Differences in management styles mean that Western academics may struggle to settle in jobs in Chinese universities, research warns.

Shuangmiao Han, a researcher in the College of Education at Zhejiang University, said ¡°abundant grants for scientific research, more job opportunities and cultural curiosity¡± were driving more Western researchers to take up jobs in Asia, particularly as vacancies become more scarce back home.

However, foreign academics are a ¡°flight risk¡± if institutions do not consider the impact of differences in management styles, Dr Han said.

For a recent report in , she interviewed international academics at a research institution in China, plus two Chinese joint-venture universities with UK and US partners.

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Dr?Han found major concerns over the Chinese practice of ¡°routinised improvisation¡±, which means that staff are expected to be responsive to the whims of their superiors. A ¡°lack of professional protocol¡± and ¡°ambiguous lines of communication¡± can lead to a sense of ¡°disengagement¡± by international faculty, she found.

Last-minute, non-urgent meetings called by Chinese managers were just one example of the communication gap between the two sides.

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In China, leaders can ¡°change whenever they want?to. And everyone has to follow along. In the US, a leader can only do that once. The next time, people will say ¡®no¡¯,¡± one interviewee said.

¡°The big challenge is that China really doesn¡¯t have a connection with the culture of what we call faculty governance,¡± said another interviewee. ¡°In the US, in Europe, the universities are run by faculty, because they are the people who have to carry out the responsibility.¡±

Once a decision is made by a?Chinese department head or dean, ¡°it?becomes policy¡± with ¡°few opportunities for new faculty to directly communicate with them. It is the way culturally things are done here,¡± one interviewee said.

Different management styles can also affect relations between institutions and can ¡°cause difficulty when coming to systemic and sustainable international cooperation¡±. While joint ventures are run collaboratively with foreign partners ¡°on?paper¡±, in reality ¡°the Chinese dean keeps the campus running since we are physically here in China¡±, an interviewee said.

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Assessments were another area where management styles clashed. The Chinese system uses citation rankings as its main metric, regardless of whether an academic is working in a high-impact field, whereas the US and UK systems take more account of peer review and the quality of theses.

¡°In China, everyone seems to think you can make objective measures of this kind of thing. They¡¯re wrong,¡± one interviewee said, adding that the measure of an academic should be ¡°how much you have changed students¡¯ lives and how much impact you have made in the world¡±.

These foreign interviewees¡¯ experiences could ¡°provide implications to other countries at a similar HE developmental stage¡±, Dr Han writes.

¡°The question remains as to what degree foreign academics and ¡®established¡¯ academic practices are able to be integrated into the Chinese and more broadly Asian HE systems,¡± she concludes.

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joyce.lau@timeshighereducation.com