Title: Managing complexity in the process of transforming new start-ups into well established firms in the Chinese economy context

Authors: Xudong Gao, Yajun Wu, Mingfang Li

Addresses: Department of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. ' Department of Strategic Management and Public Policy, Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China. ' School of Business, Hohai University, Nanjing, China; School of Management, Jilin University, Changchun, China; Department of Management, California State University Northridge, Northridge, CA 91330-8376, USA

Abstract: Transforming new start-ups into well established firms is a complex process and contains the management of many complex and challenging tasks. In this paper, we examine the roles played by some Chinese cultural values in facilitating the development of effective strategies to manage these tasks and argue that these cultural values are of critical importance because they could be the cognitive basis for developing a paradoxical frame that helps managers to recognise and accept the simultaneous existence of contradictions, develop a more effective cognitive representation when facing a rugged landscape and identify effective management rules in complex environment.

Keywords: complexity; start-ups; systems perspectives; Chinese economy; cultural values; paradoxical frameworks; contradictions; cognitive representations; complex environments; well established firms; business; culture; systems research; China; strategic management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBSR.2010.035076

International Journal of Business and Systems Research, 2010 Vol.4 No.5/6, pp.577 - 595

Published online: 02 Sep 2010 *

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