英汉文化差异对中外合资企业的影响

Both English and Chinese culture is developing depending on connatural natural condition and acquired factors of human nature. Different natural condition builds different cultural forms. Activities of agricultural production with people crowdedly living together occupy ascendancy in Chinese ancient society (Li et al, 2008). Agricultural production makes Chinese live in the same place for a long-term and this is easy to promote the development of static cultural type. However, the geographic climate of Britain is not suitable for the development of agricultural production. England, on the coast of Mediterranean, with advanced seafaring, has rapid development of business (Xu et al, 2009). Hence, English culture gravitates towards the flowing cultural. The main diversity of English and Chinese culture could be reflected by language and characters, way of thinking, and philosophic concept. 

For the inducing and suggesting elements of language and characters, Chinese language and characters is omnibus with strong sense of image that it is easy to understand it through focusing on image aspects and macro integration. The direct ideographic function of Chinese language and characters often could suggest Chinese combined with objective fact constantly and subtly to develop and invent practical things but Chinese often ignore abstractive and pure theoretical thinking (Hirst et al, 2008). As a result, Chinese often has advanced technology and hysteretic theory. At the same time, grammatical formative of Chinese language and characters is obscure and it does not stress grammar. Hence, the concept application of making a careful and detailed analysis of Chinese is not that systematic as well as English. English language and characters is pretty elaborate on grammar and this promotes the formation of detailed presentation way of though (Lu et al, 2006). The formation of scientific theoretical system is just like precise grammar system actually that the grammar system includes basic element of scientific reasoning and the formal logic actually is the things that are included in language element. 

For the way of thinking, the largest characteristic of Chinese mode of thinking is comprehensive and the significant feature of English way of thinking is analysis (Xu et al, 2009). In the words of philosophy, Chinese way of thinking is rolling into one and English way of thinking is one dividing into two. Dialectical thinking in Chinese and English culture also is different. Chinese dialectical thinking pays high attention to unity of opposites to reach harmony and English dialectical thinking emphasizes conflict and stresses the opposition (Li et al, 2008). The thought of English often is outgoing and opposite and the thought of Chinese often is introverted (Xu et al, 2009). To analyze an issue, Chinese often is from far to near and English is just the opposite. Chinese concentrates on the main points from macroscopic aspects to microscopic aspects to make deeply analysis and English often starts from small point to expand the analysis. Chinese way of though often has composition of intuitive that master the essential characteristic of thing directly and English way of though often has strong rational element that without real evidence and a whole set of reasoning process, it is hard for English to accept some conclusion (Li et al, 2008). The difference of Chinese and English way of thinking shows in the following chart:#p#分页标题#e#

For the philosophic concept, the philosophy of Chinese mainly is virtue and it is isogenies with ethics and morality and Confucian culture is the core and main body of Chinese culture. The important influence of Confucian culture to Chinese culture main is reflected by that the value of Confucian culture about emphasizing ethics, personality shaping, and the standard of behavior are the criterion of examination of social value (Child, 2009).. As a result, Ethics and morality is the leading role in Chinese philosophy. The philosophy of English is isogenies with science and technology and it emphasizes to research and conquer objective world. 

The section also intends to use Hofstede’s national culture model to analyze the cultural difference between English and Chinese. Hofstede ’s national culture model think culture is the common psychological procedure in the same environment and different group, religion, or country has diversity in the process (Tung and Verbeke, 2010). The diversity could be divided into four dimensions which are power distance, uncertainty avoidance index, individualism versus collectivism, and masculine versus feminality (Tung and Verbeke, 2010). 

The power distance is the degree of power concentration, the degree of leader’s dictatorship, and the degree for the society to accept inequality of division of powers in organization (Hofstede, 2011). In enterprise, the power distance could be treated as the social distance between employee and managers. Britain has small power distance and China has high power distance and high acceptance of power distance. In enterprise, the manager of high power distance country often poses as leader and is good at controlling subordinate and the manager of low power distance does not care the position of leader and is willing to get along with colleague of low level. 

