591 Hrm Week 7 Hr Metrices Litreture Review
Introduction
This review report was conducted in memory of Professor David Lepak, the late Editor-in-Principal of The International Journal of Human Resource Direction (IJHRM), for the significant contribution he has fabricated in advancing the human resource management (HRM) field through cutting-edge research and research capacity building. Professor David Lepak (Lepak hereafter) and his colleagues accept published a considerable number of influential studies in the HRM field in general and strategic HRM more specifically (see articles marked past ** in the reference list). His research on strategic HRM includes a wide variety of constructs. These include, for instance, HR architecture, employment modes, 60 minutes configuration, human capital, contingent workforce and internal components of HRM systems (e.one thousand. skill-enhancing, motivation-enhancing and opportunity-enhancing components).
In recent years, Lepak and his colleagues were dedicated to unlocking the black box in strategic HRM inquiry, and for that thing, explicating the mediating mechanisms of the Hr systems–organizational functioning relationship. Specifically, Lepak was amongst the first scholars to question the HRM content approach and abet the HRM procedure arroyo, positing that it is employees' attitudes and behaviours, rather than the content of 60 minutes systems, that contribute to desirable organizational performance (Nishii et al., 2008). This enquiry provided new insights into the emerging torso of literature on employees' perceptions of HR systems in the last decade, which has avant-garde the strategic HRM field and extended our understanding of the how and why issues.
Lepak's publications are highly cited in both the international and Chinese HRM community. Compared with the studies conducted in western countries, research in the Chinese context pays closer attending to the contingency perspective by identifying the impact of contextual cues, reflecting, in part, the pragmatic approach in the Chinese civilization. We believe that conducting a review of Lepak and co-authors' contribution to research in Mainland china may provide added value to the strategic HRM field in two main ways. First, Lepak's theoretical frameworks are primarily based on the western context which differs significantly from Communist china in many, if not virtually, dimensions of the context, such as labour regulations, national civilization, and economic and political systems (Su & Wright, 2012). Therefore, a review of studies conducted in Red china can uncover novel mediating mechanisms and boundary weather, which helps refine and expand Lepak'south theories. Second, focusing specifically on Red china can reverberate the rationale for research findings and provide novel theorizing of contextual effects, which is regarded as a 'theories of context' approach to advancing the field (Whetten, 2009). Information technology will as well assist research capacity building in Red china, with relevance to other developing countries striving to enhance their research capacity – something which Lepak has been very passionate about and supported.
Overall, this review written report makes three main contributions. First, this review aims to explore what aspects of, and how, Lepak and colleagues' academic works take contributed to the development of HRM enquiry in the Chinese context. We find that iv of Lepak'southward theories, that is, employee-oriented perspective of HRM, multiple domains of Hr systems, HR architecture, and the universal and contingency perspectives of (strategic) HRM, take made the near influential impact on inquiry conducted in China. 2nd, we explore the extent to which Chinese research has extended the conceptual arguments and analytical frameworks that Lepak and his coauthors take put forward. Nosotros reveal that discovering novel purlieus conditions and mediating mechanisms are the important methods these China-specific studies utilise to accelerate Lepak's theories. Third, given the fact that this review aims for scholars interested in strategic HRM research in full general and in the Chinese context specifically, we also address a number of areas where time to come research efforts may be directed to making strategic HRM enquiry more cogitating of the recent societal context and relevant to do. Indeed, adopting an emerging perspective, the context-driven perspective in this review, is an important avenue for generating theories (Mail et al., 2020). We acknowledge upfront that Lepak's works are intellectual outputs of collective wisdom; by singling out Lepak, our intention is not to underplay the contributions of Lepak's co-authors. Rather, our article aims to exist a tribute to Lepak as the previous Editor-in-Chief of IJHRM, which has been the chief home for studies of HRM in Red china and a source of stimulation to encourage further scholarship in advancing research on strategic HRM in People's republic of china. For the purpose of this study, we ascertain strategic HRM as HRM systems (including strategy, policy and practise) that seek to have an affect on organizational performance (MartÃn-Alcázar et al., 2005; run across also Paauwe & Boon, 2018).
Data collection and analysis
Nosotros focused on English journal articles in this review. Nosotros searched the main databases for relevant articles, including EBSCO, Elsevier, Emerald, JSTOR Arts and Sciences, ProQuest, SAGE, Springer, Taylor & Francis, Spider web of Science and Wiley. The searching period was prepare with an end engagement of December 2018. We used, as the search string, the combined HRM-related terms (e.g. human resource management, HRM, recruitment, selection and staffing, performance direction, talent direction, training, reward, compensation, performance appraisal, international HRM, expatriate management) with China. Nosotros curated a database of over 3000 journal articles on HRM in mainland Mainland china, that is, the data of the studies come from red china. We excluded manufactures on Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, due to the meaning differences of their institutional and business concern environments from those of mainland Prc, which have a strong bearing on HRM policy and exercise.
We then searched this database for articles that refer to 'Lepak' in the main text of the article. This procedure generated over 200 articles; we screened through each of them and identified a final sample of 133 manufactures which have referenced Lepak and his co-authors' works to various extents. The earliest Lepak (co-author) article that we could discover was published in University of Management Journal in 1996, sample articles included in our review report were published between 2001 and 2018 (see Table 1). While our search method may not have captured all the articles, nosotros are confident that the majority of the studies have been included in our review.
Table one. Number of articles referencing Lepak and his co-authors' works by year of publication (Due north =133).
