A different capitalism? : Guanxi-capitalism and the importance of family in modern China

The emergence of Capitalism is said to always lead to extreme changes in the structure of a society. This view implies that Capitalism is a universal and unique concept that needs an explicit institutional framework and should not discriminate between a German or US Capitalism. In contrast, this work argues that the ‘ideal type’ of Capitalism in a Weberian sense does not exist. It will be demonstrated that Capitalism is not a concept that shapes a uniform institutional framework within every society, constructing a specific economic system. Rather, depending on the institutional environment - family structures in particular - different forms of Capitalism arise. To exemplify this, the networking (Guanxi) Capitalism of contemporary China will be presented, where social institutions known from the past were reinforced for successful development. It will be argued that especially the change, destruction and creation of family and kinship structures are key factors that determined the further development and success of the Chinese economy and the type of Capitalism arising there. In contrast to Weber, it will be argued that Capitalism not necessarily leads to a process of destruction of traditional structures and to large-scale enterprises under rational, bureaucratic management, without leaving space for socio-cultural structures like family businesses. The flexible global production increasingly favours small business production over larger corporations. Small Chinese family firms are able to respond to rapidly changing market conditions and motivate maximum efforts for modest pay. The structure of the Chinese family proved to be very persistent over time and to be able to accommodate diverse economic and political environments while maintaining its core identity. This implies that Chinese Capitalism may be an entirely new economic system, based on Guanxi and the family

Guanxi Capitalism in China: the role of private enterprises and networks for economic development

This dissertation sets out to analyze the socio-economic structures behind a variety of capitalism that relies heavily on traditional (and insofar out-dated) institutions, especially networks, for its success. The specifics and advantages of business networks for small firms are well established in the literature but it rarely refers to China. It is argued that although similarities exist, Chinese networks are different to their European counterparts and therefore play a more prominent role for the Chinese economic system than networks elsewhere do. Here, personal relations are not separated into a private and a business sphere or exchanged by contractual, and in Western thinking more rational, means of doing business. Personal relations expose comparative efficiency as they are chosen as the most capable instrument for the private sector in China which makes the system as successful as we can observe today. Therefore, this dissertation will scrutinize the specific socio-economic environment of private firms and their networks in China, thereby dissecting a new form of Capitalism that extrapolates traditional institutions for its economic success and survival instead of supplanting and overwriting traditional socio-economic structures. This challenges Weber’s distinction between rational and traditional behavior and redefines the boundaries of economy, society and culture in a new way

Eine zukunftsfähige Verkehrsinfrastruktur für einen wettbewerbsfähigen Standort

EINE ZUKUNFTSFÄHIGE VERKEHRSINFRASTRUKTUR FÜR EINEN WETTBEWERBSFÄHIGEN STANDORT Eine zukunftsfähige Verkehrsinfrastruktur für einen wettbewerbsfähigen Standort / Rühle, Susanne (Rights reserved) ( -

Towards the Development of a Metadata Model for a Digital Cultural Heritage Collection with Focus on Provenance Information

This project report describes the first steps of the development of a metadata model for the contextualization of heterogeneous objects from different cultural heritage collections with focus on provenance information. The project started with the assumption that aims and objectives of researchers working with cultural heritage collections differ from discipline to discipline. Accordingly, use cases and requirements for the description of objects are heterogeneous. To provide a model that would be usable not only within but also across academic disciplines the project needed to know where these requirements differ and where they match. Therefore the first part of the project was focused on the investigation of use cases and requirements. On the base of the common requirements a generic model will be built that allows the merging of data from a variety of disciplines using different metadata standards. The model’s structure will be a combination of prevalent metadata standards mapped to each other. Another peculiarity of the model will be the modular design of micro -ontologies, sets of domain-specific class structures that are, nevertheless, available on a meta-level in terms of substructures. Applying the DCMI dumb-down principle these subproperties and subclasses will be assigned to a who-what-where-when model, a base structure for the description of objects.The project divided the work process of the project into seven steps. As the project is still work in progress, only four steps will be explained in detail in this report. The three remaining steps will be presented in an outlook

Proceedings Of The 23Rd Paediatric Rheumatology European Society Congress: Part Two

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