comparative value priorities of chinese and new zealand

New Zealand and China entered into a Free Trade Agreement on 1 October 2008. This
treaty liberalised and facilitated trade in goods and services, improved the business
environment, and promoted cooperation between the two countries in a broad range of
economic areas. Business expansion will increase the frequency and complexity of faceto-face
interaction between Chinese and New Zealanders. As the bilateral relationship
develops, more businesses in New Zealand will be engaging with Chinese
businesspeople; organisations with Chinese backgrounds will be established in New
Zealand; and Chinese and New Zealand businesspeople will be working together. Given
this need in today’s business environment, this study undertakes a comparison of
business managerial leadership behaviour in China to assist and facilitate commercial
interaction between the two countries. Due to resource constraints for collecting data in
New Zealand and China, and existing findings on uniqueness of geographic regional
culture areas in China (Ralston, Yu, Wang, Terpstra, and He, 1996; Littrell, Alon, and
Chan, 2006), the Chinese geographic region of study is restricted to southern China,
specifically Guangzhou City in Guangdong Province. Ralston et al. and Littrell et al.
found different patterns of value dimension and leader behaviour preferences in
different regions in China, and more recently by Tung, Worm and Fang (2008);
The analyses in this study will derive theory of the specification of relationships
between preferred leader behaviour and value priorities within countries, and how these
relationships differ between countries. This is one initial step in the planned global
project, comparing samples from many societies.
Why Guangzhou City?
Guangdong Province accounts for more than 30 per cent of China’s exports, and the
province ranks first amongst China’s provinces in terms of its openness to trade (ANZ
Bank, 2006). Thus, New Zealand businesses engaged in trade and investment in China
are likely to encounter businesspeople from the Guangzhou City area. Statistics
provided in a personal communication from records maintained by the New Zealand
Trade Commissioner at the Consulate in Guangzhou indicate that in 2007 China
imported US$1.537 billion worth of goods and services from New Zealand; Guangdong
Province imported around US$309 million (20% of China’s total) worth of goods from
New Zealand. For a city break-down,
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