Individualism is the degree for individual maintaining personage independent or blending in group such as family (Hofstede, 2011). Under individualism culture, value and morality encourage pursuing individual achievement, individual power, and independency and people tend to be responsible to individual behavior, without depending on group about emotion (Tung and Verbeke, 2010). On the contrary, under collectivism culture, people cares more for group benefits rather than individual benefits and thinks group has priority compared with individual. Collectivism thinks individual status bases on group members that group is responsible for individual and individual needs to be loyal to group (Tung and Verbeke, 2010). England advocates individualism and stress freedom of personality and individual achievement. Hence, to launching individual competition between employees and awarding individual performance is the effective humanism intensive policy in the enterprise of UK. China stress collectivism and employee has emotion dependence to organization and it is important for enterprise in China to construct harmonious relationship between employee and manager. #p#分页标题#e#

In any society, people feel threats when facing uncertain and vague situation and try to prevent. There are many methods to prevent uncertain situation, for example, providing better occupational stability, making more standard rules, forbidding transgressed thought and behavior, pursuing things as straight as a die, and obtaining professional knowledge (Hofstede, 2011). Different nations, countries, or areas have different impendent degree to prevent uncertainty. Relatively speaking, in the society with low uncertainty avoidance index, people generally have a sense of security and tend to relax life attitude and encourages adventure (Hofstede, 2011). In the society with high uncertainty avoidance index, people often have strong sense of urgency and gumption to form hard working emotion (Tung and Verbeke, 2010). In addition, people are easy to accept the inherent uncertainty in life and could accept more suggestions in the society with low uncertainty avoidance index and employee tends to have self-management and independent work. Superior tends to have strict control and clear instructions to subordinates in the society with high uncertainty avoidance index. English culture has low uncertainty avoidance index and Chinese culture has high uncertainty avoidance index. 

Duality of gender is the basic fact in society and different societies choose different kinds of method to treat the fact (Hofstede, 2011). Hofstede pays attention to the influence of bisexual physiology diversity to amphiprotic emotion and social role. Masculine and feminality is the standard of value which occupies dominant position in society. Masculine reflects the attitude of manager in a country on male character in society (Tung and Verbeke, 2010). The country, which male character occupies leading position and female only is responsible to and deals with some supportive social activitites, belongs to masculism country which pays more attention to individual goal such as career and money (Hofstede, 2011). In the feminality country, division of labor in society about gender does not have obvious distinction and people attach importance to social target such as interpersonal relationship, helping others, and natural environment (Hofstede, 2011). UK is the country with strong masculinity and corporate great decision often is made by high-rise and employee is short of sense of identity to enterprise as frequent job conversion. Hence, employee in UK generally does not participate in management actively. China is the country of femininity and it stresses harmonious and morality and ethics and advocates active participation. 

The impact of cultural difference between English and Chinese on Sino-foreign joint ventures英汉文化差异对中外合资企业的影响

Cultural difference between English and Chinese brings about both negative and positive influence to Sino-foreign joint ventures. The negative influence often could be reflected by the issue in communication and interpersonal relationship, management method, and decision making.#p#分页标题#e#

Cultural diversity between English and Chinese impacts the communication effect and interpersonal relationship. Chinese culture is the high-context culture that it often has connotation expression and listener has to consider the speaking environment and non-language clue such as tone to understand real implication of the words (Gesteland, 2012). However, English often expresses their meaning visually with varied communication form including intense communicating form. Those often lead conflict during the communication process to lead bad interpersonal relationship. As the cultural diversity, foreign manager often cannot make effective communication with local employee and manager may only control the operation of enterprise according to the formalistic regulatory framework and those lead the relationship between manager and employee become more distant (Moran et al, 2011). At the same time, employee may become negative to the work to lead it is difficult for manager to implement plan and the result is the no achievement of both sides. When the distance between manager and employee enlarges to a certain extent, superincumbent communication will break off. Those will influence the normal operation of joint ventures. 

