China and Italy: an introduction to comparison of different managerial culture.

Introduction.

“The growing trend toward globalization does not appear to reduce the differences with which managers working across cultures are being faced. We have to acknowledge that every form of management is culture-bound and that there is no such thing as ‘the one best way’ of management”.

The concept of culture is elusive and multidimensional; there is not unanimity among the different definitions. Due to the multidisciplinary characteristics and to the abstract description, a study concerning culture from a managerial perspective, could be seen as irrelevant, sporadic and too general. As different case studies have shown, managers are often unaware that they are strongly affected, or they strongly underestimate how much they have been influenced by cultural factors in decision-making and way of thinking. Does culture influence the seeking for efficiency, profit and determination to get things done, and done right, which are globally recognised as the main characteristics of managerial success? A large body of research on this field try to answer this question; for instance in 2008 studies conducted by Jørgensen and Grimstad demonstrated how software developers and managers are affected by underlying information; the studies examined the connection between output and developer dimensions. What they try to understand studying a multiethnic population of developers and managers, is the mechanism that lead to the biases estimation in software development industries, because this may create a lot of problems such as realism of project reduced and project failures, with important economic repercussions for the industries. The goal of the research is far away from giving universal solutions; the main purpose was to shed light on the importance of cultural aspects and prerogative. As Weber and Hsee (2000) argue, the levels of attention to culture “are not just low, but are inadequate, and that progress could be made on multiple fronts by comparative cross-cultural research.”
In a globalized world where outsourcing across borders is increasingly common in which customers and workers coming from different countries are more and more interconnected, people may find it helpful to know more about how cultural variables influence working life and the way to do business in different locations. In recent years, the theory by the Dutch organizational sociologist Geert Hotsfede gave an important contribution to the comprehensive studies and meaning of culture and how this concept become relevant in the workplace. In this competitive context characterized by economic instability, management practices may need to be modified and requiring an emphatic approach, in order to develop a sensitivity to how other cultures operate, generally in business, is becoming essential to take advantage of new markets. How to create contact, how membership is important, how take decisions, those are important aspects of managerial approach which can be well understood by a cross- cultural comparison.

The aim of my study is not to give a literal and rhetorical explanation of what culture is, but comparing China and Italy together with managerial aspects connected to those different countries, I will try to answer, based on my personal experience and academic research, the two main questions which have inspired my research, concerning the motivations behind Chinese FDI and the Italian FDI in China, which are the consequences of a different strategy and managerial approach, and the repercussions on the Made in Italy, by Chinese in both countries, through a cross evaluation.
China and Italy comparison well represents the typical approach of a country from the East and the other one from the West. The asymmetric way to international business, different values and politic scenario is remarkable. On one hand a nation state, western and