)
3rd day: Brings in relative to work alongside sales girl and obviously to initmidate her that her job was at risk.
I was disgusted then. I’m disgusted now just writing about it. Sickening.
I guess there is too the obvious question of labour laws/enforcement and the hitsory of tarde unions, etc.
Really, some of the mad shit I’ve seen in Taiwanese offices just could not/would not occur in the west. I think people in the west are far more conscious of rules determining offcie protocol and behaviour.
Sexual harrassment is another good example. People in the west are shit scared of being accused of sexual harrassment and go to extreme lengths to ensure there can be no suspicion.
HG
[quote=“Ironman”][quote=“Mother Theresa”] Western owned companies were believed to be more concerned with respect for the individual and do not tolerate humiliation of individuals and insulting behaviour by managers. . .
Taiwanese managers were seen to be very harsh in their treatment of subordinates. [/quote]
Lets go to first hand experience.
I was only in Taiwan for 2 weeks when I got to witness a Taiwanese sales manager at work on the sales girl.
1st day: “You have to get new customers or we will be firing you right after this show”.
2nd day: “When you smile at Western customers you look like a snake”.
(This seemed to me to conflict with the goals set on the first day)
3rd day: Brings in relative to work alongside sales girl and obviously to initmidate her that her job was at risk.
I was disgusted then. I’m disgusted now just writing about it. Sickening.[/quote]
I agree with you that the manager’s behaviour is disgusting, but what is intrinsically “Taiwanese” about it?
My own first hand experience, having worked in the US, Taiwan and Hong Kong over the past 15 years, is like many others who have replied here, which is that there probably isn’t a “Chinese” Management style.
Maybe there is a “Confucian” Management style, which again would not be limited to Taiwan or China. I have also experienced a “Family”-business management styles outside of Taiwan, which wasn’t remarkably different than the good and bad experiences of friends of mine who have worked in their own and other family/private businesses here, in Malaysia and elsewhere in Asia.
Ok. I work for one of Taiwan’s most successful companies. It’s huge. Well over 1,000 employees in our building, factories and offices around the world, annual revenue of almost US$5 billion. The heads of the business groups and the very top managers are almost all assholes who like to belittle and batter down those underneath them, including my boss, whom they seem to take particular satisfaction in humiliating, making him (me actually) write and rewrite and rewrite the same memo over and over and appear before them repeatedly to explain it and get chewed out over it, not because he’s doing a crappy job, but just because they want to teach him who’s boss.
He then does the same to my coworker, a very decent guy who for some reason is the boss’s punching bag and is now very close to quitting because the boss chews him out so much for nothing at all. It’s a shame, too, because he’s actually a very decent employee and we’re about to lose him because the boss feels a sadistic need to pummel someone psychologically.
I’ve never worked for such a bunch of sadistic, fucked-up losers. Yes, there are crappy bosses in the West, but I think there’s some truth to all the stories about this being a rigid confucian system where authorities like to humiliate and abuse those below them – to teach them a lesson I guess (that the boss is the boss). :s
It was very Taiwanese. It happened in Taiwan.
I’m always skeptical of talking about this as a “Confucian” phenomenon. Confucius would not have been pleased with these practices.
Basically, judging from experiences that I’ve seen in the workplace (such as my father being forced out of a job by personally demeaning public behavior from a superior, my mother being forced out of a job for rocking the boat or questioning superiors’ / group consensus, my own being harassed for pointing out the problems with decisions my superiors were making and getting torn apart by petty office politics – all three at western companies) they are not specific to Taiwan.
And one of the best managers that I’ve known (who used to work for my old company, which was Australian-owned and operated) was a Taiwanese guy who was a good manager precisely because of Confucian values: he was extremely, well, ren towards his staff, treated them more humanely than anybody else in management at the place (and he the only Asian), and protected his people the way a good Confucian manager should. And the staff was intensely loyal because of it. So it’s not that the West has nothing to learn from Taiwan, either (though perhaps much less than vice versa.)
That said, Taiwanese managers can be major dicks, too, there’s no denying that.
What it comes down to is what I think one of the recent posts was hinting at: people who have been dicked around and abused at work tend to repeat that pattern towards others, creating a cycle. It’s bad news, but authoritarianism can be self-reinforcing. Some people can break the cycle, and some aspects of Taiwanese culture might reinforce the cycle or make it more prevalent in TW as opposed to elsewhere. But it isn’t specifically or magically “Taiwanese,” it’s just crappy management, which Taiwanese cultural practices might make more likely… if that makes sense.
If there is a culturally specific point about management styles to be made here, other than “TW culture often leads to bad managers,” then it’s probably to be found in looking at what qualitative differences there are between Western crappy management and Taiwanese crappy management. Maybe this point could be better made if we get down to brass tacks and specifically compare management practices between the two groups: er, compare bad W mgmt to bad TW mgmt, and good to good?
