Research design, methodology and findingsIntroductionInterviews typically took an average of two hours and were conducted in Cantonese orEnglish, depending on preferences, by a native speaker. Senior management teammembers – 16 in all – were interviewed and the discussions either recorded in audio ornote form, depending on interviewee preferences. In semi-structured interviewsowners/senior managers in each company were asked to identify the five mostimportant decisions made in the last three to five years. These decisions were thendiscussed at some length with the respondents. Questions relating to new businessdevelopments, business operations, and human resource management policies werealso asked. The responses were assessed in relation to secondary data from otherstudies of Hong Kong manufacturing firms as well as in relation to recordeddevelopments in the Hong Kong manufacturing industry. Analysis consisted of asearch for narrative structures – we treated each organization as a story told to usby the people who knew it (Boje, 2001). We identified common themes concerningHong Kong firms moving beyond the confines of the Chinese family business(Redding, 1990).We interviewed in two electronics firms, a toy firm, and a shipbuilding firm, as partof a wider study of Hong Kong business strategies. The four firms are privately ownedfamily businesses, in one of which the second generation of the family occupiesmanagerial positions. All were established in Hong Kong as manufacturers, each hastransferred their manufacturing operations to China, where the scale of theiroperations is much larger than it was in Hong Kong. Their Hong Kong operations arecentres for strategic planning and control, international liaison, financing, andstrategic product development.Nature of the firm
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