Keith Goodall

The impact of economic reform on the role of trade unions in Chinese enterprises

The movement of the Chinese economy towards a market orientation has been characterized by high levels of foreign direct investment, the diversification of forms of public ownership and the growing economic significance of the private sector as the PRC joins the global economy. These changes have clearly had a significant impact over time on the Chinese labour-force. This study, based on a geographically dispersed sample of sixty-two enterprises, both state-owned and joint venture, examines the effect of these economic reforms on industrial and labour relations, and in particular on the role of trade unions at plant level.

HRM dilemmas in China: the case of foreign-invested enterprises in Shanghai

How can we best understand how people are managed in the new kinds of Western-influenced enterprises currently emerging in the Peoples Republic of China? In this article, we look in depth at 20 Shanghai-based, foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs) in order to analyse their human resource dilemmas as well as related issues facing them in the Chinese market. We have, in this context, examined key HRM (human resource management) problem areas, such as recruitment and compensation, using semi-structured interviews and questionnaires and have used this data to begin to build conceptual models which can be further tested in future investigations. The main conclusions we present are that current discussions around the ‘localization’ of HRM practices often fail to deal adequately with the complexities of the Chinese environment, and that FIE responses to these environmental complexities appear to have been characterized in the literature as far more planned and rational than appears to be the case from our fieldwork. The current investigation also reinforces our previous view that overly neat generalisations about HRM practices in this context are unsustainable. The debate should rather be re-framed to take into account critical differences between individual strands of HR policy and practice.

Expatriate Managers in China: The Influence of Chinese Culture on Cross-Cultural Management:

This article deals with expatriate managers in the Peoples Republic of China and how their experiences are shaped by the cultural environment in which they work. It, therefore, combines an analysis of Chinese culture and its potential impact on business effectiveness with an account of fieldwork carried out with expatriate managers in the Suzhou Industrial Park, south of Shanghai. Using qualitative analysis we focused on six broad issues: culture shock; language barriers; miscommunication with local staff; staff turnover; empowerment and motivation; and teamwork.