Nosotros adopted a manual content analysis arroyo and qualitative coding method to analyse the selected journal articles for the review study (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Selecting central phrases or cursory sentences to sort the information into unlike categories is in line with what Miles and Huberman (1994, p. 57) phone call the use of 'descriptive codes'. Ane of the authors did the first screen and information coding under the agreed inclusion–exclusion guideline. An excel sheet was used to record the data, including, for example, authors' names, yr of publication of the article, periodical title, theories/models used, commendation of Lepak's works, research methods, sample size, sources of data drove, key findings, and our observations and preliminary analysis. This was then double checked by another author. Differences in the screening and coding between these 2 authors were brought to the lead author for review and decision. This double coding approach enhances the reliability and consistency of the data processing and interpretation of the qualitative data (Miles & Huberman, 1994). We excluded those manufactures which just referenced Lepak et al.'southward work briefly without using information technology to inform their study or argument. For example, nosotros excluded papers that only made quick references of Lepak et al.'s piece of work without citing their theories or models, particularly when these references are listed alongside several others. We acknowledge that this qualitative approach contains a level of subjectiveness, though we were quite generous when applying the exclusion criteria and included every bit many articles equally we could in our final sample.
Principal findings
As Table 1 shows, Lepak and his co-authors' works are being used by an increasing number of studies since the mid-2000s, with articles published in 2018 making upwardly over 25% of the sample articles.
The main publication outlets for articles citing Lepak'south piece of work are journals in the HRM field. As demonstrated in Table 2, The International Journal of Human Resource Management (IJHRM) (35 articles, 26.3%) has published the most sample articles past far, followed by Human Resources Management (15 articles, 11.3%), Asia Pacific Periodical of Homo Resources (half dozen articles, four.5%) and Personal Review (five articles, iii.viii%). This pattern is in line with the fact that IJHRM has published the well-nigh articles on HRM in the Chinese context, compared with other journals. Though our sample manufactures are centralized in HRM-specific journals, a number of articles made their way into full general management journals, such every bit Periodical of Management (4 articles, 3%), Asia Pacific Periodical of Direction (three articles, 2.three%), Frontiers of Business Research in China (three articles, two.three%) and Management and Organization Review (three articles, two.3%). Yet, the number of articles published in superlative-ranked management journals, such equally Academy of Management Journal (ii articles, 1.5%) and University of Management Review (0 articles), remains relatively small. Information technology is too worth noting that a scattering of manufactures appeared in journals in the organizational psychology domain, such as Journal of Practical Psychology (two articles, 1.5%) and Personnel Psychology (two articles, 1.5%). Overall, our sample manufactures are widely distributed across the fields (come across reference listing).
Table 2. Top 12 academic journals that have published most of the sample articles (N =133).
Equally Table 3 indicates, amid the 133 manufactures, fifteen are review/conceptual articles and the remainder of the 118 are empirical studies. None of the review papers used a meta-analysis approach to explore their research questions. Instead, all of the review papers in the sample adopted a qualitative approach. For the empirical studies, quantitative methods are the dominant approach (100 out of 118 studies, approx. 85%), whereas the other ii types of methods – mixed and qualitative methods – are adopted far less. Ii-thirds of the empirical studies are designed for a single level. Specifically, although an increasing number of studies adopt the private perspective to explore the mechanism by which strategic HRM affects workplace outcomes, enquiry on the organizational level is nevertheless dominant. Notably, the unit/team level has gained the least attention in extant studies. Given that team and unit found an important base for stimulating creativity and innovation at individual, squad and organizational levels (e.g. Gong et al., 2013a; Song et al., 2020), this is an area that more research attending can exist directed to. We can too observe that about ane-3rd of the empirical studies heeded Lepak's telephone call for more multi-level studies in the field of HRM (Lepak et al., 2007). In fact, Lepak and his colleagues argued that employees could respond differently to the same HR practices implemented by the management. That is, idiosyncratic employees' perceptions of Hour practices (an individual-level construct) are associated with individual attitudes and behaviours, which, in the aggregate, will exert impacts on unit-level behaviours and outcomes (Nishii et al., 2008). In this regard, Lepak's phone call for the adoption of cantankerous-level research design is highly relevant to his contribution to the employee-oriented perspective of (strategic) HRM. In addition, the majority of empirical studies collected data at a unmarried fourth dimension signal, although at that place is an emerging trend for empirical studies that use multi-wave surveys for data drove.
Table iii. Number of manufactures by research design and methodology (N =133).a
The bulk of authors of our sample articles are Chinese. This is perhaps non surprising as Chinese scholars may be more than familiar with the Chinese context and have easier accessibility for data collection in China. As illustrated in Table four, among the 11 top-ranked authors based on the number of articles published, 7 are Chinese scholars, four currently affiliated to institutions in Mainland Red china and Hong Kong and three in overseas institutions. In addition, the four not-Chinese-origin scholars who are amongst the peak xi authors have co-published with Chinese scholars.
Tabular array iv. Top eleven authors based on the number of their articles.
How has Lepak and colleagues' piece of work influenced research on strategic HRM in China?
In this sub-department, we provide further analysis to highlight achievements and research gaps. Due to space constraints, we but select a few key areas where Lepak and colleagues' works have made the most contribution in guiding strategic HRM research in the Chinese setting, although more detailed summaries are included in Table 5.
Table 5. Lepak and co-authors' inquiry topics most often cited by the sample manufactures.a
Citation analysis has been oftentimes used to identify the influence of manufactures (due east.one thousand. Luo & Zhang, 2016). Following the previous citation assay research, we identified Lepak'due south well-nigh influential articles based on the number of citations by our sample. Nosotros and so categorized Lepak's articles by topics based on their main theories or arguments. As shown in Table 5, there are eight articles related to the employee-oriented perspective of HRM. It is the most influential topic because of its highest commendation number (138 citations). We tin too observe that the topics on multiple domains of Hour systems (66 citations), 60 minutes compages (62 citations), and the universal and contingency perspectives of (strategic) HRM (54 citations) are widely cited by our sample articles. Hence, we can draw a decision that these four topics are the most important contributions, or influence, that Lepak has made to the strategic HRM scholarship in China. In this sub-section: (1) we summarize these topics in a chronological sequence; (2) discuss why they are favoured in China; (3) evaluate how far People's republic of china-based research has congenital on and extended Lepak and colleagues' works and (iv) outline a number of unique contributions that China-based research has fabricated to the strategic HRM field in general.
