PS Café at Ann Siang Hill,
knowledge intensive service industry
with a cherry on top

Posted on by cheryl

Cheryl Marie Cordeiro, Patrik Ström, Claes G. Alvstam, Singapore

A CIBS “selfie of the day” at Amoy Street, Singapore.
Text & Photo © P Ström, JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2014

I recently found myself navigating a number of historical streets in and around the central business district of Singapore. If this somehow is an epigenetic memory or not, I don’t know, but I do find myself very much at home around here, it being the very place in Singapore as to where I want to bring my friends.

In Singapore together for this study visit were colleagues from the Centre for International Business Studies (CIBS) of the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Continue reading “PS Café at Ann Siang Hill,
knowledge intensive service industry
with a cherry on top” →

Across the outdoor patio seating of Ristorante Da Valentino in Singapore, 2014

Posted on by cheryl

Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

Visiting Valentino’s in Singapore have by and by become a meeting with the Valtulina family. It is pleasant beyond description to be welcomed by familiar faces and even better having your own guests treated as if you were just a big family having waited much too long to finally see each other again.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2014

Across the outdoor patio seating of Ristorante Da Valentino in Singapore is a small spice garden. The restaurant is the venture of the Valtulina family. A place I have over time come to regard as a little home away from home, and a place I am always happy to revisit as occasions occur.

Regarding the little garden. We had actually talked ourselves into this little gem mainly in the care of Gianpiero Valtulina, or Papa Gianni, by showing a genuine interest. And while excusing himself for “its many shortcomings”, he showed us around, showed us what were to be and complained – as all true farmers at heart – about the soil, the weather, the sun, the rain and the climate in general, with a smile. Continue reading “Across the outdoor patio seating of Ristorante Da Valentino in Singapore, 2014” →

China Goes Global 2014
Distinguishing between international and global societies, valuing many systems within one system of global trade: the case of Sweden and China in the 1700s.

Posted on by cheryl

Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

Dr. Cheryl Marie Cordeiro, speaking about 18th century trade relations between Sweden and China at the China Goes Global (CGG) 2014 conference held at the Shanghai Jiaotong University, China.
Text & Photo © E Dijk, JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2014

The 8th international conference of China Goes Global, organised by the Chinese Globalization Association took place for the first time this year in Shanghai, China. Co-hosted by the Institute of Chinese Enterprises Development at the Antai College of Economics and Management of the Shanghai Jiaotong University (SJTU) and KEDGE Business School (France), it was there that I was given the opportunity to speak some about Sweden’s trade relations with China during the 1700s.

In the process of doing some literature review for the presentation, I found myself thoroughly enjoying Robert Crowcroft’s (2012) article entitled, Globalisation and Public Language, where readers are left with a sense of seething irritation at the ubiquitous yet careless use of the word ‘globalisation’ and its concept, the contention being that both academics and politicians alike have failed to disentangle the various meanings of the word ‘globalisation’, and how can that be when not a day goes by in public discourse that the word is not used? Continue reading “China Goes Global 2014
Distinguishing between international and global societies, valuing many systems within one system of global trade: the case of Sweden and China in the 1700s.” →

Swami – product development of an orange cushion cover

Posted on by cheryl

Noodle soup

Noodle soup.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2014

§START
$1: most theories of consciousness still put the human being at the center of it all / that[i]s my problem with them / and i don[o]t like it / it[i]s like thinking the sun revolves around the earth because you observe it to be such / the theories haven[o]t matured in the thought processes / these theories they have now are put out to make the human being feel important // what i[a]m saying is that / from a cosmic perspective the difference between humans and mold or bacteria is insignificant / it[i]s like / nothing // in fact / look at yeast / it can raise bread // <1 can the human being raise bread >1 / <2 what can humans do compared to yeast >2 / nothing / at some level / humans are not much better than a virus / destructive and eating everything in sight / and if we can do better / we[a]re not showing that we can do better / the general consciousness of humanity is going downhill // this somewhat has to do with technology / globalization / and the interconnectedness of everything / too much too fast / inequality gaps increasing between groups of people / and people feel it / they get disenfranchised Continue reading “Swami – product development of an orange cushion cover” →

China Goes Global 2014
Visit to ZTE Corporation, Shanghai

Posted on by cheryl

IMG_6887a 598

ZTE Corporation, Shanghai, China.
Text & Photo © C Lattemann, JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2014