[quote=“yisha’ou”]I’m always skeptical of talking about this as a “Confucian” phenomenon. Confucius would not have been pleased with these practices.
Basically, judging from experiences that I’ve seen in the workplace (such as my father being forced out of a job by personally demeaning public behavior from a superior, my mother being forced out of a job for rocking the boat or questioning superiors’ / group consensus, my own being harassed for pointing out the problems with decisions my superiors were making and getting torn apart by petty office politics – all three at western companies) they are not specific to Taiwan.
And one of the best managers that I’ve known (who used to work for my old company, which was Australian-owned and operated) was a Taiwanese guy who was a good manager precisely because of Confucian values: he was extremely, well, ren towards his staff, treated them more humanely than anybody else in management at the place (and he the only Asian), and protected his people the way a good Confucian manager should. And the staff was intensely loyal because of it. So it’s not that the West has nothing to learn from Taiwan, either (though perhaps much less than vice versa.)
That said, Taiwanese managers can be major dicks, too, there’s no denying that.
What it comes down to is what I think one of the recent posts was hinting at: people who have been dicked around and abused at work tend to repeat that pattern towards others, creating a cycle. It’s bad news, but authoritarianism can be self-reinforcing. Some people can break the cycle, and some aspects of Taiwanese culture might reinforce the cycle or make it more prevalent in TW as opposed to elsewhere. But it isn’t specifically or magically “Taiwanese,” it’s just crappy management, which Taiwanese cultural practices might make more likely… if that makes sense.
If there is a culturally specific point about management styles to be made here, other than “TW culture often leads to bad managers,” then it’s probably to be found in looking at what qualitative differences there are between Western crappy management and Taiwanese crappy management. Maybe this point could be better made if we get down to brass tacks and specifically compare management practices between the two groups: er, compare bad W mgmt to bad TW mgmt, and good to good?[/quote]
Good post. Obviously there are good and bad everywhere. I’ve mentioned the bad. The good is a Chinese business owner born and raised in Taiwan being one of my business heroes. Very hard to fault.
Using a broad brush approach to managment styles there are very clear differences between Western and Asian. How could there not be?
Same as we experience every day with living in Taiwan.
Even a simple thing like pointing at yourself. Me, are you saying I screwed it up? Asian locals will point at their nose, we point at our chest.
I’m likewise dubious on the Confucian links in all of this (in any case, it should be neo-Confucian to be specific) and more confident it’s more to do with recent history than ancient. Prinicpally it’s only the likes of the Singaporeans that keep raising the legitimacy of the Confucian tradition to justify paternalistic authoritarianism. No one else much gives a toss.
Recent history in the Chinese world is all rather brutal as far as industrial relations is concerned. I mean it’s just a hop skip and spit to the days of expendable coolies after all. Given that there has also been little in the way of effective trade unionism, and resultant ammendments to labour laws, the legal framework leaves the gates open to the feudal (brutal) past and a plethrora of ugly despotic examples. Basically managers have far too much legal leeway to be utter arseholes.
Take the example raised earlier of the boss bringing in relatives to intimidate that saleswoman. If that occurred in an office in the west the lass could well consider it a gift from the heavens - an early retirement plan of sorts after her lawyers have shredded the manager (and the company for allowing it) through the courts.
Fired, deported, etc, there’s plenty of examples here in Forumosa highlighting the lack of legal protection for foreigners specifically, but workers more generally.
HG
As I have tried to say in previous posts, I am basing MY thoughts in this question on MY experiences. I also tried to say that I have had western managers that look like what Ironman et al describe as typcial confucian/Chinese m’ment style.
I think rather than it being as HGC said - ancient history, perhaps it is more to do with Taiwan managers being caught in that western influenced vortex. They are trying to be western - ie have been overseas to study or have read the latest book on leadership etc… and as MT highlighted, have this conflicting with years of upbringing… I dont know. Thats the thing about Taiwan, think about it too much and it does your head in! I prefer to just put people in the good, bad, average manager category and deal with them accordingly. IF they cant/wont/dont need to change then I am the one that needs to readjust my strategy in the workplace to deal with them and get on with the job.
Understand AWOL.
Connecting the dots on my previous post - had a coffee since - in a legal vacumn managers refer to hstorical precedent. This could I guess tie with a Confucian sense of their role, or a personal sense of what they feel is right. Obviously different managers will react differently. Unfortunately my experience is that too many make bad choices. This for me has been compounded by a reduced ability to legally counter bad behaviour, or call upon relevant laws to justify my opposition and maintain my job.
HG