Localized poaching and skills shortages of manufacturing employees among MNEs in China

Using a mixed-method approach, we examine the experiences and responses among foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs) of employee poaching and skills shortages in a prominent Chinese electronics manufacturing hub (Suzhou Industrial Park). This highlights strategic challenges MNEs face in Asia Pacific economies as more advanced subsidiaries outgrow their earlier low-cost, low-skill vocations. In examining poaching empirically, we also extend the field by introducing a local labour market perspective into the study of HRM in China. Third, we advance theorization of employee poaching beyond mainstream Western approaches to capture the interactions between internal and local labour markets that increasingly mark FIE manufacturing in fast developing economies. 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. § The authors thank Steven Lui for helpful advice and Joep Cornelissen and Kwok Leung for feedback on earlier versions. * Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 2 9385 7177; fax: +61 2 9662 8531. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (P. Sheldon), [email protected] (Y. Li). 1 Tel.: +61 8 9302 0005; fax: +61 8 8302 0512. 2 Calculated by the authors based on National Bureau of Statistics of China data accessed 22 December 2010 at: http://219.235.129.58/reportView.do?Url=/ xmlFiles/ad13ac25bcb740078268875389943965.xml&id=e58c6bdb559b4560ad10305fddf1def8&bgqDm=20090000.