Universal and contingency perspectives of (strategic) HRM
In their seminal study published in University of Direction Journal, Youndt et al. (1996) cogently argued that two alternative perspectives (universal versus contingency) are not necessarily contradictory. On the ane hand, they lent support to the universal perspective, which proposed a direct relationship between HR systems and firm performance. On the other paw, they revealed the moderating effects of business strategies (eastward.g. cost, quality and flexibility strategies) on the link between HRM and performance, supporting the contingency perspective.
Their findings are vigorously echoed by Communist china-based literature (see Tables 4–7), at least in part because the contingency perspective tin provide a fertile ground on which to assess the generalizability of the conventional HRM-performance framework based on the western setting. At a deeper level, the contingency approach and the 60 minutes architecture approach (see below) that provide differential 60 minutes interventions co-ordinate to different employment modes are particularly well-tuned to the Chinese culture (pragmatism) and labour marketplace atmospheric condition (a large proportion of not-standard employment to lower labour costs in the pursuit of economic growth). Indeed, at that place is a notable tendency in the strategic HRM in China studies to treat China every bit a specific example country, and, in the meantime, discover the e'er-expanding People's republic of china-specific mediating variables or boundary atmospheric condition which may alter or expand Youndt et al.'south (1996) initial theory. These contextual factors accept been framed beyond unlike levels.
At the organizational level, it is well-documented that specific business strategies and house characteristics, in terms of, for case, innovation strategy (Zhang & Li, 2009), organizational civilisation (Chow & Liu, 2009) and autonomy in staffing and market orientation (Wei & Lau, 2008), are expected to exert a subtle and powerful influence on HRM implementation in Chinese firms.
In comparison, the broader societal and cultural context inside which the Chinese firms are operating remains less explored. This problem may originate, in no pocket-size measure, from the dearth of anterior qualitative studies to tease out the multitudes of contextual cues in the Chinese setting. One of the exceptions is Zhang and Albrecht's (2010) comparative case written report, which examined the cultural differences between the ii Spanish subsidiaries located in China. They demonstrated that cultural differences could influence the organisation'southward strategic HRM development, and ultimately, the overall performance. Their report is of import given the fact that western-oriented HR systems should be modified to be matched with the specific contextual environment in China (Grub et al., 2008).
HR architecture
Lepak and Snell's (1999) early work on HR architecture is some other influential component of the theoretical foundation, sowing the seeds for research on employment modes as office of the strategic HRM. The underlying logic of the 60 minutes architecture framework is the proposition that not all employees possess noesis and capabilities that are as valuable to a item organization (Lepak & Snell, 1999). As such, an system needs to adopt distinct employment modes (i.e. internal development, acquisition, contracting and alliance) for unlike groups of employees in gild to increase its competitive advantage (Lepak & Snell, 2002).
HR compages theory is gaining traction among Chinese scholars, as it provides practical implications for the labour market transition in contemporary China (due east.g. Zhou et al., 2012b). Several studies on China advance Lepak and Snell's (1999) theory past taking into consideration the external labour market conditions. Lepak and Snell (1999) originally presumed that qualified human uppercase tin be available in the open up labour marketplace. This presumption, nonetheless, is not valid at all time points and beyond labour markets. Li and Sheldon (2010), for example, documented that there are chronic shortages of skilled employees in Mainland china considering of labour market place pressures and the inadequacy of vocational instruction and training systems. In this regard, organizations resort to use internal training programs to develop qualified employees, rather than adopting the externalization approach as Lepak and Snell (1999) suggested. In other words, the adoption of employment modes should not only exist based on the strategic values of the employees inside an organization, but also the external labour market place situation. Indeed, the Chinese labour market is now highly fluid and flexible, with labour shortages across both the skilled and semi-skilled spectra. This makes the proposal, adult in the tardily 1990s, of differentiating the workforce into core-peripheral (skill–semi-skilled) segments and applying differential 60 minutes practices to them to remain cost-competitive, hard to implement.
At that place are plenty more research opportunities to extend and revise the HR architecture thesis. For instance, as the Chinese economy is shifting towards a knowledge-based economic system underpinned by innovation, as aspired to by the regime (Fu et al., 2020), how are firms responding to this strategy? How do they acquire their strategic HR capability in low-cal of the practice of poaching (Cooke et al., 2014)? How have internal development programs been provided, if at all, to heighten employees' power, knowledge and motivation? Which external and internal factors can shape employers' decisions on innovation-driven employment modes? Tin can the internal employment manner yield the all-time innovation operation from employees? What may exist the alternatives? We will return to these questions in the side by side section.
Employee-oriented perspective of strategic HRM research
As indicated in Table five, another key strand of influence of Lepak and colleagues' research into strategic HRM in Prc is their employee-oriented perspective, through the lenses of HR attributions (Nishii et al., 2008), employee-related mediating mechanisms of HPWS-performance (Takeuchi et al., 2007) and distinctions between the managers' and employees' views of HPWS (Liao et al., 2009). These studies reverberate Lepak'south broader interest in the employee-oriented perspective of strategic HRM, which has two related implications in the Chinese setting.
Offset, as discussed in a higher place, employee-related variables (i.e. employee attitudes and behaviours) play an important mediating role in the link between HRM and organizational functioning. Following Lepak and colleagues' works, a growing number of studies on Communist china cast low-cal on an expanding set of mediators, including employee relations climate (Ali et al., 2018), organization-based self-esteem (Zhang et al., 2018) and collective melancholia commitment (Gong et al., 2010). The major contribution of this body of enquiry, as the authors claimed, is to conduct a cross-cultural comparison of western-oriented mediating mechanisms in a different cultural setting. Withal, contextual implications in these studies are only discussed in a cursory way, such that China-specific employee-related mediators take non been fully understood. In order to identify how and why employee-related mediating mechanisms may vary across contexts, nosotros need to consider a bundle of key facets of context (Johns, 2006). These include, to listing a few examples of questions:
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Who are the respondents studied in the enquiry (e.g. private demographics, People's republic of china-specific personal characteristics: power distance, Chinese traditionality and cultural values)?
