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The purpose of this paper is to examine the indigenous Chinese concept of suzhi (素质) with the aim of furthering the development of Chinese human resource management (HRM) research and practice.

An extensive review of the literature on suzhi, published in the West, as well as in China, is the basis for proffering an organizational-level conceptualization of suzhi in the Chinese context.

Instead of understanding it as a free-floating signifier, we argue that suzhi can be considered as a criterion-based framework for HRM research and practice. Suzhi research is classified into two major sources – indigenous Chinese and indigenized Western constructs. We further make a distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic suzhi, and analyze a popular set of suzhi criteria, considering de (morality) and cai (talent), while focusing on de in HRM selection (德才兼备, 以德为先). As multilevel and multidimensional framework, suzhi criteria may form different gestalts in different organizations and industries.

From a social cultural and historical perspective, HRM research that incorporates a combination of indigenous and indigenized suzhi characteristics may receive better acceptance by individuals, organizations and the society in the Chinese context. Accordingly, the reconstruction of suzhi into manageable and measurable dimensions can be undertaken for more effective HRM practice in the Chinese context.

The HRM literature is advanced by linking the indigenous suzhi discourse to Chinese indigenous HRM research and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to gain an understanding of the current status, major concerns and trends faced by Chinese HRM professionals in relation to Wayne Chen and Hay Group China's engagement in its client organizations, also to identify the relationship between HRM research and practices in China.

The paper reports an interview with an established HRM consulting practitioner, Wayne Chen, Managing Director of Hay Group Northeast Asia.

The gap in HRM professionals' skill set between China and Western countries may take years to close. The impact of Chinese culture in the workplace also indicates HRM practice is different to that in the West. The focal area of China HRM practices is to help organizations achieve their strategic goals by effectively managing and developing talents additionally, research informed HRM practice proves to be effective in enhancing the contributions of HRM practices to organizations.

The practical implication is obvious as the interviewee is with a leading consultant currently engaged in real world Chinese HRM practice. This paper also informs future research on Chinese HRM.

The interviewee, Wayne Chen, offers valuable insights for both HRM practitioners and researchers about current status and future trends in Chinese HRM practices.

The purpose of this perspective article is to identify the developmental trajectory of human resource management (HRM) research in the Mainland China as well as the major research gaps to be filled in the future. In particular, the paper focuses on the current challenges as well as the emerging research trends by reviewing the literature in HRM research in the Mainland China.

The paper takes a geocentric perspective of HRM theory development to analyze the status quo as well as the emerging trends of the future HRM research in the Mainland China.

HRM research in the Mainland China exhibited an obvious tendency of adopting an etic approach at the early stage of research, but displaying an emerging trend toward an emic approach at a later stage. However, the current HRM research in the Mainland China, including both etic and the emic approaches, falls seriously short of meeting the high-quality standards of the international academic community.

Through analyzing the status quo of HRM research in the Mainland China, the paper identified an emerging trend toward an integration of both etic and emic approaches in which the two approaches constitute a yin-yang duality as a unity-in-opposites toward a geocentric HRM research framework with a holistic, dynamic and duality etic-emic balance.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the field of human resource management (HRM) in China, with insights drawn from recent times to several millennia earlier, with a view to informing the further work that needs to be done to better understand managing people in China.

The authors examined Chinese ancient texts related to people management and drew on reviews of HRM research in China since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 till current times, to draw lessons for HRM in China today and for the future.

The 2,500 year gap that separates the literatures studied as part of this review cannot hide the striking similarities between the conceptual views about the importance of people and their management in the two periods. Yet, there remains a lack of empirical studies of the Chinese style of HRM practices. The majority of recent research in the field of HRM in China is focussed on comparison between HRM practices in various types of enterprises operating in China and those in the west, with the apparent aim of better understanding the latter rather than the former.

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 have managed their people at home and globally to achieve performance outcomes. Are there lessons other firms, especially those in emerging markets could learn? What are the implications for building global management and organisational knowledge? This paper provides some directions for future research about HRM in China, which may help gain a better understanding of the Chinese style of management and further develop management and organisation theories in the China context.

This article aims to highlight the importance of creativity and innovation in Chinese HRM research and practice. The authors first seek to bring some conceptual clarity to the term “innovation”, especially in relation to the notion of creativity. The authors then discuss Chinese HRM research and policies and practices associated with innovation. The authors conclude the article by introducing the forum articles that constitute this issue of the journal.

Literature review and analysis.

The authors discuss the conceptual difference and similarity between innovation and creativity. The literature analysis shows that Chinese HRM research is in a transitioning stage from local private novelty to global novelty, and innovation at individual and organizational level is determined by a sound national innovation system (NIS) that either fosters or hinders the overall ability of innovation in a sub-system.

The article differentiates creativity and innovation conceptually and specifies the critical role of NIS in fostering innovation ability at individual and organizational levels.

