Xueguang Zhou

Late Adoption of the Multidivisional Form by Large U.S. Corporations: Institutional, Political, and Economic Accounts

In a system and method for automatically starting, synchronizing and operating a steam turbine, control means for valve position limiting wherein such limit can be changed non-linearly. Means are provided whereby the system operator has the ability to manually select a minimum incremental change of the valve position limit as a keyboard-entered constant. If the operator enables a continuing change in the limit it is introduced arithmetically, permitting large swings in a reasonably short period of time.

Economic Transformation and Income Inequality in Urban China: Evidence from Panel Data

Using panel data of 4,730 urban residents drawn from 20 cities in China, this article examines changes in income determinants between the prereform and reform eras. To guide this empirical study, a conceptual model is developed that emphasizes the coevolution of politics and markets to synthesize theoretical ideas in the recent debate on the transformation of state socialist societies. The findings show significant changes in returns to education and in the rise of private/hybrid firms in the reform era. There is also strong evidence of institutional persistence in returns to positional power and in the organizational hierarchy. These findings reveal multifaceted processes of transformation that call for more sophisticated theoretical models and in-depth institutional analyses.

Status Processes in Enduring Work Groups

We examine the impact of team, organizational, and societal status characteristics on interaction patterns in long-term work groups. Data are from 2077 respondents representing 224 research and development teams drawn from 29 large corporations. Hypotheses based on status characteristic theory are supported: Both external (organizational and societal) and internal (team) status characteristics affect team interaction. When status within a team is controlled, only one external characteristic has a significant positive effect. Team status, in turn, is significantly affected by each of the external characteristics studied. While most of these external characteristics may reflect a team members past performance, gender, when past performance is controlled, also has an independent effect on team status with males being accorded higher status. This suggests that competence and performance are not the sole bases for team status. Status processes in enduring work teams behave very much like those observed in ad hoc groups: Beliefs associated with diffuse status characteristics affect the ordering of interaction.

Embeddedness and Contractual Relationships in China's Transitional Economy

Interfirm contracts represent common economic relations in the marketplace; they are also deeply embedded in social relations and social institutions. In the context of Chinas transitional economy, this study examines how three mechanisms-economizing transaction costs, network-based social relations, and institutional links-- affect interfirm contractual relationships in (1) the choice of search channels for contractual partners, (2) the formality and provisions in a contract, and (3) the intensity of social interaction in contract implementation. Empirical evidence is drawn from information collected on 877 contracts from 620 firms in two Chinese cities, Beijing and Guangzhou. The authors find distinct roles of social relations, institutional links, and regulatory environments in the initiation of contractual partners and the forms of contracts adopted, whereas transaction-specific factors play a significant role in the intensity of social interaction in contract implementation. These findings suggest the interplay among economic calculativeness, social networks and institutional links, and the complementarity in the underlying theoretical ideas.

The Dynamics of Organizational Rules

This article examines the rate of rule founding and the rate of rule change in a university organization in its 100-year history. Organizational learning and institutional theories are used as research guidelines to explore the effects of path dependency, attention allocation, governmental intervention, and historical context on the evolution of organizational rules. The findings suggest that rule founding and rule change follow two distinctive processes. The former largely reflects an organizational response to external crisis and shocks, while the latter is strongly regulated by an internal learning process. Once rules are established, they are path dependent, sensitive to agenda setting, and adaptive to governmental constraints. There is also evidence that rules are institutionalized over time.

The institutional logic of occupational prestige ranking : Reconceptualization and reanalyses

Departing from the earlier literature that emphasizes power and resources as sources of occupational prestige, the author proposes to explain the phenomenon of occupational prestige ranking from an institutional logic of social recognition that is centered on the principle of legitimacy and appropriateness. The author develops theoretical arguments to explicate the mechanisms that generate the intersubjective evaluation of the “social standings” of occupations and that give deference to occupations that can make legitimate claims on the bases of nature and reason. The proposed theoretical ideas are tested by examining patterns of occupational prestige ranking reported in 1989 GSS data. The findings are consistent with the hypotheses derived from the institutional logic that motivates this study.

