The influence of Chinese cultural custom and policy practice on doctoral supervision in the management discipline in China

Abstract

Although China has the largest population of doctoral candidates and doctoral graduates in recent years, China currently still suffers from a shortage of effective supervisors, particularly who have a high reputation, working in high ranking universities. Two reasons cause this result. One reason is the number of doctoral candidates has dramatically increased in last four decades, and more than half of the candidates prefer to commence their doctoral journey in high reputation universities. The other reason is because most doctoral supervisors in these universities are generally selected only from the group of ‘Professor’, so the number of doctoral supervisors is limited. As a result, Chinese doctoral supervision, particularly in high ranking universities, has drawn the increasing attention of researchers.

Compared to other disciplines, the Management discipline is a very popular and emergent subject in China. According to a report in 2015, four of the top ten popular subjects are linked with the Management discipline (EOL 2015). Furthermore, the theory and practice in the Management discipline is influenced by traditional culture and present policies (Guo, Y 2014; Lv 2011). Therefore, the effective doctoral supervision in the Management discipline in China has been focused on, rather than other disciplines. Much research on effective doctoral supervision in Western countries has been conducted (Agu & Odimegwu 2014; Collins 2015). However, there is little published research focusing on Chinese doctoral supervision, particular in the Management discipline. In this thesis, I argue that the Chinese cultural custom, and present policy practice influence doctoral supervision.

Qualitative methods were used and case study was adopted in this research. The researcher collected the data via face to face, one to one interviews from a leading Chinese university in Beijing. All 39 interviewees, who were from three groups including students, supervisors and graduates, who studied or worked in this university, participated in this research are volunteers.

A theory has been established from this thesis through refining the data results with the assistance of Nvivo 10.0 software. This theory includes two models: the model of doctoral supervision in Management and the pinde model. The model of doctoral supervision indicated that within the influence of cultural custom and policy practice of China, Chinese doctoral supervisors had two main duties: cultivating people and delivering academic knowledge and skills. Based on the two main duties, even if Chinese doctoral supervisors would offer the individual one-to-one training for each doctoral candidate, they preferred to do more group-way education and pinde education during the whole doctoral supervision process. The results from all interviews emphasised that doctoral supervisors remain in familial relationships with their candidates and use family-style approach to manage their candidates. This theory also indicated a pinde model in the contemporary Chinese academic system.

The findings in this study contribute to fill in the knowledge gap of doctoral supervision in China and the Management field, and provide a valuable Chinese theory. It is important, because the theories or models from Western countries do not necessarily work well within the Chinese context.