In search of the roots of HRM in the Chinese workplace
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to trace back the roots of US-driven “Human Resource Management” (HRM) school of thought which now become widely institutionalized in China, up to the present day.
Design/methodology/approach
It looks at the diffusion of management knowledge over the period to Chinese business, which involved in turn scientific management (SM), human relations (HR) and HRM, respectively, from the interwar years onwards, by using a bibliometric analysis of Chinese language sources, searching a number of databases now available.
Findings
The authors scanned the international, as well as Chinese, literature to support a conjecture of a HR route towards China and how it morphed into HRM and went on to conclude that there was by the end of the year 2015 still a significant output of academic publications with references to both HR and HRM, respectively, but that we must be cautious in asserting a firm conclusion.
Originality/value
This paper traces back the roots of Chinese HRM back to the US-driven HR school of thought.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the Baker Library Historical Collections at Harvard Business School for granting access to photocopies of 33 pages of Elton Mayo papers, Series 1, subseries B (professional correspondence), Box 1a, 1943-1946, labelled “China”. The authors would also like to thank the National Natural Science Foundation of China for the support of this research (Project No.: 71332002).
Citation
Busse, R., Warner, M. and Zhao, S. (2016), "In search of the roots of HRM in the Chinese workplace", Chinese Management Studies, Vol. 10 No. 3, pp. 527-543. https://doi.org/10.1108/CMS-03-2016-0057
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2016, Emerald Group Publishing Limited