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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.

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.

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.

This paper traces back the roots of Chinese HRM back to the US-driven HR school of thought.

The international comparison of organisations in near‐identical situations with regard to size, technology, the task environment, dependence and location suggests itself as the most appropriate opportunity to test the “null hypothesis” of the cultural influence on organisation structures for the purposes of this study. The overall design of the project is based on earlier French research work, which had initiated cross‐national comparisons in the early 1970s. This article specifically focuses on British‐German comparisons.

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate a unique approach to researching into the mind of Mao and, at the same time, review of papers in this issue of Chinese Management Studies. Through this paper, the editor hopes to communicate the three simple yet important criteria that should feature in the selection of future papers.

Values of scholarly community as embodied within the 1,040-year-old Yuelu Academy are first introduced as translated by the joint efforts of the authors. The relevance of such cultural values for modern scholars is then discussed. This is followed by the author highlighting the unique research opportunity (documentary study and analysis) as offered by the Shaoshan Mao Memorial Museum. Perhaps it is possible to get a hint of the thinking of Mao Zedong. Finally, consistent with the earlier two review papers, a bird-eye view of key findings is given of the nine selected papers, namely, on politics, state-owned enterprises, team, socialism, planning, human resource management, leadership, competition and knowledge.

Clearly the modern scholarly community will benefit by imbibing the values of the Yuelu Academy with their strong emphasis on ethical behaviors, diligence and the deep pursuit of scholarly inquiry. Also, the Chinese, by documenting the writings of Mao Zedong (Shaoshan Museum), made him perhaps the most well-documented strategist for in-depth research. From the latest review of manuscripts, authors have yet to incorporate Chinese cultural, historical and social background as an integral part of their papers.

This paper calls for scholars to try to reintegrate Chinese cultural values back into research on Chinese management. Professor Warner Malcolm, Cambridge University, a contributing author wrote to the journal saying in essence: “[…] Chinese management is […] deeply rooted in Chinese cultural norms […]” Hopefully more of the submissions will begin to reflect such an orientation.

Employees in Britain have a remarkably low level of involvement in decisions that affect their working lives, but they do want a greater say in those decisions.

In the past two decades, the way enterprises in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) manage their human resources has changed dramatically. Multinational enterprises (MNEs) have entered into the “strategic investor” phase, where now the integration of PRC operations into the MNE network receives growing attention. For these companies HRM is often of high strategic importance. This article seeks to explore how differences in HRM practices in such businesses vary with their ownership forms. The study is based on in‐depth interviews with HRM managers – on the PRC country‐level – in 12 MNEs. The large majority of the participating companies clearly stated that today the HRM function is of high strategic importance for their operations in the PRC and is predominantly controlled by the MNE partner. Although equity ownership stake is an important variable influencing HRM policies and practices, it is shown that it needs to be seen in conjunction with other possibly non‐equity control‐mechanisms.

To cope with changing market requirements firms have had to invest in advanced manufacturing systems. By combining the benefits of flexibility and specialisation, new manufacturing systems have produced a shift in production with important implications for labour and product markets. These systems may lead to flexibility in organisation, management and labour, as well as technology. In order to cope with the relative shortage of skilled workers in the microelectronics industry, there is a need to expand training programmes and make them available on a massive scale. This is justified on economic and social grounds, as this shortage is increasing faster than the growth in technical sophistication.

In this paper, we argue that discussion of worker participation in decision‐making is very limited in its usefulness unless the analysis looks at the structure of decision‐making, particularly in terms of centralization, in the organization concerned. The issues of worker participation are not instructive per se. If there is decentralization, it may assist the effectiveness of participation structures at lower levels, but the problem remains of the degree to which the costs of some decentralization are traded‐off by the ‘dominant‐coalition’ in the corporation against the benefits of centralization of decision‐making in the areas of finance and senior personnel.

Those who believe that the effects of micro‐electronics are due to the working of technical imperatives, or to the mechanisms of the capitalist system, are prone to neglect national differences. Our suggestion is that micro‐electronics, and specifically CNC, may have different con‐sequences and be used to different ends, according to the prevailing traditions within society. We expressly include, under such traditions, technical, organisational, and labour variables. We then conjecture that the stability of work traditions will not be changed by the incidence of micro‐electronics; it will only be expressed in new ways. We thus see the development and application of supposed‐ly “high technology” as constrained by an unchanging socio‐technical tradition.

This paper examines the challenges facing China's employment relations after its WTO accession and consequently, the implications for further reform.

Theoretical questions are considered in relation to the debate on globalization vs the nation‐state over political, economic and social issues. By examining the challenges from both internal and external sources, the paper investigates the impact on the employment relations system at both macro‐ and micro‐levels.

The major finding of this paper is that the current system of employment relations system in China is in the process of transformation towards a “hybrid” model combining authoritarianism and neo‐corporatism.

This paper provides the most recent analysis on the impact of WTO accession on the changing pattern of employment relations in China. It helps people who are interested in transitional economy in general and in China in particular to have a better understanding about the transformation of employment relations system under the influence of different forces.