Network Society and Enterprise Management Reforms: A Fieldwork Study in Daoxiangcun Group Co. Ltd.

Abstract

In a network society, the fast-changing economic situation brings about considerable challenges to traditional enterprises, especially for a “time-honored” enterprise like Daoxiangcun Group. It is an interesting academic topic for scholars to portray the ways in which these time-honored enterprises have achieved tradition-modernization transformation via the internet technology. This paper, by taking Daoxiangcun Group as a case study, makes an anthropological fieldwork research and analyzes the changes in the management of Daoxiangcun Group at four levels: network society as the macro structure, the baking industry as the meso structure, the company’s organizational structure and business processes as the micro structure. It is found that the tradition-modernization reforms reflect the pattern of “from outside to inside” to “from inside to outside”, and the pattern of "from top to bottom” to “from bottom to top”.