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Where is the report conducted (e.thou. rural or urban areas; northern or southern regions; land-owned or private-endemic enterprises; manufacturing or services industry)?
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When does the inquiry occur (due east.g. during or afterwards working hours; before or after important Chinese holidays; before or after financial incentives)?
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Why are the information collected in such a manner (east.g. qualitative or quantitative methods; cross-sectional or longitudinal; purpose or rationale of the study, data collection and assay)?
2nd, Lepak and colleagues recently paid special attention to the variability in employees' perceptions of Hr practices. As Lepak and his colleagues observed, due to the divergent organizational contexts and individual characteristics, employees exposed to the aforementioned HR practices tend to develop their perceptions of these practices in different ways (Jiang et al., 2017; Meijerink et al., 2016). Over again, subsequent research repeated Lepak and colleagues' works in the Chinese context with the intention of assessing the generalizability of existing theories (east.thousand. Shen et al., 2018). Their strategy is reasonable in the sense that replicates studies on the well-established theoretical underpinning may be an easier and safer road to move the field forrad than pioneering research aimed at a substantial quantum. All the same, there remains plenty of scope for future research on Mainland china to produce new theoretical insights. To advance our knowledge of the employee-oriented perspective of strategic HRM, researchers may broaden their research questions, prefer multi-level methodologies and constitute context-driven theories. Li et al.'south (2011) study provides a adept example. Li et al. (2011) framed their hypotheses across diverse domains (e.g. perceived Hr system features, organizational climate and employee attitudes) rather than a single specific area. Using multi-level methods and theoretical frameworks, they showed that organizational climate strength, as a unit-level construct, could augment the positive link betwixt consensus and job satisfaction, and the negative association between consensus and employees' turnover intentions. This cantankerous-level enquiry is valuable because information technology opens up an avenue for researchers to identify the potential and dynamic interactions between individuals, units, organizations and external contexts.
Multi-dimensional nature of HR systems
Since its publication, Jiang et al.'s (2012) study of three dimensions of an HR arrangement, as well described every bit Hr sub-systems (eastward.g. skill-enhancing, motivation-enhancing and opportunity-enhancing), has gathered potent momentum in Mainland china (34 citations, encounter Tabular array v). It is not surprising, considering that this written report uncovered the multi-dimensional nature of HR systems, which were conceptually and empirically under-researched. Prior work considered HR systems as a uniform construct and assumed that HR systems could exert an identical bear upon on individual and organizational outcomes. Lepak and colleagues challenged this presumption by revealing that different Hour sub-systems may influence performance in a heterogeneous style (Jiang et al., 2012).
Subsequent research on Prc has made two main contributions to extending the knowledge of 60 minutes sub-systems. First, a large number of studies went beyond these three sub-systems and identified many other 60 minutes sub-systems. HR sub-systems differ from the general HR arrangement every bit they promote the interests of diverse stakeholders beyond employers (Shen & Benson, 2016). For example, the power-enhancing HR systems (Tian et al., 2016) and human uppercase-enhancing Hr systems (Li et al., 2015) provide managerial support to address employees' interests, whereas socially responsible 60 minutes systems (Shen & Benson, 2016) aim to satisfy the needs of external stakeholders.
Second, responding to Jiang et al.'south (2012) call for investigating the potential interactions amid divergent Hour systems, a few studies on Cathay accept recognized that dissimilar dimensions of HR systems may not operate in silos. Liu et al. (2017), for case, plant that maintenance-oriented Hour systems would moderate the positive association between performance-oriented Hour systems and employee domain-relevant skills in the private-owned enterprises more than in state-owned enterprises. This research suggests that the impacts of 60 minutes systems on both individual and organizational outcomes vary significantly and depend on the organizational context (e.m. firm ownership).
Overall, studies of strategic HRM in People's republic of china take relied heavily on sophisticated quantitative methods, and applied well-crafted western theoretical propositions in the Chinese context to refine and extend Lepak and colleagues' initial works. Despite the considerable progress that China studies have made in contextualizing Lepak and colleagues' initial framework, the way in which context is captured appears to be relatively stylized. The Chinese context, mentioned in extant studies, mainly informs the inquiry background (east.grand. region, ownership type and industry), rather than reflecting the rationale for research interpretation (e.g. hypothesis evolution, data analysis and research contribution) (Johns, 2006). This 'theories in context' approach is of bang-up value to empirical establishment of contextual effects. However, a 'theories of context' approach in considering 'context equally a source for novel theorizing' is as well important to advance the field (Whetten, 2009, p. 29).
As Jackson and Schuler (1995) suggested, HRM needs to be captured based on the internal (i.e. organizational size, corporate structure and business concern strategy) and external contexts (i.e. merchandise union, labour regulations, national culture, and economic and political systems) where enterprises are operating (see also Jackson et al., 2014). Based on Jackson and Schuler'southward (1995) context-driven framework, Cathay's direction context can differ significantly from its foreign counterparts in diverse ways (Su & Wright, 2012). For instance, the enforcement of labour legislation in China is weaker than that in the western nations in that Chinese trade unions are straight responsible for the governmental agencies rather than front-line employees (Friedman & Lee, 2010). Furthermore, the Chinese culture is characterized as loftier ability distance and traditionality, hence employees are more inclined to show obedience to managers and the hierarchical structure (Chen & Aryee, 2007). As such, high-involvement piece of work systems and self-managed teams may not exist suitable in China. In addition, due to the on-going market transformation, Chinese firms are more likely to adopt the cost-reduction business strategy, undermining the use of delivery-oriented HR systems as their western counterparts may practise (Su & Wright, 2012). Mainland china, therefore, provides a novel and dynamic inquiry site where researchers can build domicile-grown theories and make a substantial quantum. We suggest that future inquiry should extend Lepak and colleagues' contributions in various ways, including field of study matters and enquiry approach. We elaborate this further in the next section.
