<p>China’s economy is experiencing the most tremendous growth in the world. Many MNCs come to China mainly expecting cost-reduction and new market.  But these MNCs face a shortage of talents in China. Thus, the MNCs search the ways to develop the talents by themselves and retain qualified talents. But not all Western retention and development tools can be applied to Chinese employees.</p><p>Thus the main question company has to answer in China is “How to retain and develop Chinese talents?” So in our study we intend to answer on this question and realize which tools MNC can use for retention and development of Chinese employees, and in what way it should adjust them with the cultural characteristics of Chinese employees.</p><p>In order to achieve it, we conducted our research using different methodologies (literatures, case studies, interviews) to find the answer about effective retention and development of Chinese employees.</p>

While meanings of leisure have been widely studied from Western perspectives, to date, few researchers have explored the meanings of leisure in non-Western cultural contexts. However, in an era of globalization, it is particularly significant to explore leisure experiences of people from non-Western cultures. This study is then designed to investigate the role leisure plays in a Chinese culture context. Specifically, Chinese university students’ leisure experience and the values they ascribe to leisure in relation to their lives as a whole is examined. Their ideology of work and its impact on leisure participation is addressed in particular. In a Chinese university, criterion sampling method was first applied to recruit Chinese students who could provide information-rich stories about their leisure participation. Snowball sampling method was also used to find more information-rich cases for this exploratory study. 11 participants were engaged in this study. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted to discover leisure experience of these students. Data analysis was guided by a constructivist grounded theory approach to understand the participants’ perceptions and meanings of their leisure experience. The data analysis resulted in three major themes. The first theme “Valuations of Work” addressed that the students placed high valuation on work and their life was ruled by work. The second theme “Two Spheres of Leisure” illustrated the students’ ideology of leisure and its impact on their leisure experience. The last theme “Causes for the Subordinate Role of Leisure”revealed two underlying causes that shaped the subservient role of leisure in the students’ daily lives. The emerged themes reflected that the students’ lives were centered around work; and they gave little consideration to their leisure participation. Holding such work-leisure ideology, the students’ leisure participation cannot always contribute to their well being. Therefore, this study advocates the implementation of leisure education in China, which may facilitate the Chinese people to build a balanced and healthy life style.

While meanings of leisure have been widely studied from Western perspectives, to date, few researchers have explored the meanings of leisure in non-Western cultural contexts. However, in an era of globalization, it is particularly significant to explore leisure experiences of people from non-Western cultures. This study is then designed to investigate the role leisure plays in a Chinese culture context. Specifically, Chinese university students’ leisure experience and the values they ascribe to leisure in relation to their lives as a whole is examined. Their ideology of work and its impact on leisure participation is addressed in particular. In a Chinese university, criterion sampling method was first applied to recruit Chinese students who could provide information-rich stories about their leisure participation. Snowball sampling method was also used to find more information-rich cases for this exploratory study. 11 participants were engaged in this study. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted to discover leisure experience of these students. Data analysis was guided by a constructivist grounded theory approach to understand the participants’ perceptions and meanings of their leisure experience. The data analysis resulted in three major themes. The first theme “Valuations of Work” addressed that the students placed high valuation on work and their life was ruled by work. The second theme “Two Spheres of Leisure” illustrated the students’ ideology of leisure and its impact on their leisure experience. The last theme “Causes for the Subordinate Role of Leisure”revealed two underlying causes that shaped the subservient role of leisure in the students’ daily lives. The emerged themes reflected that the students’ lives were centered around work; and they gave little consideration to their leisure participation. Holding such work-leisure ideology, the students’ leisure participation cannot always contribute to their well being. Therefore, this study advocates the implementation of leisure education in China, which may facilitate the Chinese people to build a balanced and healthy life style.