Cultural diversity between English and Chinese leads management become complicated. Members of Sino-foreign joint ventures with different value, belie, and cultural tradition as cultural diversity and this decides them have different demand and expectation and different behavioral expression and code of conduct to satisfy corresponding demand and expectation. Hence, the same behavioral expression of employee in Sino-foreign joint ventures does not mean they have consistent aspiration and expectation. For example, silence express supporting for Chinese employee but English employee may express criticism and unconcern through silence (Tsui et al, 2007). The unclear meaning increases the difficult of management in Sino-foreign joint ventures. In addition, English culture pursues equal management idea and the management method tends to be flattening which uses multifunction team to replace original organizational structure. The management idea of Chinese enterprise is impacted by Confucian political ethics which pays high attention to ethic and human relationship that dilutes strict regulations and management system (Yiming, 2014). Those also makes the management activities become more complicated and it is easy to lead management confusion and conflict in Sino-foreign joint ventures. 

Cultural diversity between English and Chinese makes the decision-making become more difficult. The important character of joint venture is that control rights of enterprise is joint ownership and this means it needs common decision making for the issue of corporate development direction (Zheng, 2014). However, it is hard to make many senior managers make co-decision during the operation of joint venture enterprise especially in Sino-foreign joint ventures with cultural diversity. Manger from UK often is used to individual decision-making and manager of China is accustomed to group decision making to avoid more responsibility. In addition, communication is the important link of decision-making to make decision-making could express the hope and requirement of employee. It is necessary to ask for and listen to the suggestion and opinion of employee to the decision-making; however, it is hard to achieve this as the fault and misunderstanding during communication process of Sino-foreign joint ventures aroused by cultural diversity. It is because cultural diversity, staff of Sino-foreign joint ventures often has different job motivation, demand, and expectation and this makes it is hard to achieve consistent decision (Zheng, 2014). In addition, cultural diversity also makes the decision-making implement in Sino-foreign joint ventures become hard. In one side, employee with different culture has difference understanding to the decision scheme and management system and this lead different behavioral expression. In the other side, ethnocentrism may lead employee have distinctive behavior deliberately in order to show the existence. #p#分页标题#e#

For the enterprise which yearns for achieving successful operation, cultural conflict is undoubted to be a huge challenge. It will create the damage of market opportunity and the low efficiency of organizational structure. In internal management, different value, life goal, and behavior standard will lead the increasing of management cost, for example, the increasing integrative and implementing difficult of corporate target leading the increasing of corporate management cost (Tsui et al, 2007). For the external operation, cultural diversity creates more complicated operating environment to enhance the difficult of market operation. 

Cultural difference between English and Chinese also could bring about positive influence. The negative influence that cultural diversity brings about to Sino-foreign joint ventures mainly focuses on operation process and the multi-culture of Sino-foreign joint ventures is very favorable for enterprise to make forecast and adjustment to developing prospect such as developing new program, put forwarding new opinion, formulating new market plan, and adopting new operation method (Zheng, 2014). First, the multi-culture is easy to help enterprise produce new opinion. Multi-culture could help enterprise to make multi-angle analysis for some issue and this could help it have deep, comprehensive, and thorough understanding for the issue. Multi-culture help enterprise obtain more optional schemes through multi-angle analysis as each culture has unique understanding and solution to some special problem. In one side, the more optional schemes increase the elasticity of corporate management. In the other side, it also increases the skill to solve problem to make the management activities be more artistry and have high efficiency. Those bring about beneficial vigor and vitality to Sino-foreign joint ventures and promote enterprise build effective communication system and information transmission channel to improve corporate competitiveness. Second, multi-culture makes Sino-foreign joint ventures be easy to obtain development in international market. Multi-culture makes management understand the important significance of culture for the development of enterprise. Hence, management could make role transition consciously in order to understanding the demand and expectation of consumer with different culture to formulate specific marketing strategy to occupy larger market share (Tsui et al, 2007). Third, cultural diversity could enhance the innovation ability of enterprise. Corporate innovation degree is decided by the acceptance of human to new thought and new opinion. The integration and communication of different culture is in favor of the cognition, understanding, and acceptance of organization to new things and this is helpful to improve corporate innovation ability and stimulate technological and management innovation. Fourth, cultural diversity finally could achieve addition of cultural advantages. After the crash of business partners in a joint venture for a period, they could notice the strengths of other’s culture to make enterprise absorb the advantages of other’s management culture during management practice and apply it to the management practice (Zheng, 2014). The addition of cultural advantages could make business partners seek common points while reserving difference and reach a consensus in cooperative process on the long-term development of enterprise to fight for business expanding and seeking long-term interests.#p#分页标题#e#