A comparative study on the management styles of Chinese and Filipino restaurant managers in Binondo and Bel-Air

• Main Authors: Gumabay, Karla M., Paronda, Alvin Glenn A., Wong, Kenley Y.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2011
• Subjects: Restaurant management > Philippines; Chinese restaurants > Management; Food service management; Business Administration, Management, and Operations
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/11460
• Institution: De La Salle University

The demand for Filipino managers would most likely increase in the next few years, because they have been keeping businesses in the country successful. These managers excellence in management led them to be candidates for top positions in multinational companies. On the other hand, Chinese entrepreneurs, being business-inclined people, are increasing even more in the Philippines nowadays and most of the business tycoons in the country are Chinese. Their establishments share a large percentage in the market and they continue to compete with the local business industry of the country. For these reasons, the researchers chose to focus on Chinese and Filipino managers. In this study, the group had been specific in targeting restaurants managers. Because of Filipinos love for eating restaurants have greatly served and fed Filipinos as well as other kinds of nationalists in the country. Not only have they been one the main sources of food in the country, restaurants have also become places to exercise leadership skills through management. The group aimed to identify the management styles of Chinese restaurant managers in Binondo and Filipino restaurants managers in Bel-Air under the categories of control and power, employee involvement, output and communication, and determine the effect of nationality on the management styles that they employ. Through the distribution of survey questionnaires to restaurant managers in the selected locations, the researchers were able to achieve the mentioned objectives of this descriptive study. The frequency percentage method was used in getting the results of this study. The participants of the study included twenty-four restaurants from Binondo and forty from Bel-Air, wherein the management styles of its managers who are Chinese and Filipino respectively were compared, under the same categories mentioned above. In relation to the management style of Chinese restaurant managers, the paternalistic management style ranked first under control and power, employee involvement and output with 67%, 46% and 67% respectively. But under communication, automatic (54%) was the dominant management style of the Chinese managers. Filipino restaurant managers likewise ranked first in paternalistic under control and power (85%), and output (60%). Under communication, they also follow the paternalistic management style (68) and for employee involvement (85%), Filipino managers show a democratic way of management. This study showed that the Chinese and Filipino restaurant managers generally follow the same management style under control and power, and output which is paternalistic. The Chinese's Confucianism belief on the five human relationships includes the father and son relationship, which brings out the paternalistic side of them, in the same way that Filipinos as managers act as fathers to their staff. However, they differ in terms of employee involvement and communication. Chinese managers are paternalistic when it speaks about involvement of its employee, and autocratic when it comes to communication, revealing that Chinese management still follows a centralized approach. On the other hand, Filipino managers are democratic under employee involvement, which could be influenced by the country's democratic form of government, and are paternalistic with regards to communication. Thus, Chinese and Filipinos tend to be different under certain aspects and situations, which could possibly a result of the influence of their nationality.