American factory
The challenge is to what extent people can communicate with and understand each other at a deep level. Can the organizational merging of distinct cultures work? Maybe the attitudes of young people around the world are converging.Īmerican Factory can feel like a cautionary tale. These young people are used to being the emperors of their families. If the boss says, ‘You need to work overtime,’ they don’t care. Their power distance may be shrinking, too. The ‘ Post-90s’ are products of the one child policy and a growing economy. Yes, the younger generation, born after 1990, is different. Chinese are more used to being criticized their ‘tiger moms’ and ‘wolf fathers’ believe being critical makes kids grow faster.Īre these longstanding cultural norms in China changing at all? But where Americans are willing to voice their wants and needs, Chinese people are less likely to complain.Īlso, Americans often crave recognition and appreciation they’ve been brought up being praised. People everywhere want better pay and safer working conditions. We generally don’t see that kind of disciplined hierarchy in the U.S., outside of the military.ĭifference in power distance also affects employee voice. At every level of an organization, people give their leaders great respect. In China, a CEO is basically a king of his company. What are some other common sources of culture clash observed in the documentary?Ĭompared to the U.S., China generally has a much higher power distance, which is its relative relationship to authority. More people in China live to work than work to live. So, especially when I’m young, I should focus on career success and work really hard. Chinese people believe these two are highly connected: if I don’t achieve success at work, I can’t have a higher quality of life. In the U.S., many people see them as being separate: career success is important but after-work hours and weekends are mine. In cross-cultural research, career success versus quality of life is one of the value orientations we compare. There are different norms and expectations in the way organizations relate to their employees and employees relate to their organizations. Is there a significant cultural difference? The Chinese and Americans at the plant seem to have a different relationship to work. This derives from the traditional dynamic of the CEO as father figure to a family of employees. Instead of pitching against the management, they support the company by offering social events such as Chinese new year celebration (as seen in the documentary) and helping employees to solve problems related to personal life such as dating, wedding, or child care. But they play a totally different function. In the chairman’s mind, American-style unions are a barrier to efficiency and productivity, which is really not so different from the stance of some U.S. Can you contrast this from the encouragement of Fuyao’s Chinese workers to take part in their local union? So every Chinese manager brought over, to some extent, represents the country.Ĭhairman Cao goes to great lengths to dissuade Fuyao America employees from joining a labor union. We want to establish a new image about China through this collaboration. But he said, we’re not going there to make quick money. When Cao announced he was going to open a factory in the United States, he faced a lot of backlash from the Chinese people for moving manufacturing jobs to the US. He has built his own private enterprise and is a good example of an old-school patriarch-leader-very different style than a more modern Chinese leader like Jack Ma (of Alibaba). Fascinating character, yes?Ĭhairman Cao is very famous in China. Gung Ho was more dramatic and a lot funnier, though.Īmerican Factory spent time with Fuyao’s American workers, the Chinese expats brought over to manage them, and even Cao Dewang, the company’s billionaire founder and chairman.
#American factory movie
It reminded me of an earlier movie by Ron Howard called Gung Ho (the 1986 comedy, starring Michael Keaton, that found humor in the takeover of an American car plant by a Japanese corporation). Were you excited to see a film take on a topic so near to one of your areas of research? She’s recently written a book on successful Chinese entrepreneurs and is an authority on cross-cultural workplaces.
#American factory professional
Chen is a native of China who has spent most of her professional career in the United States. Condit Endowed Chair in Business Administration at the UW Foster School of Business. To unpack the film’s trove of management insights, we asked for some expert perspective from Xiao-Ping Chen, a professor of management and the Philip M.