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The purpose of the research is to identify the factors contributing to the formation of high-level strategic thinking ability (STA) of Chinese grassroots cadres.

Through in-depth interviews with 20 Chinese grassroots cadres with high-level STA and grounded theory method, this research explores the contributive factors for the formation of the grassroots cadres' STA from a dynamic and long-term perspective.

The formation of STA is an accumulative process based on the interaction between external factors, including wide space for activities, adequate supporting resources, demonstration of role model, and inflection point and internal drivers, including strong sense of self-actualization, high sense of responsibility, thinking enhancement skills, diverse knowledge and high openness. Moreover, the external factors play a more important role in shaping STA in the early growth stage of the grassroots cadres, while in the late stage the internal factors tend to dominate.

The study advises to offer more professional training on STA and take STA as an important factor for Chinese grassroots cadres to compete in a complex socio-political environment in the long term.

(1) This paper investigates into the STA of Chinese grassroots cadres, which are largely ignored in current literature; (2) different from the extant studies which studies the static influencing factors of STA, such as demographic variables, personal traits and organizational characteristics, this paper focuses on the dynamic and long-term factors during the growth of the cadres.

The purpose of this paper is to study the evolution of Chinese industrial relations after the market reform of 1978, while basing its arguments and conclusion on analysis of the interactions of key actors in the labour arena in China. The significant phenomena in the evolution of industrial relations are the coming of transnational capital and the emergence of self‐organising protests by migrant workers.

The paper uses a case study approach.

The Labour Contract Law and the local political economy experience strong effects from TNCs and other business players. Meanwhile, globalisation has introduced the civil society movement to China, which has given rise to an increasing number of NGOs working for labour rights. Tight financial and technical connections between grassroots NGOs and international donor organisations make it possible for bottom‐up labour activities to counteract the unilateral influence of the state and market over the Chinese workforce. Since the ACFTU, the official trade union umbrella, has many institutional constraints to undertake a thorough transition towards labour in the near future, workers' representation is diversified.

One implication for further theoretical studies is that tripartism cannot fully disclose the reality of Chinese labour, and that labour representation derives from both unions and self‐organisation of workers, such as NGOs, which opens more room for the entrenchment of the grassroots labour movement to sustain the balance of power among the state, ACFTU, firms, international market forces and individual workers in the long term.

This study explores configurations that promote the development of collective economies in China's rural villages and reveals the multiple development pathways that otherwise remain relatively unexamined in the literature.

The authors obtained first-hand representative case data from 20 villages in 12 counties in 5 provinces in East, West and Central China via fieldwork and applied fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to conduct a configurational comparative study of the development of village collective economies.

This paper identifies five factors in the current literature that affect the development of village collectives, based on an “entrepreneur–situation” analytical framework. Using the fsQCA method, this study further obtains two main configurations of conditions that culminate in the growth of rural collective economies in China. The first solution is the “top-down path”: When entrepreneurial leadership (EL), resource endowment (RE) and government assistance (GA) are present, a village collective economy will experience a high level of development, irrespective of policy support (PS) and villagers' participation (VP). The second solution is the “bottom-up path”: When EL, VP and PS are present and GA is not present, a village collective economy will experience a high level of development, irrespective of RE. In both situations, EL stands out as the core condition for the development of village collective economies, implying the need for the government to vigorously cultivate the entrepreneurial skills and aspirations of village cadres.

Taking a configurational perspective and using an fsQCA approach, this research constructs an “entrepreneur–situation” analytical framework to investigate the key combinations of factors and pathways involved in the high level of development of Chinese village collective economies.

The purpose of this paper is to study the changing perspectives of Chinese trade unions towards labour rights and interest, through exploring the nature of Chinese trade unions from the aspect of shop stewards, or enterprise union cadres. These opinions can explain the nature and orientation of unions towards representation and rights protection for workers.

This paper is based on a survey of 1,811 enterprise union chairpersons, which is analysed by variable interaction analysis through statistical package for social sciences.

Enterprise trade unions have realised the importance of labour representation and are willing to undertake actions for labour rights and interests in the companies. Enterprise union cadres tend to change the union for more autonomy and effectiveness in safeguarding collective labour rights at the workplaces. The enterprise union chairpersons have been learning how to use this multiple role of the Chinese trade union for pursuing the rights and interests of their own members. However, for shop stewards, it is essential for their unions to focus on inside‐company issues, rather than allocating energy or attention to outside issues, which are the duty of upper‐level unions.

Over half of the survey, companies are either state‐owned enterprises or small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises. This undermines the credibility of this research for explaining the situation in all kinds of companies in China. Meanwhile, the survey collects opinions and judgements from the enterprise union chairpersons, while ignoring those of the company managers and workers. This biased perception can then only present the minds and behaviour orientations of the union at the enterprise level.

This paper offers a pioneer study on shop stewards in the Chinese workplace through a large sample survey.

This chapter discusses how China’s rapid economic development since the 1970s has involved three different periods of administrative reform, stretching out over seven successive five-year plans. The author focusses on leadership style, specifically, the thinking that is expected from leaders in each period of leadership for development, open leadership and innovative leadership. The author discusses that leadership for these reforms comes from the highest levels, the Communist Party of China (CPC), as articulated by successive secretary generals of the CPC, that the purpose of reform is not only to achieve policy goals but also to uphold CPC leadership in China, and that public managers throughout China are assessed by the party as well as the government. The author also provides an excellent case of reform anti-corruption leadership that shows how the CPC deals with complex and entrenched issues through education and strict implementation, leading to punishment of 1.2 million people, including senior officials. The case shows well senior officials setting the general direction, preserving the role of the CPC, achieving results, learning through practice and innovation, trends towards increasing the rule of law, and the use of audits.

