regarding causes and effects among various business and management
forces such as relationships among various stakeholders.
Research method
Participants
We selected participants using two criteria: they must be leaders of
firms with at least a hundred employees, and they must have been in
an executive position for at least three years. We recruited thirty-five
business leaders, and, with one exception, they were all male. Their
mean age was 42.84 years, with a range from 31 to 52 years. They had
an average length of education of 16.7 years (equivalent to a col-
lege education), and an average tenure in their current position of
6.73 years. Nine were from state-owned enterprises in various indus-
tries such as telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, transportation
and textiles, and the remaining twenty-six were from private enter-
prises in information and communication technology, logistics, manu-
facturing, chemistry, real estate, business and trading, education,
finance or consulting. These thirty-five business leaders were from
different regions of China. At the time of the interviews, their com-
panies had 1380 employees on average, with a range from 110–5000
employees; the average assets of these enterprises were 853.12 million
Chinese yuan (about $105.32 million), and the average sales were
1,105.93 million yuan (about $136.53 million).
Procedure
We identified possible participants from three sources. First, with
approval from the administration, the first author contacted business
leaders in Beijing and Shenzhen who attended executive business pro-
grams offered by a management school. Second, we relied on some
CEOs’ personal references. The third source was a management con-
sulting firm with a wide network of business executives, which nom-
inated potential participants. The executives who met our criteria
were formally invited to participate in the study by a letter stating
the research purpose and method. They were told that a face-to-face
interview of about one hour would be conducted and were assured
of anonymity in any publications of this project. They were also
Chinese traditions and Western theories 241