Founded in 1985, ZTE Corporation is China’s first dual listed company. Listed on both the Shenzhen and Hong Kong stock exchanges, ZTE is a giant of a corporation hidden in plain view with its revenue in 2013 hitting a cool 12 billion USD. And it is growing rapidly yet. The telecommunications equipment and systems company that plays a principal role in supporting China’s massive constructions of 4G networks, surpasses the more renowned Europe based Siemens, Ericsson and Philips in patented innovations, reporting a sustained triple digit profit growth in its nine month forecast in 2014. Continue reading “China Goes Global 2014
Visit to ZTE Corporation, Shanghai” →

Sustainable, a word with many meanings

Posted on by cheryl

Stockholm Strömmen

Stockholm Strömmen.
Stockholm is one of Europe’s five fastest growing cities and is the first European Green Capital 2010.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2014

Many years ago I watched a man restore an antique wooden door. He had first carefully sanded it down to its original paint layer, til it was soft enough to run your hand over it, til you could feel the warmth of the wood at its core. To get the door to match the rest of the interior of the house, he then began by adding a thin layer of linseed oil. Each brush stroke was carefully calculated in pressure, length and weight.

I soon realized that he carried with him a tacit knowledge that not many others had. But more than tacit knowledge was also a genuine interest in what he was doing. He breathed life back into an antique door that most others would have thrown away and replaced with a brand new one from Bauhaus. He worked with undivided attention and as I watched, I pondered who else would ever come to appreciate the efforts? What came through clearly was that the care he put into that antique door was also a personality trait that you could see run through almost all other things he did.

I realized that this door might well outlive us both, at the cost of some linseed oil.
Continue reading “Sustainable, a word with many meanings” →

Towards agglomerating tacit knowledge and regional expertise: Ted Österlin, Noble House Sushi, Passion för Mat 2014

Posted on by cheryl

Ted Joakim Österlin, Noble House, Gothenburg

Ted Österlin, CEO / Owner of Noble House AB.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2014

Introduction: knowledge intensive economies
Whilst manufacturing production in many OECD countries has declined in recent decades, services however, are on the rise. On average services now account for about 70 percent of OECD GDP. The culinary and gastronomy industry lies within the grey area in the definition of OECD-WTO Trade in Value Added (TiVA) derived from services embodied in the exports of manufactured goods. In the case of Sweden, the country’s services sector has continued to grow from the early 2000s, when its share of the workforce employed within services increased from 67 to 75.2 percent just between the years of 1989 and 2003. Today, Sweden has about 42 percent of its workforce in services-related occupations in manufacturing [1].

In the past decade, the debate on creativity as a driving force for regional economic development in the context of the third wave of globalisation within the academic realm of international business studies has been increasing [2,3,4,5].

Empirical findings seem to point towards that knowledge and service oriented economies have three characteristics in common that encourage innovation:

  • First, is the need for firms over time, to reduce technical and economic uncertainty.
  • Second, interactions with outside parties are necessary.
  • Finally, immediate presence and face-to-face contact remains important because of trust building and tacit knowledge transfer [6].

These three points converge in constellations of individuals who share similar values and world views, firms in industrial clusters or other agglomerations of various kinds. The continuous interlocution between people, place and firm, is what drives a region and gives it its brand. In the past few years, the city of Gothenburg has focused its efforts on being the centre of gastronomic activities. It is currently recognised as Sweden’s Culinary Capital, and September 21-24 will see the city host the World Food Travel Summit with the theme, New Wave in Food Tourism.

It is in this context of Sweden’s growing services industry, and the exchange of knowledge between Sweden and Asia / South-east Asia, that I met with CEO and Owner of Noble House AB, Ted Österlin, at this year’s Passion för Mat.
Continue reading “Towards agglomerating tacit knowledge and regional expertise: Ted Österlin, Noble House Sushi, Passion för Mat 2014” →

North of the Bund, Shanghai

Posted on by cheryl

nob

Crowne Plaza Shanghai Fudan Hotel
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

When looking at the facade of the Crowne Plaza Shanghai Fudan Hotel it is difficult to not read into the facets of its facade some influences from the constructivist art movement that grew out of Russian Futurism in the early years of the 20th century.

Constructivist architecture flourished in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and early 1930s. Its ideas were revolutionary at the time and combined advanced technology and engineering with social purposes.