In any time and space and under any circumstance, we find peasants are never passive actors in their livelihoods and rural development. Instead, they always create space for manoeuvre in order to make changes. This chapter analyses the innovative actions taken by the majority of rural inhabitants in rural areas during the overwhelming modernization process, so as to affirm that peasants are the main actors of rural development. It is they who have shaped the transformation of rural societies and the history. Through the analysis, this chapter concludes that rural development is not an objective, a blueprint nor a design. It is not the to-be-developed rear field in modernization. It is not the babysitter for cities, nor a rehearsal place for bureaucrats to testify their random thoughts. Rural development is what peasants do. The path they have chosen reveals scenery so different from modernization. If we regard development as a social change, or a cross with influential meanings, we could understand rural development as peasants’ victories over their predicament. Villages accommodate not only peasants, but without peasants villages would surely vanish. In this sense, the most important part in rural development or rural change is peasants – their conditions and their feelings.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the boundary-spanning behaviors of Party organizations, and the processes and constraints of these behaviors in controlling worker unrest in Chinese resource-based state-owned enterprises in the “new work-unit system” using boundary-spanning theory.

This case study was carried out in a resource-based state-owned enterprise in the “new work-unit system” in China. The research utilized interviews and archival documents, and then coded and analyzed the data using NVivo.

In China, Party organizations’ boundary-spanning behaviors (PBSBs) in labor relations management are identified, and classified into the behaviors of the ambassador, task coordinator, and scout. Worker unrest can be controlled by these behaviors through the mediation effect of the behaviors of agents in the “new work-unit system” but can also be provoked in the transformation of the “new work-unit system.”

The Communist Party plays a key role in labor relations management in China’s SOEs; however, this role has not been explored in any depth. This study builds a model to reveal the “black box” in which the PBSBs influence the agents’ behaviors and how the agents’ behaviors then influence the workers, and in this way control worker unrest.

With multiple-related organizations, worldwide infections, deep economic recession and public disorder, and large consumption amount of anti-epidemic resources, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been defined as a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). Nowadays, Wuhan has recovered from the pandemic disaster and reentered normalization. The purposes of this study are to (1) summarize organization collaboration patterns, successful experience and latent defects under across-stage evolution of Wuhan's cooperation governance mode against the pandemic, and on the basis, (2) reveal how the COVID-19 development trends and organizations' collaborative behaviors affected each other.

Detailed content analysis of online news reports covering COVID-19 prevention and control measures on the website of Wuhan Municipal Government was adopted to identify organizations and their mutual collaborative interrelationships. Four complex network (CN) models of organization collaboration representing the outbreak, preliminary control, recession and normalization stages, respectively, were established then. Time-span-based dynamic parameter analyses of the proposed networks, comprising network cohesiveness analysis and node centrality analysis, were undertaken to indicate changes of global and local characteristics in networks.

First, the definite collaborative status of Wuhan Headquarters for Pandemic Prevention and Control (WHPPC) has persisted throughout the period. Medical institutions and some other administrations were the most crucial participants collaborating with the WHPPC. Construction-industry organizations altered pandemic development trends twice to make the situation controllable. Media, large-scale enterprises, etc. set about underscoring themselves contributions since the third stage. Grassroots cadres and healthcare force, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), financial institutions, etc. were essential collaborated objects. Second, four evolution mechanisms of organization collaboration responding to the COVID-19 in Wuhan has been proposed.

First, universality of Wuhan-style governance experience may be affected. Second, the stage-dividing process may not be the most appropriate. Then, data source was single and link characteristics were not considered when modeling.

This study may offer beneficial action guidelines to governmental agencies, the society force, media, construction-industry organizations and the market in other countries or regions suffering from COVID-19. Other organizations involved could also learn from the concluded organizations' contributions and four evolution mechanisms to find improvement directions.

This study adds to the current theoretical knowledge body by verifying the feasibility and effectiveness of investigating cooperation governance in public emergencies from the perspectives of analyzing the across-stage organization collaboration CNs.

This paper aims to explore the extent to which unionized employees are dissatisfied in Chinese Enterprise Trade Unions (CETUs) when they perceive high levels of the triple-role conflicts, as well as whether rights expectations will moderate these relationships. The authors define CETUs' triple-role conflicts as the extent to which CETUs and their cadres prioritize fulfilling the roles of preserving social stability (“peace”) and/or maintaining the production order (“production”) over protecting worker's rights and interests (“workers” rights).

Pilot study developed the scales via both qualitative and quantitative studies, which include item generation using the transcript of individual interviews with 36 informants, and exploratory factor analyses with 106 respondents. The study used a sample of 327 employees from more than 20 firms in North and Southwest China.

Results indicate high reliability and validity of the scales and provide largely consistent supports for our hypotheses: three dimensions of triple-role conflicts are negatively related to employees' satisfaction in CETUs, and rights expectations moderate these relationships.

This study developed three scales to respectively measure CETUs' triple-role conflicts, rights expectation and satisfaction in CETUs. More importantly, the findings shed light on the moderating mechanism of rights expectation in the relationships between triple-role conflicts and satisfaction in CETUs.