Through examining executive rationale on why firms exist, Redding and Witt's (2015) paper serves as a window through which we can view varieties of capitalism and management models in several societies. However, though rationales are the socially constructed, historical patterns of material practices, they are after all ideational factors. The economic action and organizational practices, as Redding and Witt acknowledge, are often the result of the interplay of the material and ideational forces in society. Meanwhile, as the studied five economies are all relatively mature economies, executive rationales are rather stable, which is not the case for China. This commentary thus examines the evolution of Chinese management along with the shift of political economic parameters.
