An empirical study of high performance HRM practices in Chinese SMEs

This paper explores the performance effects of human resource management (HRM) practices in 74 Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Four high performance HRM practices are identified: performance-based pay, participatory decision-making, free market selection, and performance evaluation. Regression analysis results support the conventional idea that the adoption of HRM practices generates better HRM outcomes and, in turn, better HRM outcomes contribute positively to firm performance. However, not all HRM practices, and their effects, led to improved SME performance. Among the Chinese SMEs investigated, a high level of employee commitment was identified as being the key HRM outcome for enhancing performance.

Looking beyond HRM practices in enhancing employee retention in BPOs: focus on employee–organisation value fit

This paper argues that the effectiveness of HRM practices in tackling employee retention can be enhanced by improving the compatibility between employee and organisational values. We test our hypothesis using structural equation modelling on a sample of 258 employees in business process outsourcing (BPO) firms in the Philippines. The results show that the fit between employee and organisation values positively and partially mediates the effects of HRM practices on employee retention. However, employee–organisation value clash in US-owned BPOs was found to have a negative effect on employee retention. Because employees are less likely to leave when they share similar values as their organisations, HRM practices can be used strategically to improve the employee–organisation value fit to improve retention. The implications of the findings for HR managers of BPOs in developing countries are fully discussed.

The global village: online cross-cultural communication and HRM

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine relational and task dimension of online communication and the associated emotional experience.

Design/methodology/approach – This paper examines four categories of work outcomes: emotional experiences of work, work attitudes, work dynamics and work behaviours; and links each to the cross-cultural online communication context.

Findings – It was found that diversity-oriented HRM can reduce the cultural fault-lines betweenindividualist and collectivist (IC) cultures, and thereby positively moderate the relationship between cross-cultural online communication and affective, cognitive and behavioural outcomes.

Practical implications – Diversity-oriented HRM can capitalize on an organisation’s cultural diversity and avoid cross-cultural misunderstandings. In a more practical sense, the research purports that combined use of IC HRM practices can produce greater efficiency and effectiveness in
online communications worldwide.

Originality/value – The paper provides an insight into the potential implications of increased use of information technology on cross-cultural communication, and human resource management. The significance of diversity-oriented human resource management in managing these implications is also highlighted.

Strategic HRM in for-profit and non-profit organizations in a knowledge-intensive industry

This article examines the adoption of strategic Human Resource Management (HRM) by for-profit and non-profit knowledge-intensive health services (HS) organizations in the Australian context. Survey data collected from senior executives are used to test the relationships between a strategic HRM model and firm performance. Path analysis found that for HS firms, irrespective of whether for-profit or non-profit, adopting strategic HRM could increase organizational performance. Strategic HRM could be achieved through the cultivation of an external orientation to customers' demands and a commitment to employees. Building an external orientation with internal structural dimensions such as commitment to employees, allows HS organizations to develop a strategic HRM approach with human capital-enhancing HRM practices. Public and non-profit organizations in the HS industry facing or undergoing health sector reform need to be aware of both of these orientations in order to adopt strategic HRM and improve their performance.

HRM research in China : looking back and looking forward

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the field of human resource management (HRM) in China, with insights drawn from recent times to several millennia earlier, with a view to informing the further work that needs to be done to better understand managing people in China.
Design/methodology/approach – The authors examined Chinese ancient texts related to people management and drew on reviews of HRM research in China since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 till current times, to draw lessons for HRM in China today and for the future.
Findings – The 2,500 year gap that separates the literatures studied as part of this review cannot hide the striking similarities between the conceptual views about the importance of people and their management in the two periods. Yet, there remains a lack of empirical studies of the Chinese style of HRM practices. The majority of recent research in the field of HRM in China is focussed on comparison between HRM practices in various types of enterprises operating in China and those in the west, with the apparent aim of better understanding the latter rather than the former.
Originality/value – As China is rapidly becoming a key global player, and its enterprises represent an increasing share of the global market, it is crucial to understand how Chinese firms have managed their people at home and globally to achieve performance outcomes. Are there lessons other firms, especially those in emerging markets could learn? What are the implications for building global
management and organisational knowledge? This paper provides some directions for future research about HRM in China, which may help gain a better understanding of the Chinese style of management and further develop management and organisation theories in the China context.

