ABSTRACT
The role of senior managers in China is, in certain ways, similar to that of their counterparts in America (Mintzberg 1973). Like them, senior managers in China work long hours, often staying long after everybody else has gone home. Indeed, for Chinese managers, work does not end there. They will often get home to find one or two members of staff waiting to talk to them about some personal favour. Dealing with people in their homes has a number of advantages. Not only is it away from prying eyes and the constant interruptions encountered at work. It is also preferred precisely because managers will be less business-like when at home. With the boss surrounded by family, one hopes to benefit from a more warm-hearted atmosphere, one full of human sentiment (renqing). Employees also at times calculate on being able to capitalise on an element of embarrassment from the relatively sumptuous surroundings enjoyed by the manager. While at work there may be the excuse of ‘look at the difficulties the company is in’, this loses its force in surroundings that say ‘look how well I am doing’.
