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Understanding strategic business issues for executives
Edited by Yair Holtzman, Margot Puerta and Harold Lazarus
Introduction
Much of our discipline as business and society scholars is devoted to an exploration of the role the business community does and should play within the greater society of which it is such an important part. Specifically, we focus on the relationship among the business, civil society, and governmental sectors, and on the interdependence and interconnectedness of those three entities (e.g. [10] Lussier and Sherman, 2009; [21] Steiner and Steiner, 2006).
For better or worse, most of that exploration to date has had a decided focus on the US and Western Europe. While there has been good work done (e.g. [3] Donaldson, 1996, [4] 1989) in the business ethics area to expand our thinking and our research to other cultures, this has not been the case in the area of corporate social responsibility and the relationship between business, society, and government.
As globalization continues to develop at what seems to be an accelerating pace, as more and more of our supply lines and our business transactions take on international flavors and characteristics, it becomes increasingly important that we look at other countries and other cultures to learn how their businesses relate to their governments and their societies.
Nowhere is this more true than in China. China has emerged rapidly as such a dominant economic and geopolitical power in the world, but to date little attention has been given to how Chinese businesses interact with the various levels of government and the elements of the civil society there. The purpose of this paper is to begin to correct this deficiency. Using the recent tainted milk scandal as a case study we will look at how business, society, and the government in China did or did not interact, drawing some contrasts where appropriate with recent product recalls in the USA.
The business sector
It is difficult for westerners, and perhaps for the Chinese themselves, to grasp the changes in China's business sector in the brief time period of the last 30 to 35 years. Since the death of Mao Zedong, the ascendancy to power of Deng Xiaoping, and the opening up at an accelerating pace of the Chinese economy to global...