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Personal Styles, Cultural Values and Management: The Sincere and Wing on Companies in Shanghai and Hong Kong, 1900–1941

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

Wellington K. K. Chan
Wellington K. K. Chan
Affiliation:
WELLINGTON K. K. CHAN is professor of history and acting chair of the Department of History at Occidental College.
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Abstract

While retailing a great variety of goods under one roof and single management already existed in China by the late nineteenth century, modern style department stores on the China coast began only in 1900. Organized by Chinese entrepreneurs who had started their careers in Australia, they consciously borrowed managerial techniques from abroad. Sincere and Wing On, the two premier Chinese department stores, expanded rapidly during diese years and, in the process, developed new forms of organization and strategy based on western models as well as on traditional Chinese business practices and cultural values. When political and economic turmoil during the 1920s and 1930s slowed the growth of these companies, Wing On emerged more successfully tban Sincere. Wing On's path diverged from that of its competitor because its stronger management team was better at blending individual personality, western organization and Chinese cultural values.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , Summer 1996 , pp. 141 - 166
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1996

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References

1 Barth, Gunther, City People: The Rise of the Modern City Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 1980)Google Scholar, provides a colorful account of the rise of modern department stores in Europe and America.

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27 Shanghai Yong'an gongst, 87.

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29 Charles Mar Fan, Ma Xiaocong, Daniel P. K. Au, and Pan Chengrong, with Sincere, interview by author, Hong Kong's Sincere Company head office, 25 June 1980. Ma Yubao, Liang Caokui, Ji Gaozhi, Xie Xianglin and Sheng Jiang, with Wing On, interview by author, Shanghai, 27, 28 February and 2 March 1980. Guo Dihuo, interview by author, Guangzhou, 28 May 1981.

30 Quoted in Wing On, The Wing On Life Assurance Company Limited: Golden Jubilee Book 1925–1975 (Hong Kong, n.d.), 18.

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