Surviving local government policy intervention: the case of embedded markets within a historical cultural cluster

Abstract

China's name derives from "china" (porcelain), and "China" (pronounced as "Changnan") is the former name of Jingdezhen, the capital city of porcelain-through whose exports of "blue-and-white" china the country gained international renown. The 2200-year-old porcelain cluster in Jingdezhen has survived through multiple empires with distinct policies towards the development of the city's dominant industry. This in-depth case study examines interactions between local government and the business community to discover the effectiveness of policies and the perception of those policies by entrepreneurs through qualitative research employing Grounded Theory methodology. The centralized institutional structure in China contributes significantly to the findings of a total split of "government action" from "public perception" and leads to new considerations for policy-makers to redesign their economic development strategies and plans to engender real effects in the desired direction. This paper also provides an exemplary lesson for historical cultural clusters seeking to escape from unfavorable policy interference.

Impacts of cultural behavior of civil servants on citizens' satisfaction: A survey on licensing services of Indonesian local government agencies

“…The main contribution of this study is to empirically examine the impacts of cultural attitudes and behaviors of civil servants on citizens' satisfaction with public services and to test the cultural variables that have a stronger impact on citizen's satisfaction. The findings are in line with the argument that cultural traits in public and private organizations influence quality services, customers' satisfaction, and accountability (Chang & Lin, 2015; Eskiler et al, 2016; Gaus et al, 2017; Hernandez, 2008; Millar et al, 2018; Zhuang & Everett, 2017). As the relationship between Javanese culture and citizens' satisfaction is scarcely investigated, this study can provide a new direction for the reform of Indonesian public services.…”

“…This is because interactions between service providers and receivers are taken place in the cultural contexts they share, and the ways public services are perceived and evaluated cannot be free from these. Sector businesses and citizens can commend local government policies and public services in the event of cultural change (Zhuang & Everett, 2017). Culture and values can encourage knowledge-intensive services (Millar et al, 2018).…”

Legitimate but “not for me”: The role of validation in migrant entrepreneur understanding of COVID‐19 business support policies in Shanghai

“…The cornerstone of public administration research is citizen satisfaction with government performance (James, 2007; Olsen, 2015). Within the context of China, scholars have surveyed regular Chinese citizens to gauge different performance measures and policy implementation (Huang & Yang, 2018; Yu & Ma, 2015), but little attention has been paid to entrepreneur perception of government performance (Tsai, 2007; Wang & Yu, 2017; Zhuang & Everett, 2017) and even less on the experience of rural migrant business owners (Liu et al., 2019). This is despite the fact that entrepreneurs contribute to economic development in cities (Chen & Feng, 2000; Liu & Huang, 2016) and are “stakeholders entitled to evaluate government performance” (Wang & Yu, 2017, p.701).…”

“…Some studies have examined the impact of reforms on the Chinese entrepreneurial landscape by focusing on the financial system (Huang et al, 2016; Tsai, 2007), tax incentives (Liu et al., 2018), property rights (Lu & Tao, 2010), ownership structure (Welsh et al., 2017), and excessive government regulations (Wang, 2017). However, there is a lack of research on policies created to support Chinese businesses during a national crisis (Zhuang & Everett, 2017) and specific to the COVID‐19 pandemic.…”