I. Is There One Universal Market Culture or Many?

A. Mauss, Marx, Weber, Taussig, Ong, and Willis: capitalism leads to similar results in different places

1. Forget links between people
2. People become disciplined subjects of capital
3. Resistance hits the "smooth black marble wall"
4. People consume the same mass produced goods, services, media images
5. Ultimately, capitalism = homogenization

B. Heterogenization

1. Variety in local responses to capitalism
2. Global circulation of money, goods, and ideas allows exposure to different cultures
3. We prize difference, exotic
4. People respond to capitalism in different ways

C. Asian conceptions of household, family, and business: one market culture or many different cultures?

 

II. US: Company as Separate from Family

A. Oikos revisited
B. Household as emotional, nurturing unit
C. Business as apersonal, self-interest
D. Rationalization of business through laws, contracts

 

III. The Japanese Company as Uchi (Family)

A. 1970s industrial crisis in US, Japanese success ==> interest in Japanese ways of doing business
B. Thomas Rohlen, For Harmony and Strength (1974)

1. Large Japanese bank
2. Bank has corporate culture influenced by Japanese values
3. Rituals, company songs, ceremonies, training programs
4. Corporate culture = social norms and ideologies which shape how business is done
5. Japanese corporate culture centers on uchi (household)

a. Lifetime employment
b. Individual self-interest depends on success of the enterprise
c. Social relations and recreation take place within framework of company
d. Insiders versus outsiders
e. No bouncing around from one company to another
f. Companies sometimes had employee graveyards

6. Employment contract

a. Employee: agree to work wholeheartedly to support the organization, pledge to follow company rules
b. Employer: serve employee's needs, recognize employee as member of uchi
c. No legal obligations, rights specified

7. Rohlen: employer-employee relationship isn't strictly economic, involves moral obligation, mutual responsibility within group hierarchy

C. Inside-outsider divides members of company from those outside it, not workers from management within it (as in US)
D. Difference in conceptions of personal relationships

1. US: horizontal, peers
2. Japan: differential, vertical

 

IV. Chinese Family Enterprises

A. Weber's explanation for lack of capitalism in China
B. Tremendous success of Chinese business today, particularly in Southeast Asia

1. 1997: $600 billion output annually in SE Asia
2. Malaysia: Chinese control roughly half of corporate assets
3. Philippines: Chinese less than 2% of population, control 1/3 of 1000 largest corporations
4. Hong Kong: bustling metropolis

C. Confucianism as explanation for Chinese entrepreneurial success (Weller)

1. Emphasizes human relations
2. Harmony based on filial piety
3. Respect for authority
4. Identity of self with group or organization
5. Worldly diligence (similar to Weber's worldly asceticism)
6. Acceptance of one's status in the universe and social world

D. Confucianism as multi-stranded, capitalism has strengthened some elements, downplayed others
E. Three factors for Chinese entrepreneurial success

1. Family

a. Company IS family: most businesses employ and are run by kin
b. Saying: "You can only trust close relatives"
c. Kin are loyal, self-interest equals group's interest
d. Kin can be employed cheaply, flexibly

2. Guanxi: connections

a. Multi-stranded relationships based on reciprocal favor-granting and mutual trust (xinyong)
b. SEAsian Chinese businesses as "outsiders," lack access to formal institutions
c. Can only rely on the group
d. Entrepreneurial growth does not lead to the impersonalization of business practices: "One can hardly think of a more decisive counterexample to Max Weber's faith that the spread of capitalism would everywhere mean the demise of personalistic ties in favor of a faceless bureaucratic machine" (Hefner 1998:12)

3. Religion

a. Weller: individualistic, self-interested aspects of ghost worship
b. Capitalism has led to increase in worship of such spirits

F. Weller's concept of divided market culture

1. Utilitarian exploitation of personal, natural, and divine resources
2. Concern about corrosion of shared community, family morality
3. Confucianism promotes and softens capitalism

 

VI. Market Cultures

A. No single culture of capitalism
B. Family can hamper business in one context, promote it in another
C. Religion is more flexible than Weber described
D. Effects of family, social networks, and religion vary according to one's position within them

1. Promote the status and success of a middle-aged patriarch
2. Naturalize the subordinate status of an 18 year old female assembly line worker

 

For more information, contact:  aleshkow@holycross.edu