In a significant reform move, China is set to reshape its government-funded public institutions to improve the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of public services.
The Chinese government recently issued blueprints for the reform that will affect more than 40m public sector staff currently working in approximately 1.26m government-run public institutions across the country such as schools, hospitals, publishing houses and the agriculture and forestry sectors.
However, nowhere in these reforms is there a single mention of the need for business and management education to effect permanent and lasting change. This is probably due, at least in part, to China’s long history in which a task-oriented, conservative and autocratic work culture has dominated throughout and empowerment has rarely featured.