Ownership and strategic choice of HRM methods by Chinese SMEs

Using a sample of seventy-four Chinese small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs), this paper explores the influence of ownership on human resource management (HRM) practices by SMEs. It concludes that enterprise ownership determines both strategic choice and the level of complexity in the application of HRM practices, which are more likely to be adopted by foreign-related and domestic, private-owned companies than by collective and state-owned enterprises.

The play of power and politics in innovation and HRM

This paper analyses the human resource management (HRM) practices involved in the implementation of a process innovation approach to product development (concurrent engineering (CE)) in the Australian subsidiary of a multinational firm engaged in military defence electronics. According to the research literature, almost all aspects of managing product development under a CE approach are linked to people management. Yet in this particular case, other than project team structure, the prescriptive HRM dimensions of CE were conspicuously absent in the implementation process. This absence is explained by the play of power and politics involving stakeholders analysed over an 18 month period. The implications of this analysis for understanding the embedded, interdependent and political nature of HRM and process innovation are addressed.

Innovation and HRM : absences and politics

This article analyses the role of HRM practices in the implementation of an innovative cross-functional approach to new product development (concurrent engineering, CE) in Eurotech Industries. Contrary to CE methodology stipulations, and despite supportive conditions, HRM received scant attention in the implementation process. Organizational power and politics were clearly involved in this situation, and this article explores how their play created such HRM ‘absences’. The article builds on a four-dimensional view of power in order to provide a deeper understanding of the embedded, interdependent and political nature of HRM practice and innovation.

Assessing the impact of HRM on dairy farm performance: an Australian study

This thesis explains the benefits of HRM policies and practices for Australian dairy farmers. A conceptual roadmap for rural industry policy-makers and farm owner-managers is presented in this thesis. It helps farmers to enhance dairy farm performance through HRM practices, which in turn would contribute to regional economic development.

Employee engagement, human resource management practices and competitive advantage

Abstract
Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to argue in support of a model that shows how four key HRM practices focused on engagement influence organizational climate, job demands and job resources, the psychological experiences of safety, meaningfulness and availability at work, employee engagement, and individual, group and organizational performance and competitive advantage.
Design/methodology/approach - This conceptual review focuses on the research evidence showing interrelationships between organizational context factors, job factors, individual employee psychological and motivational factors, employee outcomes, organizational outcomes and competitive advantage. The proposed model integrates frameworks that have previously run independently in the HR and engagement literatures.
Findings - The authors conclude that HRM practitioners need to move beyond the routine administration of annual engagement surveys and need to embed engagement in HRM policies and practices such personnel selection, socialization, performance management, and training and development.
Practical implications - The authors offer organizations clear guidelines for how HR practices (i.e. selection, socialization, performance management, training) can be used to facilitate and improve employee engagement and result in positive outcomes that will help organizations achieve a competitive advantage.
Originality/value - The authors provide useful new insights for researchers and management professionals wishing to embed engagement within the fabric of HRM policies and practices and employee behaviour, and organizational outcomes.

The effects of technical and social conditions on workplace trust

This paper investigates the extent to which the technical and social contexts of organizations independently affect levels of workplace trust. We argue that, in an organizational context, trust is not just a relationship between an individual subject (the truster) and an object (the trustee) but is subject to effects from the conditions of the work relationship itself. We describe the organizational context as comprising both a technical system of production (where work gets done through the specification of tasks) and a social system of work (where problems of effort, compliance, conformity and motivation are managed). We analyse the relationship between trust and these two aspects of workplace context (technical and social systems). We also operationalize this in terms of differences between industries,  occupational composition and human resource management practices. The model is tested using data drawn from the 1995 Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey. The results confirm that differences in industry, occupational composition and HRM practices all impact on levels of workplace trust. We review these results in terms of their implications for future research into the problem of analysing variation in trust at both the workplace and individual levels.