China’s economy is experiencing the most tremendous growth in the world. Many MNCs come to China mainly expecting cost-reduction and new market.  But these MNCs face a shortage of talents in China. Thus, the MNCs search the ways to develop the talents by themselves and retain qualified talents. But not all Western retention and development tools can be applied to Chinese employees. Thus the main question company has to answer in China is “How to retain and develop Chinese talents?” So in our study we intend to answer on this question and realize which tools MNC can use for retention and development of Chinese employees, and in what way it should adjust them with the cultural characteristics of Chinese employees. In order to achieve it, we conducted our research using different methodologies (literatures, case studies, interviews) to find the answer about effective retention and development of Chinese employees.

Through comparative and qualitative research method, this dissertation first analyzes the individual values in political freedom and equality emphasized by modern Western individualism, will further discuss collective consciousness in the form of emotional and moral achievements as emphasized by traditional Chinese Confucianism as comparative reference basis and finally lists common grounds and differences between these two. This dissertation researches political thought and philosophy, mainly aiming at the political objectives of argument foundations, essential connotations and achievements in traditional Chinese political thought, illuminates collective sentiment thinking and will analyze and explain the reasons for a lack of Western individualism in traditional Chinese political thought, caused by the environmental conditions created by that thinking. The author hopes to be able to offer a comparison of nature and characteristics of Chinese and Western culture and thinking and a few answers and explanations regarding the problems the Chinese society is facing since it encountered and started to learn from Western democratic political systems more than 100 years ago.

This thesis looks at the understanding of Chinese and Western cultures within the academic working environment of internationalised higher education, and the influence on their working relationships. This research takes an interpretivist, qualitative approach. It is based on four different organisational contexts of internationalised higher education in Mainland China, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom. The four organisational contexts include a Chinese case, a Collaborative case, a Colonialism case and a British case. Qualitative interview data were collected from seventy Chinese and Western academic staff. The research examines academic staff s interpretation of Western (Hofstede s cultural dimensions) and Chinese cultural values (Guanxi, Mianzi and Harmony). The key findings are Guanxi, Mianzi and Harmony are closely related to Hofstede s cultural dimensions. Particularly, with the support of the Chinese Yin-Yang theory, it demonstrates that Hofstede s bipolar cultural dimensions are not sufficient to explain the Chinese culture. The findings also show that Western expatriate academics have stronger cultural sensitivity than the Chinese indigenous academics. Furthermore, the findings show that the organisational context has a stronger impact than the national one on employees cultural understanding and working relationships. Based on the findings, practical implications are discussed as well as limitations and recommendations for future research.

Offshoring concerns the relocation or a transfer of a company’s business activities to another country. When a company decides to offshore their business to another location it involves the transfer of products and knowledge which are both key activities in transfer projects. In today’s globalization it is difficult for companies to stay competitive in the marketplace. For this reason it is becoming more common that companies offshore parts of their business and opening affiliates abroad for the production of goods or services. It is challenging to transfer a product from one site to one other since the receiving site might not have been involved in the product development process from the beginning and therefore have limited associations to the product. The transfer of competence and knowledge but also different ways of working are some of the factors that needs to be successfully managed. This makes it especially challenging when considering cultural and geographical together with the temporal distance between the sites. It is difficult for companies to maintain a sourcing strategy that is cohesive and many companies therefor fails to manage a successful relationship with their offshore partners. The purpose with this study was to present a framework that would support the transfer process when aiming for parallel production. This was to include the features needed to be developed in order to manage the most important factors in the transfer process. In order to answer the research questions a case study with a qualitative research method was performed. Interviews in Sweden and China including 34 respondents were performed in order to identify the transfer process. The approach was a qualitative interview with a guided conversation with the emphasis on the authors asking questions and listening, and the respondent answering. The respondents was seen as meaning makers rather than passive channels for retrieving the data needed. The purpose was to derive interpretations rather than facts or laws. Each interview was conducted between three people including the two authors and one respondent. The findings indicate that the organization needs to improve their knowledge transfer process. The organization also needs to develop similar processes for the activities involved in the transfer process in order to perceive the same quality. The analysis of the qualitative findings resulted in a framework including six important factors for a successful transfer project. Following factors should be taken in consideration by the company to achieve a successful transfer project: identification of knowledge carriers, set up a transfer core-team, empowering knowledge sharing, the use of a personalized strategy, the development of similar processes and improve the common perception of quality.