Word: Towards a more than ethnic arroyo to strategic HRM inquiry
Inquiry on strategic HRM in Red china has made significant progress over the final decade or and then in terms of quantity and quality (measured past the number of publications in the top English journals). All the same, the majority of this body of research is quantitative snapshots, with superficial, if any, date with the context within which the data were collected. Some authors even acknowledged apologetically that the collection of the data in People's republic of china limited generalization. The main reasons for the relentless pursuit of a 'scientific' arroyo to strategic HRM research have been pointed out by a number of influential scholars (Kaufman, 2015; Wright et al., 2015; encounter Jewell et al., 2020, for a critique and illustration of how practice-oriented strategic HRM research may exist designed and conducted). For Red china, the Chinese authorities's potent desire to build a 'double kickoff grade' (first course universities and start course disciplines) has meant that HRM researchers are eager to get into acme concern and management journals and equally rapidly every bit possible, for the purpose of performance assessment and reward.
As the top concern and management journals have increasingly emphasized the need for sophisticated research pattern and statistical rigour in data assay in theoretical contributions, Chinese researchers have shifted their attending to these important and universal criteria at the expense of developing rich and in-depth understandings to capture and conceptualize the HRM phenomena exhibited in practice. Research design has also oftentimes been premised on a set of artificial hypotheses of item types of organizational settings and framed with adapted western models. While these studies accept contributed to extending strategic HRM cognition and enabled Chinese researchers to gradually integrate into HRM scholarship internationally, they take achieved much less in revealing the opportunities and challenges faced by organizations and employment practices/HR interventions they have adopted to sustain their operation. This is considering much of the strategic HRM discourse stems from western and predominantly US perspectives.
There is nothing wrong with adopting a United states of america-oriented perspective to studying HRM issues in the Chinese context, but such an orientation has led authors to opt for theories and discipline matters that are familiar to, and more likely to be accustomed past, western journals. It also undermines the prospect of developing a exercise-based HRM system and theorization informed past the Chinese political system, historical tradition and cultural values. While, arguably, the theorization of HRM practices may exist a universal intellectual procedure that transcends national boundaries, and such a process may yield universal outcomes, without exploring HRM practices in China as a starting indicate of conceptualization, nosotros practise non know if in that location are specific Chinese HRM theories or theoretical paradigms.
How should inquiry on strategic HRM in Red china motion forwards? What may be some of the Red china-specific subject area matters that are worth investigating? We address these ii related questions in the next ii sub-sections.
Inquiry on strategic HRM in Cathay needs more local orientation
Over the concluding three decades, HRM every bit a discipline and research field has emerged in China, and Chinese researchers have benefited enormously from learning from and collaborating with western scholars. Many western developed HRM concepts and practices have as well been promoted and adopted in Chinese firms in diverse ways. This development has laid the necessary foundations to connect inquiry dialogues between the Chinese researchers and the HRM research community in the globe. It has also facilitated the rest of the world to develop an appreciation of what is going on in Mainland china. Nevertheless, how should research on HRM in People's republic of china motility forrad vis-Ã -vis an increasingly salient trend of psychologization and decontextualization of HRM research (Cooke, 2018; Kaufman, 2015, 2020)? This is a question that requires serious consideration and debate among the HRM research community in China. Information technology concerns the futurity direction of HRM research and enquiry chapters building. Information technology also involves how Chinese HRM researchers can absorb western theories and belittling techniques and utilize intellectual wisdom, skills and tools to develop Chinese HRM inquiry that reflects its reality, and feel less compelled to use the latter as subject area matter to serve the needs of the old.
Strategic HRM, and HRM more than generally, is a direction do underpinned past potent cultural, historical, time-specific and regional characteristics, and requires deep-level and longitudinal investigations. Quantitative research collects relatively superficial and standardized information based on specific questions that do not shed lite on the various backgrounds of organizations and the rapid and profound changes that many firms are undergoing. An urgent chore for HRM enquiry in Mainland china is, therefore, to develop more in-depth qualitative research through well-designed research questions and rigorous data assay, but without truncating the data into 'scientific' cubes that return the story line broken in the pursuit of 'scientifically rigorous' analysis. This means less research that, as the Chinese say, 'cuts the pes to suit the shoe', that is, cherry picking certain HRM practices and framing them in western theories that may be more than appealing to the (western or western trained) journal editors and reviewers, in order to brand the research published (in top journals). Hither, the principal objective of HRM enquiry should be about establishing a comprehensive and holistic understanding of HRM systems in Communist china, and developing constructive dialogues with communities of researchers and practitioners in other parts of the world, in order to contribute to HRM noesis accumulation and theory building. The value of HRM in Red china research is to bring to the world what is unique, as well equally what is similar to, and converging with, the rest of the world. This requires researchers to examine existing HRM practices as a starting indicate of research.
