Managing Corporate Networks from America to China

Multinational corporations (MNCs) are making a major contribution to China's economic development. This analysis examines how eight prominent American MNCs are handling the process of linking the management of their China joint ventures into their global structures. It looks at how the MNCs are addressing the tensions that arise between maintaining control in terms of their worldwide standards while attempting simultaneously to adapt to the complex and dynamic environment of China. The reconciliation of these requirements depends on a relatively few focal actors, who are located at critical interfaces within the MNCs' internal networks between the China joint ventures and the corporate level.