2012

Liang, Marier, and Cui

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East Meets West

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Strategic Human Resource Management in China: by Xiaoya Liang, Janet H. Marier, and Zhiyu Cui

Executive Overview
This paper outlines important ideological, institutional, and cultural contexts that shape what strategic human resource management practices are possible in Ghina. A detailed review of the main components of the high-performance work systems model suggests that when they are introduced into the Ghinese socioeconomic and political context, the cost-benefit calculus for high-performance work system human resource management practices is different from that in the U.S. context. Yet, in our review of Ghina-based strategic human resource management research we find the expected positive relationship between high-performance work systems and organizational performance in companies operating in Ghina. We conclude with a case example to illustrate how Ghinese firms might be both adopting and adapting the high-performance work system model to better fit their current cultural and economic context.

T

he Study of strategic human resource management (SHRM) emerged out of researchers' interests in understanding the relationship between human resource management and organizational performance (Delery & Doty, 1996; Kaufman, 2007). Since the late 1980s, most research evidence in this vein has been collected from firms located in the United States (see Combs, Liu, Hall, &. Ketchen, 2006; Huselid & Becker, 2011; Kaufman & Miller, 2011; Lepak & Shaw, 2009; Lengnick-Hall, Lengnick-Hall, Andrale, & Drake, 2009). In the last decade, however, researchers have expanded their scope of inquiry to examine SHRM practices in other national contexts. Such research is now at the forefront of SHRM research, and evidence is still accumulating. In this paper, we review the state of knowledge