There have been only sporadic attempts to highlight Chinese women’s role and influence in art, even though their contribution has been major. This thesis seeks to understand the significance of women’s participation in modern Chinese art history through the narratives and works of Pan Yuliang, Nie Ou and Yin Xiuzhen, who were professionally active at different political stages of twentieth-century China. Using an interdisciplinary framework, drawing on concepts from theories such as modernism, feminism and postcolonialism, this thesis analyzes a culturally specific field in art history and the interrelationship between various factors that have contributed to it. As artists of a peripheral culture, various factors in the artistic production of Chinese women have been overlooked and often misinterpreted. This thesis argues that the three artists in this study have produced different, individualized responses to the Euro-American model of modernism. To highlight the cultural specificity of China, the introductory chapter will include a short comparative analysis between Chinese modernism and the modernisms of other Asian countries. The adoption of Western art forms by early overseas-trained Chinese artists such as Pan indicates as many intricacies and ambivalences as in the complex relationship of China with Western imperialism. Chapter Two situates the Westernized works of Pan in the context of Chinese modernism, pre-feminism and the semi-colonized state of early twentieth-century China. In relation to the theories of orientalism and provincialism, implications of the ambiguities of Pan’s representations are extended to debates that explore the subjectivity and identity of non-European artists in their quest for modernism. Nie Ou was born into the era when the Chinese Communists had just taken over in 1949. Under the autocratic rule of the Communists, Nie was exiled to the northern countryside during her early adulthood as part of the “re-educating the elite” program. Chapter Three demonstrates how Nie successfully emerged from the repercussions of the Cultural Revolution. During this period of intensified Chinese nationalism, Nie found ways to merge the influences of the restrictive style of Socialist Realism and the poetic Chinese literati painting tradition to create an individualized style of representation. China underwent rapid modernization in the 1980s and 1990s. Chapter Four examines the works of contemporary artist Yin Xiuzhen who, with her avant-garde installations, has pushed the boundaries of what constitutes conventional Chinese art. This chapter analyzes Yin’s works in the context of late twentieth-century China, where the nation was no longer a Socialist monolith but a complex amalgam in which old and new, Socialist and capitalist, modern and postmodern co-existed. Yin’s works will be studied in relation to theories of postmodernism, postfeminism and globalism. Chapter Five consolidates the earlier chapters by reflecting on how various conditions throughout the twentieth century have changed and shaped the role of women in Chinese art history. The concluding chapter will consider the influence Chinese women artists may have on the art discourse in China today, and perhaps across other cultures. This chapter will explore the constraints upon them and the potential of their future role, not only in China but also in the broader sense of what it means to be an artist internationally.

