Patterns of power distribution in managerial decision making in Chinese and British industrial organizations

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Abstract
This article is one of three reports about the results of a Sino-British joint research project on managerial decision making in eleven Chinese companies and ten British companies. Forty managers and twenty trade union leaders from both manufacturing and service industries participated in the study. Data about decision-making patterns in eighteen different decision tasks in the organizations were collected. The results showed that there were interesting organizational and cultural differences in decision-making patterns in the two countries between manufacturing and service industries, between management and trade union groups, among short-, medium- and long-term decisions and across organizational levels. There were clear shifts of the decision-making power across organizational levels depending upon the type of decision tasks. A model of decision power shift was proposed in terms of the effects of organizational and cultural factors on patterns of organizational decision making. The implications of the decision power shift model to the management practice in the international context were highlighted.

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