Empirical Analysis

This chapter examines the role played by managerial characteristics and cultural intelligence, through adaptive capability, in influencing SMEs’ performance in the Chinese market. Mixed methods techniques are used in this study to accomplish this task. More specifically, we use multiple sources of evidence in order to address a broad range of contextual, attitudinal, and behavioral issues: survey, interviews, field observations, and internal and public document analysis. The quantitative analysis involved the submission of a questionnaire to 149 Italian SMEs operating in the three main economic regions of the People’s Republic of China, namely Jing-jin-ji, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Pearl River Delta, which agreed to participate in the survey. Hypotheses were then examined with SEM techniques and a hierarchical multiple regression analysis. In the qualitative analysis, five SMEs were identified. At each company, three semi-structured interviews were conducted with managers or participants who were actively involved in managerial projects. Impressions and evidence from field observation of the actions of the participants, and internal documents, such as slides used during meetings and management documentation, and public documents, such as the companies’ annual reports, were also collected. A meta-matrix, based on the three categories of managerial issues, Chinese cultural values, and SMEs’ activities in China, is then used to provide a comprehensive picture of how SMEs can deal with cultural paradoxes and manage the cultural dilemma in the Chinese environment.