Tag Archives: guanxi

Next time in China: Guanxi

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Revised on: 2015-09-03

Today’s post is an extension of what I wrote yesterday, in my review of what Fu Jia and Christine Rutherford wrote in Mitigation of supply chain relational risk caused by cultural differences between China and the West, an article that is very much based on Fu Jia’s PhD, Cultural adaptation between Western buyers and Chinese suppliers, where he describes nine important types of cultural differences that Westerners need to be aware of when doing business in China. If you ignore these differences, your business ventures in China, or in much of Asia for that matter, are destined to fail miserably. Today I will present these differences in more detail.

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Supply Chain Risk: Culture Shock

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Revised on: 2015-09-03

Is culture shock the reason why so many global and cross-culture business relationships fail? When it comes to Western buyers and Chinese suppliers this may very well be the case, and while issues related to product quality or supplier reliability may seem as the obvious cause externally, cultural differences may be the root cause internally. Fu Jia and Christine Rutherford from Cranfield University have just published an article on Mitigation of supply chain relational risk caused by cultural differences between China and the West, where they claim that the extent of cultural adaptation between supplier and buyer is what makes or brakes global partnerships that are culturally different.

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