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Changing Principles of Communication Between Chinese Managers and Workers

On China’s current path toward modernization, information sharing and effective communication become major learning challenges. This article explores how the change and emerging tensions are managed. Data collected from a Sino-foreign joint venture and a Chinese joint-stock company, analyzed within the framework of cultural-historical activity theory, indicate that Confucian authority chains and guanxi should be viewed as two complementary and interactive principles. The communicative configuration generated by these two principles is in transition in Chinese organizations. The zone of proximal development emerging for communication in Chinese companies takes the shape of two-way movement: toward an increasingly personal character of the Confucian authority principle on one hand and toward an increasingly production-oriented character of the principle of guanxi on the other hand. The successful design and implementation of communication systems in Chinese companies will largely depend on management’s ability to understand and shape this historical change.