A shift in management focus among international enterprises in China: a longitudinal analysis

The People´s Republic of China (PRC) began its transition from a command economy to a market structure when it opened its doors to foreign direct investment in 1978. A study of 75 small- and medium-sized enterprises doing business in Tianjin, The People´s Republic of China (PRC) was initiated in 1996. The Lally School of Management and Technology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Tianjin University, and Nankai University formed a cross-cultural research team. The research opportunity was to study the “best practices” essential for a small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) to enter the People´s Republic of China´s market. The 1996 research showed evidence management´s shifting strategic focus both in manufacturing and in marketing. The transfer of older product and process technologies, for the purpose of extending their useful life cycles, has given way to adapting/adopting advanced technology in order to keep pace with world class practices. This has been accomplished to facilitate a concurrent shift in the enterprise´s marketing focus: originally established to prosecute domestic or the export markets exclusively are shifting to a broader marketing strategy. A 1998 longitudinal follow-up on 45 of those companies, still in operation, verified earlier findings and investigated the factors underlying the reasons for these apparent strategic shifts. This paper presents some of the preliminary findings of the follow-up study