Suzhi expectations for double-shouldered academics in Chinese public universities

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore suzhi requirements and expectations to double-shouldered academics as middle-level cadres (双肩挑处级干部) in a Chinese higher education institute (HEI) as an initial step to examine the interplays between suzhi requirement and expectations and organizational operational mechanism in the Chinese context. Design/methodology/approach – The study adopted an exploratory single-case approach for the study. In this study, 22 participants composed of middle-level cadres, other stakeholders at the university, college/department and business unit levels were interviewed. Findings – Suzhi requirements for the cadres followed the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) guideline, the required de, neng, qin, ji and lian (德, 能, 勤, 绩, 廉) was abstract and vague. With the parallel systems, the CPC and administrative lines, there were discrepancies between the CPC required suzhi and those expected by the stakeholders. A social phenomenon, “official rank-oriented standard” (ORS, guan ben wei, 官本位), was found significantly intertwining with the self suzhi expectation of the cadres, unveiling a more complex dynamics than most research reported for the Chinese public sector organizations (PSOs). Researchimplications – With the initial qualitative findings unveiling suzhi as an organizational construct, this study informs future empirical research in the indigenous suzhi phenomenon in organizational setting. The conceptualized results of our study offer new insight for future indigenous Chinese management research in all PSOs including state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Originality/value – As an initial step, this study endeavored to explore suzhi as an organizational construct in a Chinese HEI. The paper contributes to the literature by unveiling the complexity of PSOs in the interplays of dual management systems and ORS coupled with dual-role suzhi requirements for the cadres.

Pausanias

Pausanias was a Greek author of the second century ce (b. c. 115–d. c. 180), whose only known work is the Periegesis Hellados (variously translated as “Description of Greece,” “Guide to Greece,” etc.). The Periegesis is a ten-volume, topographically organized account of the heart of mainland Greece, covering Attica, the Peloponnesus, and central Greece as far west as Delphi and a bit beyond, and comprising descriptions of sites and monuments, local and regional histories, mythical and folkloric traditions, and accounts of religious customs and rituals. Although there was some doubt about this in previous centuries, it is now generally accepted that the work is based on Pausanias’s own travels and investigations in the region, and that it provides a unique and valuable eyewitness account of the state of Greece in the author’s own time. Pausanias presents the information that he gathers in an orderly and interconnected series of itineraries. This has fooled more than one reader into treating the text as a sequential account of a single tour that Pausanias took through Greece. In reality, Pausanias was at work on the Periegesis for a number of decades and probably made several visits to many of the sites he describes. The structure of his itineraries is thus a deliberate organizational construct rather than a record of his movements. Pausanias frequently tells the reader that his account is extremely selective. He aims to record only the most noteworthy of Greece’s cities, shrines, and monuments, and the most important historical and mythical traditions associated with them. What he chooses to include and exclude reflects a preference for the ancient over the contemporary and the religious over the secular. Despite these limitations, his account has served as an invaluable source of information for archaeologists, historians, art historians, and a wide variety of scholars in other disciplines. In recent years, Pausanias has also received recognition as an interesting representative of 2nd-century mentalities and ideologies.

The Competence-Based View on the Management of Virtual Web Organizations

The organizational concept of virtual Web organizations encompasses three organizational elements, namely the relatively stable virtual Web platform from which dynamic virtual corporations derive. Virtual corporations are interorganizational adhocracies that are configured temporally of independent companies in order to serve a particular purpose, such as joint R&D, product development, and production. The third element of this organizational construct is the management organization that initiates and maintains the virtual Web platform as well as forms and facilitates the operation of dynamic virtual corporations. Since the organizational concept of virtual Web organizations is hardly researched this chapter aims to provide readers with a better understanding of the organizational concept of virtual Web organizations and in particular of how such an organizational construct is managed. Based on empirical research the author developed a competence-based management model of virtual Web management organizations. This competence-based view of virtual Web management organizations presents an overview of a set of common sub-competencies underlying the three virtual Web management’s main competencies of initiating and maintaining virtual Web platforms and forming dynamic virtual corporations. Furthermore, the developed competence-based management model describes the content of the individual sub-competencies and it explains the purpose, the interrelateness and the temporal dimensions of the virtual Web management’s sub-competencies.

The Competence-Based View on the Management of Virtual Web Organizations

The organizational concept of virtual Web organizations encompasses three organizational elements, namely the relatively stable virtual Web platform from which dynamic virtual corporations derive. Virtual corporations are interorganizational adhocracies that are configured temporally of independent companies in order to serve a particular purpose, such as joint R&D, product development, and production. The third element of this organizational construct is the management organization that initiates and maintains the virtual Web platform as well as forms and facilitates the operation of dynamic virtual corporations. Since the organizational concept of virtual Web organizations is hardly researched this chapter aims to provide readers with a better understanding of the organizational concept of virtual Web organizations and in particular of how such an organizational construct is managed. Based on empirical research the author developed a competence-based management model of virtual Web management organizations. This competence-based view of virtual Web management organizations presents an overview of a set of common sub-competencies underlying the three virtual Web management’s main competencies of initiating and maintaining virtual Web platforms and forming dynamic virtual corporations. Furthermore, the developed competence-based management model describes the content of the individual sub-competencies and it explains the purpose, the interrelateness and the temporal dimensions of the virtual Web management’s sub-competencies.