A self-representation analysis of the effects of individualist-collectivist interactions within organizations in individualistic cultures

Purpose – Increasingly, organizations in the Asia-Pacific region are recognizing the importance of cross-cultural management to the sustainability of their competitive edge. Although the literature is replete with cross-cultural studies of individualism and collectivism, little information is available on the factors that foster effective individualist–collectivist interaction (ICI) within organizations. This paper attempts to provide a theoretical description of individualists and collectivists at the individual
level of analysis, which offers specific testable hypotheses about the effect of self-representation on prejudice between individualists and collectivists (ICs).

Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, a theoretical model is presented in which intergroup prejudices and interpersonal prejudices mediate the effects of ICI and bicultural orientation toward cross-cultural experiences and, in which, the dissimilarity openness of the climate
moderates the level and outcome of prejudices flowing from ICI.

Findings – The model depicts that the outcomes of ICI are mediated by the intergroup prejudices of collectivists and the interpersonal prejudices of individualists, which are moderated by the extent of diversity-oriented HRM policies and practices and individuals’ orientation to cross-cultural experiences. When workforces become culturally diverse, organizations should modify HRM practices to enable the full use of the range of skills and talents available from the diversity, and to ensure affective and behavioral costs are minimized. As globalization and international competition will continue to increase, organizations including those in the Asia-Pacific region, should seriously reevaluate their HRM policies to adapt and take advantage of an increasingly culturally diverse workforce.

Originality/value – The model provides a useful basis upon which organization researchers and practitioners can base their respective agendas.

Reducing the online cross-cultural communication divide between individualists and collectivists

In an era of globalized information, Internet usage has profound implications for human resource management (HRM). Cultural diversity and technology literature imply that cross-cultural online communication emphasises cultural fault-lines, while simultaneously, building bridges of understanding between members of different cultures. The key tenet of this paper is that diversity oriented HRM (namely the combined use of individualist and collectivist HRM practices) is expected to reduce the cultural fault-lines between individualists and collectivists cultures, positively moderating the cross-cultural online communication effects. Although it is acknowledged that distinguishing values of I/C can increasingly be found within any given culture, the key tenet of the paper is to examine the effect of Hofstede's definition of I/C within the context of cross-cultural online communication.

Employment relations : integrating industrial relations and human resource management

Incorporating Human Resource Management policies within the regulatory and institutional framework that governs contemporary industrial relations has always been problematic. This paper details the nature and causes of this problem, noting the different conceptual and practical understandings that underpin each form of labour management when being applied in organisational settings. It then looks at a range of industrial relations realities confronting managers when trying to apply HRM practices, and how these practices might be accommodated within the context of such realities as a means of improving organisational effectiveness. In so doing it delineates four approaches an organisation might take in its relations with trade unions when bargaining and concluding labour contracts, and which of these are consistent and inconsistent with the coexistence of HRM and industrial relations practices. It then looks at the issue of workplace change involving trade unions and collective bargaining in terms of three categorical models—the management-driven model, the trade union gatekeeper model, and the management-union alliance model, the intention again being to show which are consistent and inconsistent with the coexistence of these different forms of labour management. The paper concludes by drawing on these conceptual models to outline the issues and policies that need to be considered when applying HRM practices within an industrial relations setting.

The need to accumlate human capital across levels of export intensity : activating resources that are increasingly difficult to mobilise

With increasing levels of export intensity, firms begin to face new demands. The first set of resources brought to bear on the issues, and those resources that are most quickly mobilised, are the employees. Indeed, higher levels of exporting require activating relatively less mobile resources through the building of organisational structures and mechanisms for managing repositories of knowledge (particularly organisational specialisation and selectively hiring appropriately skilled staff). This paper explores the management of human capital across different levels of export activity in Australian manufacturing firms. Analyses were based on 90 Australian-headquartered manufacturing exporters that responded to a survey. Overall, the results support the notion that firms need to accumulate knowledge as they internationalise. These results are discussed in terms of their consequences for HRM practices.