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Innovation with Chinese Characteristics If you engage in international business, chances are that you are at least to some degree involved with China. If you are, the findings of a recent journal article in the International Journal of Intercultural Relations , "Goal interdependence for working across cultural boundaries: Chinese employees with foreign managers" will certainly interest you. The purpose of this short article is to summarize those findings for you in a way that you can implement immediately. Most strategic alliance partners approach the alliance with the assumption that both partners hold similar objectives - hence, the alliance. Presumably, the "reason for living" of any strategic alliance is to facilitate some kind of innovation: new production methods, new management methods, etc.; and, companies cannot innovate reliably without job commitment. The articulation of objectives is typically very clear on both sides. However, many US-China alliances rapidly run into difficulty in reconciling the cultural nuances underlying the articulation of these objectives. For example, are you fully aware of what "cooperation" means to your Chinese counterparts? Are you fully aware of, and have you integrated, the meaning of competition to your Chinese counterparts? The article states that if your goal is innovation (defined by Joseph Schumpeter as "new ways to combine existing means of production"), the best way to achieve it is through constructive controversy - defined as "a major dynamic by which people with cooperative goals are able to solve problems." To do this you must consider the constellation of objective components of each of these problem-resolution behaviors: competitive, collaborative, compromise, avoidance and accommodative. Since cooperation is our topic, I will discuss only those components accompanying that dimension. Cooperation (also referred to as collaboration in the literature), regardless of culture, has been describe as the best outcome when the following conditions between the two parties exist: behavior is cooperative and assertive (on both sides, which is sometimes difficult to achieve with Chinese partners); the quality of the relationship is positive; the interests of the two parties are interdependent (win-win, not win-lose); the relative power that can be leveraged in the relationship (for instance, government-government, trade policy, etc.), and when the outcome stakes are high (i.e., there's a lot riding on this!) Any constellation short of the one described above will result in the preference for other forms of collaboration, also mentioned above. Clearly if innovation is your goal, culturally-relevant cooperation by means of goal interdependence should be your method. The culturally-relevant considerations here are how to ensure behavior is cooperative and assertive; how to make the relationship positive; how to leverage the power in the relationship; how to shift the stakes in the outcome so that a cooperative interaction becomes imperative. It is important to point out that the article also reveals that job commitment is another significant outcome of constructive controversy and cooperative behavior. These culturally-relevant considerations are beyond the scope of this present article; however, resources exist to help you identify and address these specific needs. * * * * * * * * * * Virginia Cutchin is Director of Transition Success Consulting, a cross-cultural training firm; and Assistant Professor of International Business & Trade at American University in Washington, DC. Footnote: Chen, Yi-feng; Tjosvold, Dean; Fang Su, Sofia: “Goal interdependence for working across cultural boundaries: Chinese employees with foreign managers” in International Journal of Intercultural Relations, Volume 29, Issue 4; Eslevier, Oxford, UK, July 2005.