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The purpose of this paper is to examine the strategic responses of multinational enterprise (MNE) subsidiaries in China toward a unique institutional characteristic – the structural discrimination against rural migrant workers.

Based on surveys of 181 firms and 669 rural migrant workers, as well as a case study of eight firms in Jiangsu and Shanghai, the authors examined and compared the human resource management (HRM) policies of MNE subsidiaries and domestic Chinese firms toward rural Chinese migrant workers.

This study found that MNE subsidiaries are more likely to accept local discriminatory HRM practices when managing migrant workers. In response to the institutional environments of host countries, MNE subsidiaries tend to share similar behavioral characteristics with local firms and are reluctant to show leadership in initiating institutional change in host countries.

This study is important since it enables investigation of some prevailing assumptions in the literature. Contrary to common wisdom that MNEs are change agents that proactively engage in institutional entrepreneurship in host countries, this study found that MNEs’ responses to the institutional environment of host countries are shaped by their entry modes and the institutional environment in their home countries. MNEs are as diverse as their home countries and far from forming a unified organizational field with similar behavioral characteristics.

In a complex, ever-changing, and turbulent business world, encouraging employees to express their improvement-oriented novel ideas through voice behavior is crucial for organizations to survive and thrive. Understanding how to foster employee promotive voice at work is a significant issue for both researchers and managers. This study explores how to foster employee promotive voice through specific HRM practices and positive employee attitudes. It also examines the effect of employee promotive voice on perceived organizational performance.

This study employed a time-lagged multisource survey design. Data were collected from 215 executives, 790 supervisors, and 1,004 employees in 113 firms, and analyzed utilizing a multilevel moderated serial mediation model.

The findings of this study revealed that promotive voice was significantly related to perceived organizational performance. Innovation-enhancing HRM was positively associated with employee promotive voice. The HRM-voice relationship was partially mediated by employee job satisfaction. Power distance orientation was found to significantly moderate the relationship between innovation-enhancing HRM and employee job satisfaction at the firm level. Our findings showed that innovation-enhancing HRM policies may fail to foster promotive voice if they do not enhance employee job satisfaction.

This study challenges some taken-for-granted assumptions in the literature such as any high performance HRM bundles (e.g. HPWS) can foster employee promotive voice, and the effects of HRM are direct and even unconditional on organizational outcomes. It emphasizes the need to avoid potential unintended effects of HRM on employee voice and the importance of contextualizing voice research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of human resource management (HRM) reforms on job-related well-being of academics in Chinese universities. It also tests the mediating effect of work intensification (WI) and affective commitment (AC), and the moderating effect of perceived organizational justice (OJ) on the HRM‒well-being relationship to understand the influence mechanisms and boundary conditions.

A questionnaire survey was conducted in 25 Chinese universities, obtaining 638 usable questionnaires. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used as the analytical technique to examine the model fit and test hypotheses.

The findings reveal that the relationship of HRM and well-being is neither direct nor unconditional, and a win‒win scenario for both management and employee well-being is possible when organizations pursue HRM innovations.

The limitations of this study are that data were collected at once and at a defined time, with no time lag being involved. In addition, all variables were self-reported.

Commitment-oriented HRM practices can create a win‒win scenario; when control-oriented HRM practices are necessary, managers should ensure OJ to offset their negative influence on employees.

This study is among the first to examine the impact of HRM on employee well-being in the context of Chinese higher education, contributing to the limited studies on HRM in Chinese public sector and the on-going debate on the nature of HRM in China.

Expatriate management is a popular topic in international human resource management (IHRM) because expatriates play a critical role in a firm’s international business operations. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the existing studies that often examine the expatriate management of developed country multinational enterprises (MNEs), aiming to help them identify, employ, prepare and retain expatriates and address challenges these MNEs may face, while how MNEs from emerging countries manage their expatriates is understudied.

The knowledge of expatriate management from emerging market MNEs (EMNEs) may help us understand whether there is anything new for IHRM theory and practice. This conceptual paper aims to address this research gap by selecting China, a leading emerging economy, and reviewing the existing literature in both English and Chinese to examine the status quo of the expatriate management in Chinese MNEs to highlight challenges facing these MNEs in managing their expatriates when conducting outward foreign direct investment (FDI).

This paper aims to make theoretical contributions by generating research propositions to address an under-researched area, i.e., how EMNEs manage their expatriates and the role of their expatriates in the outward FDI.

No other person’s work has been used in the main text of the paper. This paper has not been submitted for the award of any other degree or diploma in this or any other tertiary institution.