Paul S. Hempel

B2B e-Commerce in emerging economies: i-metal.com's non-ferrous metals exchange in China

Existing examples of Business-to-Business (B2B) e-Commerce in the literature tend to be drawn from the experience in developed economies, and existing theories are also implicitly grounded in this context. Emerging economies present a significantly different business context, owing largely to their less developed financial, legal, and physical infrastructures. Emerging or non-western economies also have different business philosophies and cultures, which influence the relationship between companies and the marketplace. As an example of the challenges facing an electronic marketplace in an emerging economy, the experience of i-Metal.com Limited in setting up a non-ferrous metals exchange in China is examined in detail. It becomes apparent that setting up a successful B2B marketplace in emerging or non-western economies may require the creation of basic services that are taken for granted in developed economies, as well as requiring a careful consideration of the underlying business philosophy and culture.

Chinese Business Process Re-engineering

The popularity of business process re-engineering (BPR) and its international diffusion from the United States make it important to understand the influence of cultural factors on this concept. The global economic prominence of the Chinese and their distinctive cultural characteristics prompted our study of Chinese business process re-engineering. This article addresses a large gap in the Chinese management literature and is intended to help those who are managing organizations or marketing information technology (IT) products and related services in Greater China. We systematically compare IT-enabled change in the American and Chinese business cultures. Informal planning and process modelling, highly interdependent social and organizational relationships with ingrained hierarchies, and the prevailing attitudes towards information management and organizational change will shape the preparation for IT-enabled process innovation efforts as well as the design and implementation of IT-enhanced business process models in Chinese organizations.

Differences between Chinese and Western managerial views of performance

Multinational corporations operating in Greater China need to continue improving employee performance levels, but Western style performance appraisals might not be the right answer. This paper examines some of the differences in the ways that Chinese and Western managers view performance in order to determine the appropriateness of Western appraisal techniques. Using a sample drawn from Hong Kong, significant differences between Hong Kong Chinese and UK managers are found, particularly in the role that trait attribution plays in the appraisal process. The paper concludes by considering the implications that these observed differences have for both performance appraisal research as well as for practice.

Team Empowerment and the Organizational Context Decentralization and the Contrasting Effects of Formalization

A great deal is known about how managers influence team empowerment, but very little is known about what organizations do to influence empowerment. Using teams drawn from 94 Chinese high-technology companies, the authors show that organizational decentralization enhances empowerment when decision making is delegated downward even when not directly delegated to teams. Prior research has presented both a positive and negative view of formalization, and this study found that the organizational level to which formalization is applied makes a difference. Formalization of organizational processes enhances team empowerment by reducing uncertainty within the firm, whereas formalization of jobs and roles moderates the effect of decentralization and reduces team empowerment by reducing teams’ flexibility in taking advantage of decentralization. These results show the importance of organization structure as an antecedent of empowerment and highlight the contrasting effects of different types of formalization.

Developing international organizational change theory using cases from China

This article contributes to international theory development by examining organizational change (OC) in mainland China. Eight case studies of a single type of OC, business process re-engineering (BPR), reveal that Chinese organizations diverged consistently from initially planned changes. Change context is found to influence not only the process of change, but also the content and even the objectives of change. Since specific practices carry implicit values, the congruence with existing values influences OC implementation significantly. Multinational organizations must recognize that a specific practice or policy can represent very different changes in different contexts.

Culture and the Assessment of Creativity

Laboratory studies of culture and creativity typically rely upon measures of divergent thinking while studies of creativity in organizational settings explicitly define creativity and use subject matter experts as assessors to account for the influence of culture on the assessment of creativity. Yet, little is known about what specific characteristics of a creative idea are considered when creativity is assessed by communities of experts (the field) in different spheres of creative activities (domain). In this article, we review, conceptually analyse, and illustrate using original interview data the influence of culture on the assessment of two commonly examined dimensions of overall creativity, novelty, and usefulness. Using the context of expatriates, we propose a framework, along with propositions, that integrates cultural experience, creativity criteria, and assessor perspectives on creativity assessment. Finally, we discuss ways in which a focus upon the processes underlying creativity assessments could help advance research on culture and creativity.

Designing multinational benefits programs: The role of national culture

Companies with multinational operations must design benefits systems for their employees in different countries. This is a complex task due to significant international differences in government requirements, in standard practice, and in employee expectations. This paper presents examples that show how national cultural values help to explain these differences across countries in benefits practices. The paper concludes by considering how an understanding of cultural differences can help in providing insight into how to design international benefits programs.

Human-resource-based models of production systems

Abstract One weakness of many simulations of production systems is an overly simplistic treatment of human resource considerations. This paper presents a simple model of a human-resource-based production system that can be used to augment other models of production systems. The simple model is used to illustrate how various human resource functions are inter-related, and a few hypothetical examples are presented to show how important it is to model accurately human resource costs when production costs are being estimated.

Organisational culture and the implementation of Six Sigma in Southern China

Six Sigma has become increasingly common in China, where the typical management practices are substantially different from those in the US, the original location of Six Sigma. Based upon existing organisational change research, this raises questions as to whether the existing management culture in Chinese organisations influences the success of Six Sigma implementations. This paper demonstrates that the existing organisational culture does have an influence upon Six Sigma implementation within China. In particular, organisations with a Supportive Culture appear more likely to report success, while organisations with an Innovation Culture surprisingly appear to experience difficulties implementing Six Sigma. Additionally, having clear objectives at the start of the project is critical to ultimate Six Sigma implementation success.

Locality Pay: Balancing Theory and Practice

At the time this article was written, Howard Risher was a Principal with the Wyatt Company in Philadelphia. He is currently President of Human Resource Quality in Villanova, PA. He has over 20 years of compensation consulting experience in both the public and private sector. He served as the project manager for the pay reform study commissioned by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. He is currently a member of the National Academy of Public Administration panel that is studying alternatives for reforming the federal classification system. He has a B.A. in Psychology from Pennsylvania State University and an MBA and a Ph.D. from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.