Relationship Cultivation Strategies and Relationship Outcomes: A Comparative Study on Multinational and Taiwanese Companies’ Relationship Building in China

The purposes of this study are to explore the strategies that can help an organization achieve quality relationships and, from the global public relations perspective, to find out the effective ways to communicate with the Chinese publics. I used the relationship cultivation strategies and relationship outcomes developed by Hon and J. Grunig (1999) to explore how differently multinational and Taiwanese companies build relationships with their publics in China. I conducted qualitative interviews with 20 participants from 18 Taiwanese companies and compared the findings with Hung’s (2003) study on multinational companies in China. The findings show that two-way and symmetrical communication were the best dimensions for both multinational and Taiwanese companies to achieve quality relationships. Among all the relationship cultivation strategies, positivity and cooperation were the strategies multinational and Taiwanese companies used the most to build trust, control mutuality, commitment, and satisfaction with their Chinese publics. This study not only provides more insightful evidences for the research on relationship management, but also gives more information on practicing successful public relations at the global setting.