Enterprise ownership, enterprise organisation, and worker attitudes in Chinese rural industry: some new evidence

China's Township and Village Enterprises (TVEs) have performed remarkably well during the post-1979 period. However, agreement on their organizational and behavioral characteristics and the reasons for their success remains elusive. For some, TVEs are simply private enterprises in disguise and behaviorally equivalent; for others, TVEs represent a unique form of enterprise organization based on collective ownership; the success of which poses a serious challenge to the conventional prescriptions favoring privatization. This paper reports findings from a small survey of private and collective rural enterprises in Heilongjiang, north-east China. The authors find strong evidence that differences in ownership are reflected in different forms of organizational behavior, residual payment structures, and in different worker attitudes and degrees of commitment to the enterprise.