Abstract

Translating Solutions: Transnational Networks and Circulations of Management Knowledge in Republican China

Despite a growing scholarly literature on the development of capitalist industry in pre-war Republican China (1912-1937), scholars have paid only minimal attention to the nation’s rapidly expanding discourse of management in the 1920s and 1930s. After the introduction of heady “scientific management” theories in the 1910s, a publishing boom ensued on all the latest “management methods” (管理法) from overseas. Professional translators, aspiring entrepreneurs, and foreign-returned students filled books and magazines with both direct translations and their own digests of academic research and corporate case-studies that might provide practicable, hands-on solutions for Chinese firms. Drawing on newly digitized access to these rich primary sources, this paper explores the networks behind these transnational circulations of knowledge and their ensuing impact on the co-evolution of Chinese management thought and practice. It first does so by highlighting three influential management aficionados, tracing their exposure to these ideas through overseas studies and access to foreign publications in China’s treaty-ports, as well as their lived interconnections. Second, it critically analyzes their adaptations of these ideas-in-translation to suit their agendas and experiences in China’s business context. Finally, relying on the press, it demonstrates the impact of this expanding management discourse on Chinese firms through the social and professional connections between these intellectuals and the major industrialists in Shanghai’s busy social world.