This era was also a formative one for Shanghai, as it acted as an eastern melting pot between East and West in the Warlord epoque of China in the 1910s, around the years of the Russian revolution and the financial boom of WWI. As such one would not be too surprised to find traces of these ideas right here in the Yangpu district of Shanghai where much of China’s academia flourishes today.

It is even difficult not to draw references to Russian industrialism and earlier, the cubism of Picasso and Braque, in the facets of the facade looking like human beings standing on top of, lifting, carrying and supporting each other. Architecture depicting the human strive to higher and higher achievements.

The Russian bicyclist painting by Natalia Goncharova (Cyclist, 1913) comes to mind as another reference to the Russian futurism of the 1910’s. This can be seen in contrast to the slightly older painting by Ramon Casas, of himself and Pere Romeu on a Tandem, 1897. The two works of art illustrate a dramatic change in ideologies and thus realities, that had come by in a mere few decades. The latter was painted specifically for the interior of the Els Quatre Gats in Barcelona, a restaurant and bar that was pretty much the center of the early Modernisme art movement in Barcelona at the turn of the century, and also the very place where Picasso had his first exhibition.
Continue reading “North of the Bund, Shanghai” →

Organization identity and the dialogic process of recreating corporate values

Posted on by cheryl

In SvD 19 April 2013, Näringsliv.
Conflict and powerplay between Volvo Cars and Geely.
Text & Photo © CM Cordeiro 2013

‘Five conflicts stirring Volvo in China’
Just recently this headline in war fonts headed the front page of the business section of one of Sweden’s most respected morning news papers. It was obvious that something had changed.

As one of many who keep a keen interest in the economic and geographic spatial reconfigurations of the global automobile industry, I did not expect a smooth process of acquisition of Volvo Cars by Geely from 2010 onwards.

Research literature charts a five times more likely narrative of a failed attempt at mergers and acquisitions than one of success. In the case of the Swedish then American owned Volvo Cars being acquired by Chinese Geely, language, culture, values and outlook on life per se are but the tip of the ice-berg to the multiple foundational layers of differences that need to be disentangled in this corporate marriage.

In studying Chinese and Swedish leadership and management styles, a field of research that I’ve worked with since 2004 (Cordeiro-Nilsson 2009), to say that China and Sweden have different cultures, is perhaps an appeal too much towards lex parsimoniae, where culture is here defined as a set of values, both explicit and implicit, shared by a collective of people with a shared ideology or mental framework that manifests itself in material action.

The overall picture is far more complex than what the media can at any one point in time represent. What is reflected in the media is often the result of much polishing and trimming of editorials and underlying narratives. And what is happening between Volvo Cars and Geely as reflected in the Swedish media, is but a synchronic snap-shot of a process that is inherently longitudinal in character. Organizational relations are ongoing dialogic processes that can be assessed in a more balanced perspective when placed in the context of a longitudinal timeframe, of years and decades past and what is also to come. As such, media representations of Volvo Cars – Geely relations need to be understood in the context of the larger socio-economic and political relations that have been built over time between their organizations, between Sweden and China.
Continue reading “Organization identity and the dialogic process of recreating corporate values” →

Visiting the Geely Holding Group in Hangzhou, November 2010

Posted on by admin

Geely headquarters, Hangzhou, China.

The Geely Holding Group headquarters in Hangzhou, November 2010
Photo: J E Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson for CMC © 2010

It was with great expectations that I went to visit the Geely headquarters in Hangzhou, the Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co. Ltd, as part of a Swedish delegation from the University of Gothenburg. Geely’s acquisition of the Swedish car manufacturer Volvo with their headquarters in Gothenburg was announced on Monday the 2 August 2010 and with that, the Zhejiang Geely corporation had concluded the largest ever acquisition of a foreign car company in the history of China.

Geely headquarters, University of Gothenburg visit 2010.

A warm sign at the Zhejiang Geely Holding Group headquarters that welcomed the visit by the Swedish delegation.

Geely headquarters, hallway.

Just inside the Geely headquarters entrance.

Having followed the Ford and Geely negotiations as well as could be done in the press, I expected this acquisition to be an important opportunity to study the process of top management knowledge transfer between modern China and the West.
Continue reading “Visiting the Geely Holding Group in Hangzhou, November 2010” →