At precisely 9am, the leadership and motivation workshop begins and the Shanghai executives from one of the mainland's leading computer firms start wrestling with a host of progressive management theories.
Ten minutes later, a red-faced senior executive shuffles in. 'Stop everything,' shouts one participant. The 60 delegates are told to stand up and hold a minute's silence to focus their collective corporate thoughts on the error of their tardy colleague's ways.
The miscreant - who is in the nation's top one per cent of earners - bows his head and walks to a corner of the room for his 10-minute dose of humiliation, while his colleagues go back to discussing the managerial benefits of lateral thinking over parallel thinking.
Other companies make employees stand for five minutes, holding their mobile phone aloft if the offending article rings during a meeting.
It is humiliating - but humiliation is a particularly effective motivator on the mainland, human resource managers say, and although it runs counter to a lot of modern thinking, it is widely implemented at all levels of society.
In recent history, it played a pivotal role. Criticism and self-criticism were weapons effectively deployed by Mao Zedong for decades to keep a fifth of the world's population at his feet and away from 'political contamination'. Although society has transformed radically since then, psychological residues remain.