There have been only sporadic attempts to highlight Chinese women’s role and influence in art, even though their contribution has been major. This thesis seeks to understand the significance of women’s participation in modern Chinese art history through the narratives and works of Pan Yuliang, Nie Ou and Yin Xiuzhen, who were professionally active at different political stages of twentieth-century China. Using an interdisciplinary framework, drawing on concepts from theories such as modernism, feminism and postcolonialism, this thesis analyzes a culturally specific field in art history and the interrelationship between various factors that have contributed to it. As artists of a peripheral culture, various factors in the artistic production of Chinese women have been overlooked and often misinterpreted. This thesis argues that the three artists in this study have produced different, individualized responses to the Euro-American model of modernism. To highlight the cultural specificity of China, the introductory chapter will include a short comparative analysis between Chinese modernism and the modernisms of other Asian countries. The adoption of Western art forms by early overseas-trained Chinese artists such as Pan indicates as many intricacies and ambivalences as in the complex relationship of China with Western imperialism. Chapter Two situates the Westernized works of Pan in the context of Chinese modernism, pre-feminism and the semi-colonized state of early twentieth-century China. In relation to the theories of orientalism and provincialism, implications of the ambiguities of Pan’s representations are extended to debates that explore the subjectivity and identity of non-European artists in their quest for modernism. Nie Ou was born into the era when the Chinese Communists had just taken over in 1949. Under the autocratic rule of the Communists, Nie was exiled to the northern countryside during her early adulthood as part of the “re-educating the elite” program. Chapter Three demonstrates how Nie successfully emerged from the repercussions of the Cultural Revolution. During this period of intensified Chinese nationalism, Nie found ways to merge the influences of the restrictive style of Socialist Realism and the poetic Chinese literati painting tradition to create an individualized style of representation. China underwent rapid modernization in the 1980s and 1990s. Chapter Four examines the works of contemporary artist Yin Xiuzhen who, with her avant-garde installations, has pushed the boundaries of what constitutes conventional Chinese art. This chapter analyzes Yin’s works in the context of late twentieth-century China, where the nation was no longer a Socialist monolith but a complex amalgam in which old and new, Socialist and capitalist, modern and postmodern co-existed. Yin’s works will be studied in relation to theories of postmodernism, postfeminism and globalism. Chapter Five consolidates the earlier chapters by reflecting on how various conditions throughout the twentieth century have changed and shaped the role of women in Chinese art history. The concluding chapter will consider the influence Chinese women artists may have on the art discourse in China today, and perhaps across other cultures. This chapter will explore the constraints upon them and the potential of their future role, not only in China but also in the broader sense of what it means to be an artist internationally.

There have been only sporadic attempts to highlight Chinese women’s role and influence in art, even though their contribution has been major. This thesis seeks to understand the significance of women’s participation in modern Chinese art history through the narratives and works of Pan Yuliang, Nie Ou and Yin Xiuzhen, who were professionally active at different political stages of twentieth-century China. Using an interdisciplinary framework, drawing on concepts from theories such as modernism, feminism and postcolonialism, this thesis analyzes a culturally specific field in art history and the interrelationship between various factors that have contributed to it. As artists of a peripheral culture, various factors in the artistic production of Chinese women have been overlooked and often misinterpreted. This thesis argues that the three artists in this study have produced different, individualized responses to the Euro-American model of modernism. To highlight the cultural specificity of China, the introductory chapter will include a short comparative analysis between Chinese modernism and the modernisms of other Asian countries. The adoption of Western art forms by early overseas-trained Chinese artists such as Pan indicates as many intricacies and ambivalences as in the complex relationship of China with Western imperialism. Chapter Two situates the Westernized works of Pan in the context of Chinese modernism, pre-feminism and the semi-colonized state of early twentieth-century China. In relation to the theories of orientalism and provincialism, implications of the ambiguities of Pan’s representations are extended to debates that explore the subjectivity and identity of non-European artists in their quest for modernism. Nie Ou was born into the era when the Chinese Communists had just taken over in 1949. Under the autocratic rule of the Communists, Nie was exiled to the northern countryside during her early adulthood as part of the “re-educating the elite” program. Chapter Three demonstrates how Nie successfully emerged from the repercussions of the Cultural Revolution. During this period of intensified Chinese nationalism, Nie found ways to merge the influences of the restrictive style of Socialist Realism and the poetic Chinese literati painting tradition to create an individualized style of representation. China underwent rapid modernization in the 1980s and 1990s. Chapter Four examines the works of contemporary artist Yin Xiuzhen who, with her avant-garde installations, has pushed the boundaries of what constitutes conventional Chinese art. This chapter analyzes Yin’s works in the context of late twentieth-century China, where the nation was no longer a Socialist monolith but a complex amalgam in which old and new, Socialist and capitalist, modern and postmodern co-existed. Yin’s works will be studied in relation to theories of postmodernism, postfeminism and globalism. Chapter Five consolidates the earlier chapters by reflecting on how various conditions throughout the twentieth century have changed and shaped the role of women in Chinese art history. The concluding chapter will consider the influence Chinese women artists may have on the art discourse in China today, and perhaps across other cultures. This chapter will explore the constraints upon them and the potential of their future role, not only in China but also in the broader sense of what it means to be an artist internationally.