ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on management perspectives on Chinese private-sector firms. It suggests a conceptual simplification of the multi-syllabic, multi-term phrases used to describe Chinese business organizations. The chapter outlines some of the theoretical and empirical challenges facing scholars seeking to better understand private-sector firms in China. It argues that a significant segment of China's private-sector firms are relatively young, and as such they face the omnipresent challenge of surviving their first perilous years. While the chapter is a call to institutionally contextualize the study of new firms, in China the situation is more complex, as most of the nation's new technology firms have been induced to locate in technology development zones sponsored by various levels of government. The creation of technology development zones reveals a layer of social context that must be taken into account when technology-based entrepreneurship is addressed in China.
