Baština (Jan 2019)
Conversance of Chinese mentality: The advantage during business doing
Abstract
Companies that intend to do business in whatever foreign country must invest not only in design and implementation of common business strategies, but should take into serious consideration studying the basics of culture and mentality of the country they intend to work in as well. However, it seems that this issue is often ignored by business people. Doing business in China is a very complex issue and, in order to be successful in this great and traditional country, a foreign company should make significant efforts in the attempt to understand the way the Chinese think and act. It is important to bear in mind that, in order to be successful businesswise, it is a must to establish and maintain long-lasting business relationships with the Chinese counterparts. The most important concepts that have contributed to the Chinese mentality formation and that foreign business people who intend to do business in China should therefore get acquainted with are Confucianism, Taoism, face (personal dignity, public respect), guanxi (relations, connections, Web of relationships, Chinese social capital), ganqing (emotions, feeling, affection) and collectivism. In this paper, these concepts will be briefly presented. However, China and the Chinese mentality are changing, slowly but steadily, due to various influences and it will certainly be a very interesting topic for further research, in the view of improving business dealings with the "factory of the world", which is still growing at an impressive rate.
