Developing Chinese HRM under organizational change and entrepreneurship context

Citation

Wang, Z.-M. (2010), "Developing Chinese HRM under organizational change and entrepreneurship context", Journal of Chinese Human Resource Management, Vol. 1 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/jchrm.2010.46501aaa.001

Developing Chinese HRM under organizational change and entrepreneurship context

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Chinese Human Resource Management, Volume 1, Issue 1

The inaugural issue of the Journal of Chinese Human Resource Management (JCHRM) is now published! Human resource management (HRM) has long been an active area for research and reform practices in China. In recent years, there has been a significant shift of human resources research and development from a conventional approach to a strategic paradigm, especially in China. Under the downturn of financial crisis, human resource (HR) has become one of the most crucial areas of business and management in terms of HR strategies, labor contract practice, down-sizing, knowledge management, mentoring, cultural HR management, change integration, innovation, organizational learning, high-performance system, and corporate entrepreneurship. In general, developing HRM under organizational change and entrepreneurship context has been a new task for HR academics, specialists, practitioners, and policy makers.

In this inaugural issue, we have an opportunity to share with our readers several excellent papers representing the current status of Chinese HR research and practices.

David Lamond and Connie Zheng’s paper provides us with a comprehensive overview of HRM research in China. The paper gives insights on how to manage people in China drawn from recent as well as from ancient Chinese texts. The texts referred to range from those written several millennia ago, through to those of the time of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, followed by those from the time of economic reform and opening up. As China is rapidly becoming a key global player, and its enterprises represent an increasing share of the global market, it is crucial to understand how Chinese firms and organizations have managed their people at home and globally to achieve high-performance outcomes. They point out important directions for future HRM research on the Chinese style of HR management and further develop organisation theories in the China context.

Runtian Jing, Yuanyuan Wan, and Xia Gao studied executive compensation and found useful results in this crucial area of HRM research and entrepreneurship practice. The main question is to identify the reasons for the differences of executives’ compensation across industries from the managerial discretion perspective. With an empirical survey from various manufacturing industries (2002-2007) in China, using regression modeling, it was found that executives’ compensation was positively related to managerial discretion determined by the industrial and entrepreneurial environment. The research finding proved an important point in the issue of the decisive factors for executives’ compensation.

Besides, on the more micro-level factors, Jan Selmer and Romie Littrell focused upon Hong Kong business managers’ value changes through down economies. The major contribution of this paper is that the finding of statistically significant changes in the differing importance to individuals of particular work values during the deterioration of external economic conditions. They demonstrate that the needs hierarchy theories provide an appropriate framework for the shifting importance of work values resulting from local economic conditions. These results have crucial implications for the effective management of business firms and their human resources in changing economic conditions, finding that work values of managers are not invariant but change with conditions. Ningyu Tang and Gigi Wang’s conducted a meta-analysis on five-factor personality model measures and job performance in Chinese organizations. It was shown that all the five factors were significantly related to the overall job performance in Chinese organizational context. Conscientiousness has the highest correlation coefficient while neuroticism has a negative relation with the performance. Neuroticism is more related with contextual performance than with task performance. This is the first time a meta-analysis of FFM has been done by using papers published in China. It contributes to the existing literature by extending the research scope and taking Chinese local literature into consideration. These studies represent current developments in the key areas of Chinese HRM under the new context of organizational change and entrepreneurship development.

In sum, this inaugural issue of JCHRM demonstrates the new platform of HRM research, practices, teaching, and policy making under the organizational change and entrepreneurship context in China. Our audience from China and overseas will find this new journal interesting and useful.

Zhong-Ming Wang