A Critique on the Sustainability of Chinese Management Researches

Management research is still classified as a discipline under the Natural Science category in China, especially for the purpose of research funding application. This practice differs radically from general Western norms. This method categorisation has serious implications for the form and direction of management research in China, as it encourages an empiricist and positivist research approach.

This paper challenges the existing research orthodoxy in China, which is constraining innovative approaches for management research. Corporate Governance research in China has been a hot topic but is concerned solely with internal regulations without careful stakeholder analysis. The Chinese corporate governance discourse in practice focuses almost exclusively on agency problems within only two types of firms: state-owned enterprises (SOEs), particularly after their transformation into one of the corporate forms provided for under the Company Law, and listed companies, which must be companies limited by shares (CLS) under the Company Law. With its research approach limited and constrained by the Natural Sciences, Chinese Corporate Governance researches have been led to focus on abstract and impractical modeling, as well as uncritically accepting assumptions within a narrow profit-driven organisational structures and focusing only on shareholder return. Since profit-maximisation has increasingly been rejected as the only goal for business in the context of sustainable business and global economy, the Chinese perspective is apparently limiting to modern organizations. Corporate Governance needs to accommodate and integrate both internal and external issues. While it is obviously insufficient to rely solely on technical modeling approaches, policymakers must also think clearly about the capacity of the institutions — not just legal, but social and economic — that are needed to make the model and the organizations to function as required. It is urgent to allow management research to be undertaken from both Natural Science and Social Science in China so as to expand management research, including Corporate Governance and sustainability research in China.