Introducing Western-style HRM practices to China: shopfloor perceptions of employment in a multinational Published as Gamble, J. (2006) ‘Introducing Western-style HRM practices to China: shopfloor perceptions in a British multinational’. Journal of World

The management of host country employees is often portrayed as a particularly fraught dimension for multinational firms. The problems involved are considered exponentially greater when there are substantial institutional differences and “cultural distance” between the host country and a multinational firm’s parent country, as is assumed to be the case for Western firms operating in mainland China. Based upon detailed case study research conducted at a UK-invested firm in China between 1999 and 2003 and a comparative study of a Chinese state-owned firm, this paper explores the veracity of such assumptions. The findings indicate that Western human resource management practices can be transplanted successfully and questions the degree to which foreign-invested enterprises need to adopt “the Chinese way of doing things”. Indeed, such practices can be innovative in the Chinese context and provide a competitive source of differentiation for multinationals as employees.