In that location are several reasons why we need to prefer a practice-focused approach to researching HRM. First, certain western-developed HRM practices and HRM concepts promoted past researchers and consultants may exist underpinned by particular political ideologies and assumptions that may not have taken ground in the Chinese setting. For example, the promotion of diverseness direction and inclusion is premised on the political ideology of individual rights, social justice and equal sharing of opportunities, ability and outcomes. It calls for political pluralism, cultural pluralism, and promotes the notion of multiculturalism every bit i of the defining features of republic. Why has multifariousness management attracted then lilliputian interest in Red china as a topic for strategic HRM research and practice, compared with leadership? As a matter of fact, a search of journal databases shows that diversity direction has featured far less in strategic HRM research than leadership in general, not but in Communist china. That said, Liu et al.'s (2003) contingency perspective that links strategic HRM and leadership by matching leadership styles with employment modes has so far attracted little research that tells us if their typology is suitable in the Chinese setting. Second, the same concept may invoke very different meanings in unlike societal environments and labour marketplace arrangements. For instance, as Nishii et al. (2008) observed, employees in the western countries are unlikely to attribute meaningful explanations to managerial efforts to comply with the external union requirements (described as external HR attributions) because managers are interpreted equally passive recipients of external requirements. However, in the Chinese context where workplace exploitation is not unusual and the enforcement of labour laws is relatively weak (Friedman & Lee, 2010), management's concern to respond to external regulations may be perceived as a positive and meaningful point which demonstrates that managers are actively engaged in protecting employee well-existence. In addition, the notion of work-life balance in China largely means how to reduce piece of work intensification, especially against an endemic practice of 996 (a piece of work pattern of 9 am–nine pm sixdays per week) for many. Tertiary, Hr practices, challenges and solutions that exist in China may be unheard of in other parts of the world, but may be of relevance, for example, in helping multinational firms to exist prepared for what they may see in China. Su and Wright (2012), for example, suggested that the loftier-performance work system in China could differ from its western counterparts considering of China'south singled-out institutional trajectories. Specifically, China-based HRM system is characterized as a 'hybrid system' combining both delivery- and control-oriented 60 minutes systems, which may exert more significant positive impacts on organizational performance than western-based high-delivery HR systems (Su & Wright, 2012). This research tin theoretically extend Lepak and his co-authors' inquiry on variations of 60 minutes systems (Lepak & Snell, 2002), as it develops a context-specific measure out of high-performance work system (i.eastward. employee discipline direction), which is highly relevant to multinational firms operating in People's republic of china.
What nosotros are highlighting or critiquing here is not so much about the search for and claim of universal HRM practices and effects. Rather, nosotros draw attending to a more subtle form of universalism; that is, ideologies and preferences that have been driving HRM research in certain directions, in terms of theoretical mobilization, selection of subject matter (HRM phenomena) and the style findings are interpreted. Only past realizing this reality can we and then contemplate how this tendency may exist rebalanced through more informative and relevant enquiry to develop a more rounded and expanded understanding of Chinese HRM practices and experiences, their inherent nature, and theoretical and applied implications. This does non imply China exceptionalism, rather, it calls for more academic infinite for stories from China, and indeed, infinite for stories from other countries that remain less heard, through well designed and executed research. As Post et al. (2020) advise, an important approach to advancing theories is adopting an emerging perspective. In the side by side section, we take the context-driven perspective to focus on the recent societal contexts and novel China-specific Hour practices. In addition, based on Pisani et al.'s (2017) 'antecedents-phenomena-consequences' framework, nosotros draw together an integrated framework for strategic HRM research which summarizes existing developments and time to come avenues (encounter Figure i).
Extending the frontier of research on (strategic) human resource management in Communist china: a review of David Lepak and colleagues' influence and future research management
Published online:
25 August 2020
Figure ane. An integrative framework of strategic HRM inquiry in China. Annotation: KSAs= noesis, skills and abilities; KASOs= noesis, abilities, skills and other individual characteristics.
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Evolving business environment, challenges faced by organizations and research opportunities
China is experiencing some major changes as a result of government initiatives, technological development and public health events. These incidents and developments are happening at the national, some even at the international level, with profound implications for strategic HRM. What may exist some of the Communist china-specific subject matters that are fruitful to investigate? Tabular array 6 provides a ready of examples of research topics, inquiry questions and empirical/practical considerations for time to come enquiry. These are by no ways exhaustive and some of them accept overlapped HRM implications, and ALL of them have implications for theorization.
Table vi. Examples of directions for time to come research related to strategic HRM in the Chinese context.
Organizational design and strategic capability in a customer-oriented era
With the rise of business contest aided by due east-commerce and the Cyberspace of things, customers now have many more choices in sourcing their goods and services. They accept also become more demanding and individualistic in their consumption. This requires firms to respond to irresolute customer behaviours and organize their business concern functions and services appropriately. Leading firms in China accept been at the forefront in developing new initiatives to marshal their business and HR strategy more closely with users' needs. This contingency perspective echoed Lepak and co-authors' work on the role of business strategy on the HRM–operation relationship (Youndt et al., 1996). Haier, a world leading white goods manufacturing business firm, offers some skilful examples of initiatives, including its Rendanheyi (matching employee with the customer order) and Haier Smart Home initiatives (http://world wide web.haier.net/en/). These initiatives, powered by fast and novel applications of the latest technology, require employees to be highly creative, innovative and responsive to user needs. To facilitate this concern model, Haier has dismantled its traditional management structure and reorganized some of the workforce into small de facto self-employed teams who are responsible for their ain market, finance, technology and business organisation solutions. Such a cost- and agility-oriented business strategy has far-reaching organizational implications which may only become evident a few years downwardly the line. Past dissimilarity, Huawei, the leading 5G applied science company, seems to prefer a different business model and HR strategy, with growing success and organizational resilience. Future research may prefer Lepak and colleagues' contingency perspective of strategic HRM (Youndt et al., 1996) to accost the following questions. What may exist the primal success factors? What may be the central challenges, and how do they overcome these? To what extent does Huawei'south functioning management system that is linked to its heavy financial incentives contribute to Huawei's R&D performance? These and other business initiatives/models underpinned past like business organization philosophy, in the pursuit of lower cost, faster customer response and more efficient use of human capital, warrant in-depth and longitudinal studies.