The purpose of this study is to review the current status of the Journal of Chinese Human Resource Management (JCHRM) in this initial stage and present a number of emerging unique Chinese phenomena for scholarly attention in relation to JCHRM entering its fifth year.

Based on a review of JCHRM's status, we further reviewed literature and media reports to identify new research opportunities for indigenous Chinese human resource management (HRM) research.

JCHRM has demonstrated its strength and uniqueness in contributing to management knowledge production and dissemination in the first four years, thanks to enthusiastic support from the worldwide research community. Moving forward, we identify a number of intriguing indigenous phenomena, including distinctive social political contexts in state-owned enterprises, emerging trends in embracing the Party Branches (dang zhi bu, Fixed graphic 1) by multinational corporations (MNCs) in China and the indigenous Chinese suzhi (Fixed graphic 2) phenomenon, for new opportunities in Chinese HRM research.

The three indigenous phenomena constitute only a few samples. Developing a theoretical understanding of Chinese HRM phenomena has a long way to go. Continued inquiries in this area will not only help build local knowledge on complex organizational dynamics but also enrich the overall management knowledge base.

We review the status of JCHRM in its first four years and bring a sample of intriguing indigenous Chinese phenomena to the attention of the worldwide scholarly community for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to address gaps in the knowledge about human resource (HR) professional involvement in strategic decision-making in China compared with that in Australia.

First, the authors compare the strategic involvement of Chinese and Australian HR professionals. Second, based on the upper echelon theory, the authors compare the impact of chief executive officer (CEO) and top management team (TMT) between both countries on HR involvement in strategic decision-making. Data were collected from matched pairs of HR and TMT executives in China (n = 168) and in Australia (n = 102).

Results indicate a difference, despite of no statistical significance, in HR involvement in strategic decision-making between Chinese and Australian samples. TMT behavioural integration was positively related to HR involvement in strategic decision-making in a collectivistic culture (i.e. in China), but not in an individualistic culture (i.e. in Australia). However, CEO support for HRM was positively related to HR involvement in strategic decision-making in Australia, whereas it is not related in China.

The paper conducts a comparative study and practical, and research implications are discussed at the end.

This article aims at reviewing existing theories relevant to human resource management (HRM) and providing theoretical contexts to explain the importance of managing people across borders for emerging Chinese multinational enterprises (MNEs).

Based on a literature review approach, the author examines the phenomenon of emerging Chinese MNEs from the lenses of three streams of theories: organisation‐based view; resource‐based view; and institution‐based view.

Existing theories offer sufficient insights to explore differences between emerging and established MNEs, particularly in strategic international HRM research. First, Chinese EMNEs were driven to internationalising by different motives, thus creating impact on the strategic choice and global HRM policy consideration. Second, Chinese EMNEs are operating under constantly changing institutional environments, both at home and in host countries. As a result, they are required to balance and rebalance the choices made in formulating and implementing IHRM strategies. Third, there will be different internationalisation outcomes pursued by Chinese EMNEs. Therefore, IHRM policies and practices are to achieve individual, organisational and societal well‐being.

The article has important implications for HRM theory and research. It may lead to developing relevant analytical frameworks for future research in Chinese human resource management. It is also beneficial to understand the formation and implementation of HRM policy and practices in EMNEs originated not only in China, but in other developing countries.

This article contributes to the international HRM literature in relation to Chinese emerging MNEs from a theoretical perspective. Synthesizing existing core theories with examples from Chinese MNEs, it proposes future research directions for analysing further development of such enterprises.

This article aims to highlight major unique Chinese organizational phenomena and delineate associated qualitative methods for exploratory inquiries and to focus on perceived challenges in developing indigenous knowledge in HRD and related management fields.

The author takes an in‐outsider position and adopts an observational and reflexive approach to the phenomena, methods and challenges important for indigenous Chinese HRM research.

The paper presents six major indigenous phenomena commonly seen in Chinese organizations. With a recent study exploring one of the phenomena, it discusses how grounded theory and phenomenology methods, combined with reflexivity, may be embraced for exploratory indigenous research. It also delineates challenges for indigenous Chinese HRM research.

Indigenous research is the first and necessary stage to understand unique and indigenous Chinese organizational phenomena. With appropriate qualitative methods, indigenous phenomenon entails indigenous understanding that leads to modifying, enriching, supplementing existing theories, and possibly developing new ones at a later stage.

This paper identifies six major unique organizational phenomena in the Chinese organizational context. It makes a strong case for indigenous research adopting exploratory qualitative methods for engaged scholarship and theory building research.

This essay aims to present three critical challenges in the Chinese human resource management (HRM) research related to research originality.

The author takes an observational and experiential approach to developing his argument.

Existing research on Chinese HRM research lacks of originality in three critical aspects: the topics selected, the methodologies employed and the interpretations carried out. Researchers need to consider more relevant and emerging topics adopting more qualitative and comparative methodologies by focusing on today and tomorrow's problems.

The Chinese HRM research community is to overcome the three challenges in order to develop indigenous Chinese HRM theory.