Journal of the Operational Research Society, vol. 51 (5), pp. 642 -644.
Viewpoints
Confucius, Culture and Western Modelling - a reply to Kidd and Leung
Kidd and Leung say that Lau and myself skirted the issue of the effects of Confucianism in our paper "Logical Soft Systems Modelling". This is certainly true. The paper was primarily a case study, it covered a lot of ground, it was very long for a JORS paper and it had to be cut back during the process of revision. Their comments are, therefore, most welcome as this gives me the opportunity to discuss some of the cultural, social and philosophical ramifications in greater detail. Their comments also cover a lot of ground in a short space. I shall divide my reply into four parts dealing with inter-related but distinct issues: the Language of the models, the explanation for avoidance of confrontation, philosophical influences on Chinese and Western social behaviour and finally methodology for future research.
Language of the models
Kidd and Leung bring up some important points about language and I agree with what they say. The paper stated that "the meaning of the models was not compromised" what was meant was that, although the discussing of the models took place in Cantonese, the interlocutors had no problem understanding what the English language models meant. The interlocutors were all fluent in English. Whether the discussion would have been richer if the models had been built using Chinese ideograms, rather than English, is an interesting question. It's one that needs more research.
During my four years teaching in Hong Kong I had hoped to find a student interested in building Chinese language conceptual models during an action research project. Most students thought this would be a waste of time in Hong Kong, however, those that were doing business with mainland Chinese could see the potential advantages of this. Unfortunately, practical reasons prevented a project from ever materialising. As far as I know an SSM conceptual model has never been constructed in an Oriental language. This is very sad because I have come across a number of unpublished SSM projects that have been undertaken by local people in areas where fluent English is rare. Here the research students have tended to gloss over the linguistic problems and have seemed determined to show that the Western model worked. I think poor quality supervision is at work here because the truly interesting research result would focus the problems of using the models.
Avoidance of confrontation
With regard to Confucius, Kidd and Leung seem to think that the Chinese avoidance of confrontation in social situations is a result of the acceptance of the Confucian system of laws and authority. However, from personal experience, I doubt that this is the case. I first came across the avoidance of confrontation in Thailand where it is has great importance. Harger & Spindler1 consider that "the most socially negative act [in Thai Society] is confrontation". In Thailand it functions quite separately from respect for authority. Thais try to avoid confrontation with people they consider to be of equal rank, not just superiors. Also Thailand has no history of Confucianism, their written language is based on Sanskrit and their academic heritage based around Theravada Buddhism. The fact that avoiding confrontation is a social trait that is widely distributed across some very diverse cultures in the Far East leads me to believe (though it would be difficult to prove) that it is very old indeed and probably predates Confucius.
Philosophical influences
Kidd and Leung seem to be saying that Confucius can be taken as a model for other social differences between the Far East and the West. Here again I am sceptical and also very confused by their remarks about Confucius and Rousseau. There have been many Chinese philosophers putting forward a plethora of different ideas throughout the ages, just as there have been many Western philosophers doing the same. Why choose these two? Why not compare Confucius with Plato? Plato's Republic is probably the most famous of all Western works on political philosophy and it separated from the works of Confucius by only a century. Plato was no democrat; the Republic emphasises the rule of law maintained by a philosopher king. Ideas very similar to those that Kidd and Leung ascribe to Confucius.
Kidd and Leung seem to be arguing that Confucius is representative of modern Chinese attitudes and that Rousseau is representative of modern Western attitudes. This would be very contentious and I think they would have a lot work to do to demonstrate their case. I am also doubtful that this approach would be much help in using methods and models developed in the West to address organisational problems in the Far East. This is because a lot of the important differences do not come out of the big political and philosophical ideas.
Methodology
If a methodological approach can be gleaned from Kidd and Leung it would appear to be top down. That is, start with the ideas of a great thinker and use these as a guide to understanding modern business practice. As I have shown there are two potential problems with this approach. Firstly, some types of social behaviour may predate the great thinkers. Secondly, the choice of which thinkers to take as representative is difficult. A third problem is that it is not even easy to identify the areas of study that might have given rise to current ideas. To illustrate this I need to make a fairly long digression, but one that remains in the area of concern.
A recent research project was conducted on information technology development in the Hong Kong Chinese language newspaper industry2. The researcher tried to use four well-known business models to analyse the situation. None of these models could be made to apply to the situation. They failed completely. One of the models was Porter's model of competitive strategy. To apply this would require that the newspaper companies were interested in increasing their market share of readers and advertising revenue. But it was found that most of the companies were not interested in increasing their market share but were happy with peaceful coexistence with the other companies.
Evidence such as this leads me to formulate the contention that the Chinese businessmen are more interested in co-operation than competition, with other businessmen in their area. Fighting for a larger share of the pie of profits usually involves price cutting or increased production expenses, which means that the pie tends to get smaller. Co-operation by contrast may lead to a larger pie or at least the pie maintaining its size. The co-operative model yields a win situation or situation in which there is no loss. The competitive model yields a situation where there may be a win or a loss. Of course this is simplistic but it leads one to wonder why there is such an extraordinary emphasis on competitive methods in Western business theory.
It is interesting to note that the co-operative model is difficult to express in English. What I want to say is that Chinese businessmen do not normally want to compete with their competitors, but this sounds contradictory. There is only one English word for a company in the same line of business, and that word is "competitor". We call long term business planning "strategy". In my, admitted old, copy of the Concise Oxford Dictionary3 "strategy" is defined as "Generalship, the art of war (lit. & fig.); management of an army…". The structure of the English language reinforces an aggressive, competitive approach in business theory.
One can speculate that these aggressive business and organisational ideas derive from eighteenth and early nineteenth century military writers such as Carl von Clausewitz. Prior to the industrial revolution, armies were the only large secular organisations. Generals were the first people to develop management and administrative theories. The railways formed the infrastructure of the later industrial revolution but were also such military importance that the European military played a major role development and management. In other industries the military provided the only viable model for organisational development. By the time management became an area of academic study, Western commercial organisations were thoroughly infused with military ideas. Business academic picked up on these ideas to develop modern business theories.
So, if I am right in these very tentative speculations, the explanation for an important difference between Chinese and Western business practice lies in the writing of a Prussian General not a Chinese philosopher.
References
1. Harger J & Spindler J (1996) Thais Do Business the Thai Way, A guide to effective communication in the Thai business environment. Communications Services Limited. Bangkok
2. Wong A & Gregory FH (1989). On the inapplicability of western models to information technology development in Chinese companies – the case of the Hong Kong newspapers. Implementation and evaluation of information systems in developing countries; Proceedings of the fifth International Working Conference of IFIP WG 9.4. London School of Economics and Political Science, London, and Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok.
3. Fowler HW & Fowler FG (1934) The Concise Oxford Dictionary, Third Edition. Clarendon Press. Oxford.
Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand Frank Gregory