Wal-Mao: The discipline of corporate culture and studying success at Wal-Mart China

China Journal

Volumn , Issue 58, 2007, Pages 1-27

  Davies, David J ^a  

^a HAMLINE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CORPORATE STRATEGY; INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISE;

ASIA; CHINA; EURASIA; FAR EAST;

EID: 38549119819     PISSN: 13249347     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/tcj.58.20066305     Document Type: Article

References (59)

1. A number of recent essays examining Wal-Mart's technological innovations can be found in Nelson Lichtenstein (ed.), Wal-Mart: The Face of Twenty-First-Century Capitalism (New York: New Press, 2006).
2. Its social and economic effects are explored in Charles Fishman, The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works - and How It's Transforming the American Economy (New York: Penguin Press, 2006).
3. In the United States, negative descriptions of Wal-Mart have focused on its anti-union activities, its reliance on low-wage labor and discriminatory hiring practices, and enviromnental impacts. Liza Featherstone, Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Worker's Rights at Wal-Mart (New York: Basic Books, 2004);
4. Al Norman, The Case against Wal-Mart (St. Johnsbury: Raphel Marketing, 2004).
5. As noted below, it is common practice at Wal-Mart China for employees to use English names. Since employees, in effect, use pseudonyms while at work, I have chosen to give them new ones to offer a measure of anonymity.
6. Both thought they had read about the connection in The Wal-Mart Decade. This reference has been difficult to confirm because there are at least two different books available in China titled The Wal-Mart Decade, translated into Chinese as "Wal-Mart Dynasty" (Woerma wangchao). The first appears to be the official translation of Robert Slater's (Luobaite Silaite) Woerma wangchao (Wal-Mart Dynasty) (Beijing: CITIC Publishing House, 2003). The second also appears to be a translation of a book by Licha Hamoer (Richard Hammer?), but I have been unable to locate a corresponding book in English.
7. Licha Hamoer, Woerma wangchao (The Wal-Mart Decade), trans. Mo Wei (Tianjin: Tianjin Kexuejishu Chubanshe, 2004).
8. Cf. the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss. Claude Lévi-Strauss, "The Structural Study of Myth", in his Structural Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1963), pp. 202-12.
9. The initial data for this paper were gathered from a Wal-Mart store during a visit in 2004, and two longer periods in conjunction with an undergraduate study-abroad seminar in 2005 and 2006. During an extended research period in the spring of 2006 I collected data from an additional Wal-Mart store and from some of Wal-Mart's competitors. The data include both formal and semi-formal presentations of Wal-Mart's culture and participant observation at social events. As a private corporation, Wal-Mart has strict rules for dealing with outside inquiries for information. Members of Wal-Mart's management, however, are generally proud of their corporate culture, confident in their work, and willing to talk about it. In one manager's words, "we can talk about culture, but please don't ask me about numbers". Specific numbers in this paper were thus either provided by former employees or estimates given by competitors, or are cited from the literature. None of the "numbers" in this paper were provided by current employees of Wal-Mart, China.
10. Laurie Duthie, "White Collars with Chinese Characteristics: Global Capitalism and the Formation of a Social Identity", Anthropology of Work Review, Vol. 26, No. 3 (2005), pp. 1-12.
11. Lisa Hoffman examines the aspirations of these professionals, economic competition and links to nationalism in what she describes as "patriotic professionalism". Lisa Hoffman, "Autonomous Choices and Patriotic Professionalism: On Governmentality in Late-Socialist China", Economy and Society, Vol. 35, No. 4 (2006), pp. 550-70.
12. Allen W. Batteau, "Negations and Ambiguities in the Cultures of Organization", American Anthropologist, Vol. 102, No. 4 (2001), pp. 726-40.
13. Allen W. Batteau, "Negations and Ambiguities in the Cultures of Organization", p. 726.
14. Angela Zito, Of Body and Brush: Grand Sacrifice as Text/Performance in Eighteenth-Century China (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 58.
15. Glen Peterson, Ruth Hayhoe and Yongling Lu (eds), Education, Culture and Identity in Twentieth-Century China (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2004).
16. Morris Bian, The Making of the State Enterprise System in Modern China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), pp. 2-16
17. David Bray, Social Space and Governance in Urban China: The Danwei System from Origins to Reform (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005)
18. Mark W. Frazier, The Making of the Chinese Industrial Workplace: State, Revolution, and Labor Management (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)
19. Duanfang Lu, Remaking Chinese Urban Form (New York: Routledge, 2006)
20. Xiaobo Lü and Elizabeth J. Perry (eds), Danwei: The Changing Chinese Workplace in Historical and Comparative Perspectives (Boulder: M. E. Sharpe, 1997).
21. David Bray traces the roots of the work unit's institutional form to the imagination and planning of other utopian modernist projects in 19th-century Europe and America and later in the Soviet Union. David Bray, Social Space and Governance in Urban China. Similarly, Duanfang Lu analyzes the way that the built environment of urban China was reconstructed to meet the idealized vision of a modern utopian space. Duanfang Lu, Remaking Chinese Urban Form.
22. Henderson and Cohen describe the way that work units struggled to balance the promise of Maoist egalitarianism with the hierarchical authority of the work unit leaders. This was primarily accomplished through a conception of the unit leaders that emphasized their moral character to lead.
23. Gail E. Henderson and Myron S. Cohen, The Chinese Hospital: A Socialist Work Unit (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 140-45.
