Though more and more organizations and communities have begun to accept a similar concept that they term networking. Networking can be anything from an informal grouping of people with similar goals meeting to discuss how each of their separate specialties and/or networks can aide a common goal, to personal/professional formal organizations that meet at given times throughout the year to meet new members of the business community and seek out connections to achieve personal/professional goals. As Taylor points out networking can take many forms but exists in and outside of most organizations in some form to elicit actions that met the differing needs of organizations. (Taylor, 2000, p. 251) Barabasi, discusses the nature of networking, though a concise analysis of how organizations and individuals influence one another to elicit results, in one example he states:
For example, in Silicon Valley the extensive movements of labor between companies create dense personal inter- company links. These subtle social networks are extensively utilized for hiring new employees and attracting managers." (203, p. 206)
The value of such "networks" is founded in the interconnectivity of ideas and needs in certain fields, but it can also determine the availability of employment for some individuals as well as influence the difficulty or ease an individual might have in entering a situation, as a newcomer or eliciting change in a system where they have advertently or inadvertently slighted another member of the organization or group. This to me seems very similar in context to Guanxi, though the western resistance to the eastern forms of the tradition are clearly linked to fear of the unknown.
Wood, Whiteley &...
It is also frequently pointed out that the system is best utilized in structures that are within a weak legal and regulatory system, as due to this system dealings are more likely to rely on personal relationships more than abstract legal or moral concepts. (2002, p.264)
Review of Literature:
As the economy goes global, (Barabasi, 2003, p. 202) per say, the ideals that drive business may possibly become more universalized, likely to lean on the ideals of international markets, rather than on traditional concepts of business structure and leadership, as more and more foreign owned companies begin to do business in China as well as elsewhere. Yet, it must also be said that is there is a system that is, "better" than a western (market dominator) position than it should be explored and possibly utilized within the context of the nation, from which it comes and elsewhere if it translates to other business cultures. The difficulty for western business is that the concept of Guanxi does not easily translate to western models, and it is given a decidedly negative spin when it is only marginally understood. The western concept of "who you know not what you know" is decidedly contradictory to the individualism that at least guides the idealism of the nation, even in the highly