The Institutional Logic of Collusion among Local Governments in China

A salient organizational phenomenon in the Chinese bureaucracy is collusion among local governments in response to policies and directives from higher authorities; local governments often form alliances to compromise the original intention behind state policies. There are thus significant and persistent deviations and goal displacement in policy implementation. This article develops an organizational analysis and theoretical explanation of this phenomenon. It argues as follows: Collusion among local governments, though informal, is generated and perpetuated by the institutional logic of the Chinese bureaucracy, results from organizational adaptation to its environment, and hence acquires legitimacy and becomes highly institutionalized. In particular, the institutional logic of the Chinese bureaucracy has generated three organizational paradoxes—uniformity in policy making and flexibility in implementation, incentive intensity and goal displacement, bureaucratic impersonality and the personalization of administrative ties—which provide legitimate bases for collusion among local governments. Bureaucratic collusion has been greatly exacerbated in recent years because of the unintended consequences of the centralization of authority and the enforcement of incentive mechanisms in the bureaucracy.

Institutional transformation and returns to education in urban China: An empirical assessment

Abstract Patterns of returns to education reflect fundamental principles in which human resources are allocated and rewarded in a society. Major theoretical ideas about institutional transformation in former state socialist societies are centered on changing mechanisms of resource allocation, with direct empirical implications for the changing roles of education in the transformation processes. In this study, we draw a set of hypotheses from these theoretical ideas in the literature and examine changes in returns to education in urban China between 1978 (the beginning of the post-Mao era) and 1993 (15 years into the economic reform). We find significant and substantial increases in returns to education over time, and especially in the non-state sector where market mechanisms prevail. These patterns are consistent with the core arguments developed in market transition theory. There is also evidence on an active role of the state and state policies in promoting the role of education in the same direction. These findings suggest that markets and political processes are interacting in more complicated ways than simply undermining each other.

Chinese Organizations in Transition: Changing Promotion Patterns in the Reform Era

Since the 1980s, the Peoples Republic of China has embarked on a path of economic transformation that has led to profound changes in organizations. Based on work histories of a sample of urban residents drawn from 14 Chinese cities in six provinces, we assess the extent and direction of organizational transformation by analyzing changes in promotion patterns between the prereform era (1949-1979) and the reform era (1980-1994). We begin with Walders dual-path model and examine distinctive mechanisms for promotion along two institutionalized-administrative and professional-career lines. We enrich Walders model by considering the impact of macropolitical processes on career dynamics and the effect of emerging market mechanisms on different organizational sectors. Our findings show that there have been both continuity and significant changes in the criteria and opportunities of promotion in Chinese organizations across the two periods. In the reform era, more educated managers who were recently recruited into the organizations had the highest probability of being promoted. There were also significant variations in promotion patterns across career lines and organizational sectors, reflecting the impacts of both institutional persistence and emerging market forces.

Political Dynamics and Bureaucratic Career Patterns in the People's Republic of China, 1949-1994

Bureaucrats and bureaucratic organizations are at the center of political and economic institutions of state socialism. This study examines the link between political dynamics and bureaucratic career patterns in the Peoples Republic of China to shed light on the evolution of state socialist bureaucracy. The author argues that political dynamics induced by shifting state policies and tensions between state and bureaucratic interests led to the recruitment and promotion of separate cohorts of bureaucrats with distinctive characteristics and divided loyalties. Using the life histories of a representative sample drawn in 20 cities in China, the author examines patterns of access to the Chinese bureaucracy and promotion patterns during the period from 1949 through 1994. The evidence shows varying selection criteria over time and two distinct patterns of promotion between national bureaucratic systems and within workplaces. These findings portray an image of bureaucrats as highly differentiated groups rather than a homogeneous ruling class.