The questionnaire comprising the internal survey was based on the DLOQ of Marsick and Watkins (2003, pp. 137-140), as mentioned in section 4.1. This was developed a decade ago to explore what organisational dimensions are influenced by learning organisation frameworks and which play a dominant role. Nevertheless, every single survey construct and associated operational variable was thoroughly discussed with staff at the end of each of the two interventions to seek agreement before moving on, in an example of a learning organisation’s shared vision, mental model and team learning. The family-based factory staff structure intensified the message of learning
organisation models received from me, the insider researcher, passing it along to all staff members through internal community activity, in line with their usual Chinese community relationships.
The small sample size of 150 factory workers involved a risk of bias in the results of the statistical regression undertaken with the survey data, therefore partial least square was employed to establish which constructs are important.
5.6.1 Correlation of five refined factors
Correlation of the data revealed the relationships between pairs of construct variables, in terms of behavioural patterns. While all construct variables’ means and median were found to be high, the small sample size might have led to a high degree of co-linearity across variables and a close examination of variable correlations was undertaken to provide insight into the sample’s inference bias.
‘Risk foresight’ is an term that expresses how well a company team prepares for adverse conditions and is 27 per cent positively correlated with the attribute of ‘Cross- boundary relationship’, signifying that the more a staff member discusses project uncertainty with external parties, the greater the extent of risk reduction, since external viewpoints mediate internal short-sightedness. This variable is negatively correlated with ‘Outside-in corporate mentality’ and ‘Team-shared quick vision’, indicating that employing external advisers and engaging in better teamwork reduces the need for risk mitigation.
Interestingly, the variable termed ‘Cross-boundary relationships’ was found to be negatively correlated with ‘Personal recommendation’ and ‘New business growth’. This means that market competition had led to staff being unwilling to share problems with external parties, in order to avoid keen competitors either copying the company’s ideas or monitoring its behaviour.
5.6.2 Identification of two influential factors
In conventional statistical inference, principal component analysis (PCA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) share the goal of establishing the dominant construct variables with the most influence on the dependent variables. Both focus exclusively on scenario simulations’ independent variables, however, partial least square (PLS) goes an extra step to measure the variance of influence on the
dependent variable and was employed in this analysis to identify the most influential factors.
Regarding the least influential factors, analysis revealed that the variable of ‘Cross- border relationships’ showed the lowest coefficient of correlation against ‘New business growth’. This may be interpreted as indicating that connections to external guanxi are unlikely to lead to high business performance. In the case of competitive business environments such as Hong Kong and Shanghai, outside competitors may well be informed of the company’s weakness by informal personal connections. Similarly uninfluential, the variable of ‘Risk foresight’ represents a risk averse attitude in staff, hampering an adventurous attitude in scouting for new business that, in turn, serves to reduce profitability. Moreover, the factor ‘Team-shared quick vision’ points to the ability of fast collaboration among the company staff in coping with new challenges and business opportunities. Sometimes, due consideration needs to be given to digesting business insight, therefore the finding of a low contributing coefficient for these factors had been expected.
By contrast, the ‘Personal recommendation’ and ‘Outside-in corporate mentality’ variables are the two determinants of success. This is a common sense finding; recommendation is a key attribute of Chinese community relationships, as when there is personal interest involved there is a strong incentive for internal staff and
management to make further business recommendations so that both company and related personnel may capitalise on the new opportunities. Furthermore, ‘Outside-in corporate mentality ‘is the equivalent of ‘thinking out-of-the-box’, a ground-breaking attitude adopted by company members to face new challenges with fewer resources yet achieve greater customer satisfaction.
To conclude, the factors of ‘Personal recommendation’ and ‘Outside-in corporate mentality’ had the highest PLS scoring, indicating that they are the two most influential factors of success.
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5.7 Summary
The bricolage methodology is employed in this research to employ most feasible framework onto physical situation. SSM was utilised to explore the complex business scenarios. With the help of SSM’s rich picture and CATWOE, the root issues of current commercial threats were laid down clearly before all factory members to solicit full factory participation. The corporate change programme known as the ‘learning organisation’ was adopted as a platform from which to scout for new opportunities for high growth in the currently buoyant consumer market in China.
Comments and suggestions were collected through team leaders. The very first round of qualitative interviewing found a good reception for learning organisation knowledge, procedures and value statements. Numerous internal brainstorming sessions were undertaken to collect the reflections of all staff. On aggregate, a concern over their financial stability was communicated by factory members to management and triggered the establishment of caution money. This was recognised by staff as an act of ethical consideration. It involves a slightly different perspective on business ethics in the Chinese community compared to the western world. The common-law system of the western world (Bogus, 2003, pp. 100-120) positions monetary compensation as a primary means of rewarding all kinds of performance and is in contrast to this instance of Chinese affection through guanxi.
In this ethnographic walkthrough of Chinese community relationships, affection and family ties exert a substantial influence in company structures and processes. Self- interest is de-prioritised to settle confrontations swiftly.
Reciprocity begins with a physical exchange, but it evolves into a mutual compliment system. Supportive actions from company fellows are another kind of gift exchange to strengthen reciprocal relationships within the company. In the course of finding external growth opportunities, personal recommendation offered an equal change for all factory members to contribute to the company’s expansion through their private networks. Their communal position becomes more highly ranked if their personal
recommendation works out. However, all personal recommendations must be declared to the community to ensure a fair play among members Furthermore,
recommendations can encourage all factory members to participate deeply. Their contributing actions are rewarded with more knowledge, social connections and trust from fellow members. A state of quickly shared mentality is observed.