美国公司里的同事关系——个人存在和公司存在.doc

Personal Lives, Office Lives February 19, 2008 A young Chinese banker confided to me recently that he felt rejected by his new colleagues at a famed Wall Street firm -- they rarely responded to his suggestions of after-work activities such as dinners and tennis matches. Instead, he said, they all rush home. Americans may not find that unusual, but I understood his confusion: Chinese draw the lines between personal and professional life differently than Americans do, and the idea of colleagues isnt the same in the two countries. In American companies -- especially, it seems to me, in big corporations -- colleagues are just people you work with. Youre not obliged to mingle with them outside the office unless you want to. In China, the office is both a work space and a social space. At lunch hours, Chinese stream out of office towers in large crowds. Its quite common for co-workers to go out for dinner, karaoke and team sports after work a couple of times a week, and those who rarely participate in group activities are considered arrogant or lacking social graces. While young Chinese working at multinational companies do tend to keep some distance from their colleagues, in more-traditional workplaces you almost have to consider your officemates a surrogate family. The first few days with a new company are filled with personal questions: age; hometown; parents professions; marital status; monthly salary; profession of your spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend; income level of same; value of your apartment; cost of renovating that apartment; stocks and mutual funds youre investing in; and so on. And youre expected to update your colleagues about changes. I cant think of any American colleagues I know that well. Unless they volunteered the information, I dont know my closest work friends income levels, political affiliations or religious denominations. We simply dont talk about such things. Ive even heard people complaining about colleagues talking too loudly about personal ma