Digitalization and employee-centred strategic HRM
Digital technology and its applications have been developing rapidly in China in the last few years. Large engineering-based firms such as Tencent has been at the cutting edge in harnessing the benefits offered by HR analytics to map Hour statistics in order to refine their HR policy and exercise more strategically and finer to back up their business. Due to the nature of the business, the bulk of the employees in the ICT manufacture are academy graduates in their 20s and early 30s, that is, the post-eighty and mail-90 generation. They are the employees who create the nearly value (eastward.one thousand. new product development, customer retention and profit) for the visitor. For many employees, 996 working mode, as mentioned earlier, is common. At the same time, these young employees take their specific needs and personality characteristics. For example, many managers interviewed by the lead authors take disclosed that mail service-lxxx employees are more than willing to accept the three-loftier management fashion: high pressure, high performance and loftier returns/rewards. In comparison, equally the only child in the family, the post-90 generation tends to be more individualistic and self-centred compared with their older counterparts; they desire beloved, pursue the quality of life, seek stimulation in their work and defy authority. HR practitioners may demand to contemplate Lepak and his colleagues' employee-oriented perspective of HRM (Liao et al., 2009; Takeuchi et al., 2007) in order to develop a more than fine-grained agreement of the part of employees in enhancing organizational performance. In doing so, the following research questions may be explored: how sustainable is the three-high management culture in motivating employees to achieve high performance in the ICT and other industries operating with similar management styles? When will the positive furnishings tail off, and what may be the negative effects? How can digital technology be used to capture (real time) Hour data in gild to develop Hour interventions tailored to employees according to their life-cycle stages at the company? What leadership styles are needed, and how may the generational gap create challenges to organizational leaders?
Extant research shows that the positive outcome of certain HR systems is contingent on employees' own attributes, such equally adaptability and competency, and non just on the design and implementation of Hr systems (e.g. Esch et al., 2018; Wei & Lau, 2010). Skill shortage, and the need to retain and motivate high value post-90 generation employees requires firms to rethink how they can design and evangelize their Hour services finer. Hither, Meijerink et al.'southward (2016) suggestion is highly relevant: that employees can be regarded every bit active 'consumers' of Hour services because their ain characteristics may influence their perceptions of Hour services, rather than beingness passively influenced past ecology factors such as coworkers' or managers' perceptions of HR (Jiang et al., 2017). So far, few studies take adopted the notion of employees as 'customers' and investigated how to improve their satisfaction and performance.
Chugalug and Road Initiative
The 'One Belt, One Road' Initiative (BRI) was launched by the Chinese authorities in 2013, in an attempt to enhance connectivity and cooperation amid the continents of Eurasia, Africa and Oceania, and to stimulate production demands and employment in China through international collaborative projects nether the BRI umbrella. Following the agile promotion of BRI, an increasing number of Chinese multinational enterprises (CMNEs) are actively engaging in various infrastructure and facilities projects (due east.g. mining and energy systems, railways and roads, and telecommunications) in host countries (Chinese Government Website, 2015). BRI projects are expected to increment CMNEs' demands for hiring local employees, in item, temporary and contingent employees. According to Lepak and Snell's (1999) HR architecture framework, HR managers tend to establish the compliance-based employment mode to ensure temporary employees' compliance with the terms of the contract. An important question, however, remains to be explored at the local level: what kind of regulations or rules should the contract comply with?
In less developed countries where informal ties (e.g. family unit and kinship ties) are powerful, CMNEs may need to work with a wide range of stakeholders, including not only the formal actors (i.e. government, trade unions and media), just also the informal institutional actors (i.due east. local communities) in recruiting and managing their local workforce (eastward.yard. Cooke et al., 2018). In this situation, we conceptualize that employment practices may need to adjust not but to the formal rules established past the host countries, but also to be consistent with the breezy and local customs and practice, which may be diff, or even contradictory. Adopting these rules and norms may bailiwick CMNEs to scrutiny and criticism. How may CMNEs balance the tensions inherent in these rules on the one hand, and the need to adhere to their corporate social responsibility and legal and ethical compliance on the other? How tin can CMNEs maintain long-term and cordial relationships with temporary employees equally well as the local communities in order to receive their sustainable back up? In other words, the establishment of Hour architecture may be subject to not only internal stakeholders (e.thousand. employees and employers), but as well a broad range of external stakeholders (due east.g. governmental agencies, local communities and unions). We, therefore, propose that hereafter inquiry should concord a multi-stakeholder perspective to extend the Hour compages framework originally proposed by Lepak and Snell (1999).
More broadly and fundamentally, what strategic adequacy do CMNEs need to develop in managing their international operations, with strategic HRM as an integral part? How do CMNEs codify and implement their HRM strategy, policy and practice to rest the needs and interests of multiple stakeholders to maintain efficiency and fairness? What are the roles of the external institutional actors, non least the governments at various levels, in facilitating and/or restricting CMNEs to fulfill their strategic intents? What theoretical perspectives, such as meta-governance theory to capture the working of multiple stakeholders, can be mobilized to inform investigations in these areas?
COVID-19 and organizational sustainability
The COVID-nineteen coronavirus outbreak in Cathay at the end of 2019, which has led to the restriction of travel and extended Chinese New year holiday for 1 month, has led to mass laying-off of staff in many (pocket-sized) companies due to the lack of businesses (e.thou. hotel and catering) on the one hand, and the surge of demands in other businesses (e.yard. on-line shopping, courier and takeaway delivery) which have become heavily understaffed, on the other. Some leading companies such as JD (the largest Chinese (on-line) retail house and a Fortune Global 500 company), took the initiative to source employees urgently from the hotel and catering industry and chop-chop turned them into couriers. This practice reduces the pressure level for the employers in the hotel and catering manufacture to proceed to pay for the social security to the employees on their books while the business concern is in temporary closure, and avoids laying off the employees, while enabling the latter to accept a temporary task and income in the interim menstruation.
