Abstract

In the late 1970s, China’s party leaders realized that China was not able to develop in isolation. Their aim of "learning from advanced countries" also implied bringing change to China on all business-related levels. However, both Chinese and Western practitioners and scholars agree on the inappropriateness of any change approach alien to Chinese specification. To bridge this void, this research directs its interest towards a substantive theorizing upon the Jesuits’ Accommodation approach in China (1583-1742). To do so, a hermeneutic-phenomenology, rooted within the Utrecht school and following by Max van Manen, establishes a renewed contact with the Jesuits’ Accommodation experience outside its traditional research environment. Being grounded in an exhaustive description of the Accommodation phenomenon along its meaning-units, a reflective analysis into the structural aspects of the Jesuits’ lived Accommodation experience allows nine essential themes to be abstracted. In becoming the building blocks of a substantive "Theory of the Unique," these themes summarize all requirements that are reflected in, and/or concern Context, Course, Content of any sinicized change approach. As a result, research into the Jesuits’ Accommodation approach provides Chinese and Western management practitioners and scholars with one new, substantive approach to effectively manage change in Chinese organizational settings today.