24. David Bray, Social Space and Governance in Urban China, p. 4.
25. Robert Slater, The Wal-Mart Decade (New York: Portfolio, 2003).
26. Robert Slater, The Wal-Mart Decade, pp. 54-55.
27. Robert Slater, The Wal-Mart Decade, p. 45.
28. walmart.com, International Operations: Global Strategy, Local Focus (Wal-Mart.com, 2007; available from http:/ /www.walmartstores.com/GlobalWMStoresWeb/navigate.do?catg=369, accessed 19 March 2007.
29. Dorinda Elliott and Bill Powell, "Wal-Mart Nation", Time (27 June 2005), p. 38.
30. Exchanges similar to my initial conversation with Frank occurred in subsequent visits with three different managers at two different Wal-Mart stores. Initial questions about corporate culture elicited a reference to the formal expression of the corporate culture on a "culture wall".
31. The use of this image also extends to Wal-Mart's China website and can be found next to the "ten rules of business" at: http:// www.wal-martchina.com/walmart/culture.htm, accessed 31 May 2007.
32. "Performance" in English contains both associations of efficacy or accomplishment of work and the acting, showing or expression of a particular behavior. The term biaoxian, which I have translated here as "performance", has the associations of the latter meaning - the outward expression of a particular behavior.
33. My translation, of course, plays with the polysemy of shiye, which can mean cause, enterprise or business.
34. The associations of the term tongren seem to be inconsistent across age groups and regions. While younger workers seem familiar with the term, no doubt from working in foreign corporations, the older generation seems to associate it with ren. A colleague of mine from Beijing described the associations of tongren as reminding her of the Chinese four-character phrase yishitongren, which carries connotations of pan-human benevolence and equality that have a moral tone deeper than the fairly neutral term "colleagues" in English.
35. Interestingly, the emphasis on social relationships that Mayfair Yang describes as emerging in opposition to state power during the Mao era is repositioned in opposition to Wal-Mart's own corporate culture. Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, Gifts, Favors, and Banquets: The Art of Social Relationships in China (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1994).
36. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.
37. Nelson Lichtenstein (ed.), Wal-Mart: The Face of Twenty-First-Century Capitalism, p. 18. Lichtenstein also observes how Christian references infuse Don Soderquist's description of Wal-Mart's corporate culture in his book, The Wal-Mart Way.
38. Don Soderquist, The Wal-Mart Way: The Inside Story of the Success of the World's Largest Company (New York: Nelson Business, 2005). The relationship between Wal-Mart's corporate culture and Protestant Christianity is a compelling topic for further research, especially in the context of China's reform-era religious revival.
39. Cf. Richard Madsen, "Chinese Christianity: Indigenization and Conflict", in Elizabeth J. Perry and Mark Selden (eds), Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance, 2nd Edition, (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), pp. 271-88.
40. Jane L. Collins, Threads: Gender, Labor, and Power in the Global Apparel Industry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
41. Michael Dutton, Streetlife China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 21-22.
42. A selection of such narratives, many of which explicitly thank "my Wal-Mart", can be found at: http://www.walmartfacts.com /lifeatwalmart/, accessed 31 May 2007.
43. Contrast this lack of offices to Lisa Rofel's description of the spatial separation of management offices and the shop floors which reinforced hierarchy and provided privacy from the gaze of the workers during the Mao Period. Lisa Rofel, "Rethinking Modernity: Space and Factory Discipline in China", Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1992), pp. 93-114.
44. Liza Featherstone, Selling Women Short.
45. Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins (eds), Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998).
46. Laurie Duthie, "The Chinese Meaning of English Names: Shanghai's Business Professionals and Western Naming Practices", China Study, Vol. 2 (Fall 2005), pp. 49-73.
47. Fangmeng Tian, Woerma lingshou fangfa (Wal-Mart's Retail Method) (Beijing: Zhongguo Shangye Chubanshe, 2002), pp. 25-26.
48. Xianqing Wang, Woerma lingshou fangfa (Wal-Mart's Retail Method) (Guangzhou: Guangdong Jingji Chubanshe, 2004). pp. 65-66.
49. See Ann Anagnost, "The Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)" Public Culture, Vol. 16, No. 2 (February 2004), pp. 189-208
50. Børge Bakken, The Exemplary Society. Human Improvement, Social Control, and the Dangers of Modernity in China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000)
51. Andrew Kipnis, "Suzhi: A Keyword Approach", The China Quarterly, No. 186 (2006), pp. 295-313.
52. Examples include: Liguang Zhang, Zuoren jueding yisheng chengbai (Behaving Correctly Decides the Success or Failure of One's Life) (Beijing: Zhongguo Shangye Chubanshe, 2005)
53. Zhongli Zhang, Chenggongzhe de sishisige xinfa:chenggong bushenmi (Forty-Four Rules of Successful People: Success Is Not Mysterious) (Tianjin: Tianjin Kexuejishu Chubanshe, 2005)
54. Zhiqing Zhang and Jieyun Zhang, Chenggongshu: gaosuzhi rencaide moshi yu suzao (The Tree of Success: Models of High-Quality Talent) (Beijing: Dizhen Chubanshe, 2005).
55. Long Shuai, Suzhi jueding chengbai (Quality Determines Success or Failure) (Chengdu: Sichuan Wenyi Chubanshe, 2005), pp. 188-97.
56. Long Shuai, Suzhi jueding chengbai, p. 193.
57. Long Shuai, Suzhi jueding chengbai, p. 197.
58. Andrew Kipnis, "Suzhi: A Keyword Approach", pp. 306-10.
59. Rachel Murphy, "Turning Peasants into Modern Chinese Citizens: 'Population Quality' Discourse, Demographic Transition and Primary Education", The China Quarterly, No. 177 (2004), pp. 1-20.