This kind of cantankerous-manufacture temporary hiring creates a new 'sharing employee' model of labour deployment strategy. While office-time work across different employers in dissimilar industries is non a new practice, what is new in this circumstance is the role of the employers in organizing such a course of flexible employment collectively, and the potential momentum this may create among employers beyond very different industries to consider their HR strategy and practices in a more artistic and collaborative manner and so as to overcome hard times together. It signals the emergence of a new management mindset and sense of social responsibility. It demonstrates the possibility of flexibly combining 60 minutes sub-systems (Jiang et al., 2012) across industries. It prompts businesses to consider contingency plans more than innovatively in adversarial times. Incidents like COVID-nineteen trigger businesses to consider their 60 minutes strategy, especially means to increase flexibility in labour supply, such every bit sharing staff and home-working. They also force firms to seek alternatives to become less dependent on humans by, for example, investing in AI and robots. Further, fatal national disasters such as COVID-19 require firms to develop employee back up systems, including resilience-building practices and spiritual intendance provisions to help employees navigate through difficult times. Lepak and colleagues' research on Hr sub-systems (Jiang et al., 2012) can inspire management to balance the interests of both employees and employers. For example, managers are advised to implement well-beingness-oriented HR sub-systems with the purpose of promoting employee well-being while adopting performance-oriented Hour sub-systems in lodge to go through the hard state of affairs. This may exist challenging for many employers in People's republic of china, due to the under-development in this expanse.
The higher up examples of developments in businesses advise that strategic HRM in practice is more complicated than identifying/narrowing downward a fix of HRM practices and testing them in the HRM practices → employee perception → private outcomes → HR outcomes → organizational outcomes chain, with increasingly novel mediation, moderation and associated interactions beyond levels.
While these studies are important in extending our conceptual knowledge, we also demand other empirical investigations to capture the added value for the strategic HRM domain. As Figure 1 indicates, in terms of contextual cues, the following examples of questions may exist explored: how to capture the evolving but less researched contexts, such as the COVID-19 crunch, the 'One Belt, One Route' Initiative, and the US–China merchandise state of war? How practice these emerging contexts shape the processes through which businesses are operating? What the business motivations are for adopting certain strategic HRM practices? What implications there may be in the long term for strategic HRM, non just at the house level, but at the industry and national level? In terms of HRM phenomena, what are the novel HR sub-systems across the traditional HR architecture framework which are implemented to respond to the electric current difficult times? Are these sub-systems contradictory or complementary? How can firms align the divergent 60 minutes sub-systems more closely with their overall HR strategy? In terms of consequences, what are the cantankerous-level mediating mechanisms through which private outcomes are shaped by the Hr strategy? Will the use of iii-loftier management mode and 996 working practices actually lead to superior individual and organizational functioning? If not, how can firms develop and deploy human being uppercase finer to achieve sustainable competitive advantage? We invite researchers to extend this further, conceptually and empirically.
Limitations
This review study has limitations. Offset, it only included articles published in peer-reviewed journals in English, without including relevant work published in Chinese-language outlets. Withal, we believe that the omission of Chinese outlets would not change our decision, in part considering the size of our sample (N =133) is sufficient to enable the states to place Lepak'southward principal contributions to strategic HRM research in the Chinese context. 2d, our searching central words focused on traditional HRM-related terms, while OB-related concepts (east.g. motivation, well-beingness and organizational citizenship behaviour) were non used. Hence, our sample may non take captured some of the relevant articles. Nosotros propose that time to come reviews should combine both HRM- and OB-related studies to tease out the multi-disciplinary nature of Lepak's works. A different search strategy may be adopted, for example, past identifying publications citing Lepak commencement, and then narrowing down to those cited in studies on Prc. This arroyo, though might be more fourth dimension consuming (eastward.g. over 23,000 items came upward on the database afterward searching for citations of Lepak). Tertiary, this study only reviewed HRM inquiry conducted in China as the starting signal to review Lepak'south contributions to a specific context, while HRM studies conducted in other countries were excluded. We call for future reviews to make a comparative study to explore the extent to which, and how, Lepak's works influence HRM research in unlike countries.
Conclusions
Developments in global politics, national policy, artistic applications of digital technology and irresolute client demands and social behaviour, accept brought nigh many changes in the mode businesses in Communist china (re)configure their business models and modus operandi. These include, for case, delayering of organizational construction, de-intermediation in value/supply bondage and disaggregating large business organisation segments into small-scale modules in order to respond to the market more than swiftly. All these developments have implications for strategic HRM, including human capital evolution and deployment. They call for more than research to sympathise these new contexts, practices and implications for strategic HRM.
We acknowledge that our review may not exist as comprehensive and insightful as information technology could be in assessing Lepak and colleagues' contributions to developing research capacity of strategic HRM in Mainland china. We too wish to reiterate that the motivation of our review here is not to underplay the significant contributions of the extant body of studies, a big proportion of which were conducted using a quantitative approach. Nor is our intention driven past sentiments of indigeneity. Rather, our intention is to take stock of the current condition quo and point out new avenues that deserve more than research attention. In doing so, we accentuate the value of in-depth qualitative research in illuminating contexts and phenomena relevant to strategic HRM.
In closing, strategic HRM, and HRM more than broadly, in China is a miracle, a totality, and a research field in its ain right; information technology needs to be examined as the main field of study, and not used every bit a laboratory for experimentation. We use strategic HRM in Communist china as an instance, but our argument has relevance for other societal contexts. HRM in China, or whatever specific countries, is an integral function of HRM in the globe. It requires scholars from other societal backgrounds to be more than open-minded and receptive in reading and understanding these phenomena and participating in the co-production of this torso of knowledge from dissimilar lenses for intellectual and applied purposes. Information technology also requires direct communications and dialogues between HRM researchers and practitioners.
Source: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09585192.2020.1803949
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