Ownership Patterns and Centralization: A China and U. S. Comparison

The paper examines the relationships between ownership and decision-making patterns in small business organizations in China and the United States. We also consider organizational size and the culture-free/culture-bound argument. The U.S. data (a sample of 540 enterprises) were collected by questionnaire in 1988; the Chinese data (a sample of 53 enterprises) by a converted and translated questionnaire based on the U.S. version and interviews in 1989. Findings indicate that the Chinese organizations with various forms of ownerships are more centralized than their U.S. counterparts, which is consistent with the culture-bound perspective. On the other side of the coin, findings suggest that in both China and United States, organizational centralization of decision making decreases with increasing size, although to different degree, which appears to support the culture-free argument.