about what they should do next. After discussions among their
management teams, they believe that the Chinese term for ‘‘business,’’
sheng yi, means the significance of life (sheng ming de yi yi), which
they would consider as their management philosophy.
From then on, they aimed to accomplish their values through
providing professional services for their clients. To adhere to their
philosophy, the company does not make money from projects that
do not need its professional input. In the 1990s, real estate developers
were in an advantageous position in the trade market because many
people needed to buy their own apartments. Once a project was
completed, real estate developers moved to the next one and they
requested a real estate agency to sell the apartments for them. Many
real estate agencies competed to get the opportunity to sell the estab-
lished apartments. However, the couple often rejected such opportuni-
ties. They set three principles for their consulting services: the first is
to save transactional costs for their clients; the second is to increase
the value of the property; and the third is to reduce the professional
risk for clients. With these principles in mind, the couple refused to
make easy money by just selling apartments.
Scientific management
During the interviews, eleven respondents expressed the philosophy of
scientific management, which often translated into standardization,
institutionalization, and transparency of managerial practices.
A company needs to standardize internal management first. The
CEO of a software company believed that companies in software
engineering in China do not have a standardized system for software
development, which prevented these companies from becoming as
competitive as the software companies in India. The CEO said that
his company failed to adopt the CMM III (company maturity model)
at first because software engineers did not like to follow the proce-
dure and standards in CMM. After that, he decided to establish a
standardized management system in his company. He developed rules
such as major task recording and reporting rules which are popular
in foreign companies in the same industry. He believed that a com-
pany must establish standardized management along with business
development.
Management standardization of companies can lead to the develop-
ment of the whole industry. The chairman of the board of the real
252 Zhi-xue Zhanget al.