Representing Corporate Culture in China: Official, Academic and Corporate Perspectives

This paper examines the reasons for the explosion of interest in corporate culture (qiye wenhua) in China over the past decade. It begins by surveying non-Chinese definitions of corporate culture, and then proceeds to introduce the “official” Chinese representation of corporate culture: how the Chinese government has co-opted this foreign concept, promoted it among Chinese corporations, and in the process redefined corporate culture to make it a vehicle for the government’s own policy priorities. “Academic” representations are then introduced, in other words Chinese academic texts, which in some cases explain and justify the official view of corporate culture and in other cases strongly reject it. Finally, the paper illustrates how five large Chinese corporations publicly represent their cultures, and how they comply with the official requirements for corporate culture — at least on the surface — even when there is no direct legal obligation on them to do so. The paper concludes that the corporate culture phenomenon in China is evidence of a pragmatic process of adaptation and accommodation by various corporate stakeholders, including the CCP, corporate managers and employees, and reveals a uniquely Chinese idea of the business corporation, as a hybrid economic-political-cultural organization dedicated to national and individual improvement and renewal.