The role of ethnicity in employee relations: The case of Malaysia

Abstract

The role of ethnicity continues to be underplayed in employment analysis. Given the fragmentation of many homogenous societies and workforces and their increasing heterogeneous nature, such neglect not only highlights partiality, but is also problematic at the level of analysis, policy and practice. Likewise, the state and capital have been seen as overly uniform and monolithic rather than as shifting, transient and fragmented. Furthermore, the establishment and continuing growth of first and subsequent generation citizens implies a more nuanced analysis will be required of not only labour, but state and capital as well. These issues, however, are not unusual, nor marginal (although they may be marginalised), in some countries. We use the example of Malaysia, itself an old colonially produced type of multicultural society, to show the weaknesses of traditional views and to analyse and highlight the impacts of ethnicity with a view to developing a framework for incorporating this dimension into the discourse of employment.

The Management of Human Resources in Malaysia: Locally-owned Companies and Multinational Companies

“…Bhopal and Todd (2002) and Wad (2001) focused on trade unions and industrial relations (IR); while Bhopal and Rowley (2002) examined how government concessions to labour and unions were being undermined by capital and MNCs. Rowley and Bhopal (2005;2006) looked ethnicity and MNCs.…”

“…Some Malaysian managers began to realize that the management of HR could help bring about organisational stability and harmony. Indeed, the ethnic diversity of the Malaysian workforce required appropriate HRM solutions (see Rowley/Bhopal 2005).…”

The effect of ethnic diversity on expatriate managers in their host country

“…Malaysia was chosen because of its ethnically diverse environment. According to Rowley and Bhopal (2005) Malaysia is a richly diverse nation with a population of about 25 million people comprised of three major racial groupings: Malays (65%), Chinese (26%) and Indian (9%). In addition, both the Chinese and the Indian groups are diverse in terms of language, region, and religion.…”

Management in South-East Asia: key findings, conclusions and prospects

“…Rowley and M. Warner categories, but for analytical simplicity and ease of comparison we present this grouping next (see Table 1). The role of the state and also ethnicity also varied (see Rowley and Bhopal 2002, 2005a, 2005b, 2006.…”