How culture-sensitive is HRM? A comparative analysis of practice in Chinese and UK companies

Abstract

There has been some concern about the extent to which models and practices of HRM are capable of being transferred from one country to another. This emerged in the late 1970s as concern that Japanese ideas might be adopted uncritically by US companies, and during the 1980s as concern that these ideas, after recycling within the US, might not be totally appropriate for consumption in other parts of the world. Further urgency is added to the question by the pressures on many organizations to develop their businesses internationally, or globally -since this increasingly means they have to consider and establish HRM policies which can span different national systems and cultures.This paper considers the problem through a direct comparison of practices in matched Chinese and UK companies in order to establish where variations occur both within and between countries. It is evident that there are considerable variations in the form of HRM in different settings, but also some surprising similarities. Thus, for example, there are more similarities in manpower planning systems between Chinese companies and some of the UK companies than there are between all the UK companies. In this case it can be concluded that these elements are not greatly affected by national (and assumed cultural) differences. On the other hand, there is a sharp difference between the UK and Chinese companies with regard to pay and reward systems, but much consistency within each country. This suggests that there may be deep-seated differences between the two countries with regard to attitudes towards rewards which will limit the transferability of HRM ideas in this area.

The impact of employee perceptions of training on organizational commitment and turnover intentions: a study of multinationals in the Chinese service sector

“…Previous empirical work supports this. A comparative study of UK and Chinese firms demonstrates that cultural factors strongly influence the adoption of professional HRM practices in the Chinese context (Easterby-Smith et al, 1995). Another study (Wong et al, 2001) indicates that investment in training provision, instead of benefitting multinationals, may in fact lead to greater employee turnover as skilled workers are head hunted by competitors.…”

Crossing the streams: HRM in multinational enterprises and comparative HRM

“…Others identify differences between countries such as the UK and Japan (see e.g. Lam, 1994;Storey, Okasaki-Ward, Edwards, Gow, & Sisson, 1991), the UK and China (Easterby- Smith, Malina, & Yuan, 1995), China and the Netherlands (Verburg, Drenth, Koopman, Muijen, & Wang, 1999), Britain and India (Budhwar & Khatri, 2001), and the People's Republic of China and Taiwan (Warner & Zhu, 2002). And between groups of countries (Budhwar, 2000;Cheng & Brown, 1998;Tregaskis & Brewster, 2006;Wood, Brewster, & Brookes, 2014); and between the countries in Europe transitioning from communism to capitalism (Cooke, Wood, Psychogios, & Szamosi, 2011;Morley, Heraty, & Michailova, 2009;Poor, Karoliny, Alas, & Vatchkova, 2011;Sahadev & Demirbag, 2012).…”

HRM strategies and MNCs from emerging economies in the UK

“…Seniority is also more important in Taiwan than in the UK (Von Glinow et al, 1999). By contrast, British companies tend to use 'hard' performance criteria such as 'bottom line delivery'; experience in more than HRM Strategies and MNCs one business area as well as another country; functional experience; and overall performance record as a yard stick (Easterby-Smith et al, 1995).…”

“…Thus, Taiwanese managers prefer to keep the reward range narrow and recognise and reward best performers. However, they also encourage the worst achievers to improve current job performance rather than applying control techniques of formal and systematic performance appraisal as British firms tend to do (Easterby-Smith et al, 1995;Cully et al, 1999;Guest and Conway, 1999).…”