No, it’s really not a flaw to carefully invest in China, to participate in the country’s development, to deliver technology, experience and eventually a touch of Western lifestyle (which is not much appreciated by the ruling party). Such a move can possibly have benefits for the investor, the Chinese partner and its workers alike. But European management has to be aware that it is walking on the razor’s edge. In Chinese business practices there seem to be less “taboos” or ethical standards, especially when dealing with Westerners. So many Western companies have had the experience that products soon pop up on the marketplace in China very similar in appearance to some of their own originally invented products. Yes, those sophisticated dealings with intellectual properties (IP), very common in the West, aren’t a serious issue where people have to fight hard every day for their food and shelter – it’s just a trivial offence.
Back to the Western scenario: production seems to be too expensive, wages too high and for the running of manufacturing lines, less and less staff is needed. Unemployment rates have risen to heights never seen before, and politics apparently has no intelligent answers, if ever, to the pressing questions. Companies’ top shots cannot rely upon clumsy administration and bureaucracy – and then China appears as the light at the end of the tunnel on this path. The top shots have to react of course and there is also a certain measure of greed in the game of getting products out for less money.
But this is just one side of the medal; the other is: how will a company hold its position in the countries where it is present, in a social, ethical and innovative sense when it’s continually downsizing staff despite rising profits? When anyone who wants to can recognize that management’s pockets are being filled well, but that the average Joe and his family will soon be a welfare case? Then, in this case, something has absolutely gone wrong. A company as well as its employees needs a perspective, needs to see that the company’s leaders instill trust in them and their abilities and skills, and not treat them as a kind of expendible objects.
For the whole, people working have to be taken seriously, have to be informed and need to know what they are working for. A company’s culture is of essential influence as well as the awareness which fills it with life. The management’s leadership is responsible for at least 50% or even more of a company’s success – and loss or profit will be determined by all of the employees. For achieving success, for integration of all of the staff, consent from top to bottom is a prerequisite in a concerned-headed commerce. The aim should be a solid and lasting foundation reliably providing profits, not a short-term action whose results will eventually bring the opposite. In this light, even outsourcing of production parts need not be a reason for hefty social turmoil, but rather a well-understood measure for all.
