Barriers to Entry by Paul Ross

Author:Paul Ross
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789813295667
Publisher: Springer Singapore

Cultural

Foreigners working in a Chinese company will often remark on how difficult it is to establish meaningful relationships with Chinese colleagues, especially outside the workplace. The blame for this inability to connect is typically placed at the feet of the Chinese who are accused of being insular and closed to outsiders, a trait that is especially pronounced when the outsiders are members of a different social and cultural group. Much less attention is paid to the behavior of the foreign employees who, in many cases, take deliberate steps to maintain distance and close themselves off from their Chinese colleagues and the local environment in which they find themselves. Perspectives such as those Professor Towson and Tom the video narrator share, reveal that it is the foreigners themselves who are guilty of calling attention to and perpetuating the degree of difference that exists between foreign employees and the Chinese they work for.

An extreme case of reclusive behavior among foreign employees is to be found among athletes who come to play on Chinese basketball and soccer teams. By their own accounts and those written by observers (cf. foreign players on a Chinese basketball team profiled in Jim Yardley’s Brave Dragons), foreign players spend much their time off the court, or the field, holed up in the hotel rooms that have been booked for them. In fact, the behavior of foreign players, as described in these accounts, is so consistent that one has the impression the players are following a playbook that is as prescriptive as the one that guides their play on the court. This off-court “play book” comprises a set of standard elements that include: obsessively playing Nintendo video games, making periodic Skype calls to family and friends and ordering burgers and pizza when the mood strikes and appetite dictates. Jim Yardley’s description a typical evening for Donta Smith, the ex-NBA point guard recruited by the Taiyuan Brave Dragons is a case in point:now ‘the Life’ meant nights at the World Trade[Hotel]. He [Donta Smith] ate in the hotel or at McDonald’s and watched movies, played video games, or talked to friends through instant messages or Skype. (Yardley 2012)

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