Matt Bruno, founder and general manager of ReSource Pro, left his job working for a New York City-based insurance program shortly after the World Trade Center bombing and arrived in China. Initially he planned to teach English, but soon the entrepreneurial spirit of the country caused him to begin exploring opportunities. He returned to New York and talked his former boss into allowing him to start a back-office services firm for their insurance company clients, which grew into ReSource Pro. By year-end 2007, ReSource Pro employed 250 people, of whom only 4 were U.S.-based. With aggressive growth plans, Bruno began examining potential cities in China for expansion. After narrowing his list of potential expansion sites to the five Chinese cities of Chengdu (the capital of Sichuan Province), Jinan (capital of Shandong Province), Nanjing (capital of Jiangsu Province), Suzhou (Jiangsu), and Wuhan (capital of Hubei Province), he now had to make a final choice.
This case analyzes the business strategy and expansion of JWT China from the late 1990s to 2008. As part of the world's fourth largest marketing communications network, JWT China grew into one of the largest integrated communications companies in China operating from offices in various parts of the country. The case provides students with a comprehensive history of and insights into China's advertising industry and the challenges for foreign and domestic firms operating within a highly regulated media environment controlled by the Chinese government. At the same time, this case offers insights into the structure of the highly fragmented Chinese consumers market, exploring the socio-economic disparities in income and media access as well as culturally determined consumer behavior across different regions and urban and rural areas. The case lets students explore how these trends might impact JWT's advertising and marketing strategies in the future and how to evaluate JWT's business expansion in China dealing with local and foreign competition.
Provides an analysis of why informal financial networks and institutions still play an extremely important role in China's economy in the 21st century. Although China has emerged as one of the fastest growing economies in the world, it still suffers from a weak financial system dominated by state-controlled banks and severely limited access to capital for private entrepreneurs and consumers. The case shows how the political climate, economic regulatory environment and social attitudes towards lending practices have shaped the approach to and structure of financing private enterprises over time. It also addresses the response of the Chinese government to the resilient curb market in the context of the economic reforms and policy changes for the banking and financial sector.
This case focuses on the legal and managerial evolution of limited-liability firms in China, using the example of the Dasheng cotton mills in Nantong near Shanghai. Dasheng, one of the earliest and most successful industrial enterprises in pre-war China, was founded by the famous entrepreneur Zhang Jian (1853-1926). Having survived various economic and political crises, the Dasheng cotton mills became a state-owned enterprise in 1953. In the wake of the economic reforms the successor to the original Dasheng Enterprise was restructured as the Jiangsu Dasheng Co. Ltd. in 1996. Issues of corporate governance, legal environment, government relations and the role of family business structures are discussed in the context of how they shaped the business environment in pre-war China and continue to influence Chinese enterprise culture in 2008.
Provides the complex historical background to understanding the development of family businesses in China from the late 19th century to the present. Using the example of the Rong family, China's most prominent industrialist family in pre-1949 China, analyzes the organizational structure and transformation of Chinese family firms in terms of managerial hierarchies, kinship alliances, and local networks. Emphasizes the response of the family business to major political crises, demonstrates how they dealt with the transition to a socialist government in 1949, and interprets the success of overseas Chinese family business as well as the revival of family business networks in the wake of China's economic reforms.
Concerns the growth of multinational trading companies in the first global economy. Examines two Scottish-owned merchant houses, Jardine Matheson and James Finlay, and shows their changing trade and investment strategies as well as their use of an organizational form later known as business groups. Also demonstrates the role of ethnic networks in globalization during this historical period. A rewritten version of an earlier case.