People and Organisations:
Principles and Practice in Global Contexts
Ethical Characteristics of Human
Resources
Management in Chinese
Enterprises.
Based
on employee manuals of 160 companies, A Chinese paper conducts a content
analysis to identify the characteristics and differences of HRME in various
types of firms and different industries. Results indicate that the status quo
of HRME in Chinese firms is far from being satisfactory due to the lack of
ethical care, unfair and nontransparent employee appraisal procedures and
outcomes. The results also show that there are significant differences in the
five dimensions of HRME among state-owned enterprises, private enterprises,
joint ventures, and foreign companies. It is also found that there is no
significant interaction effect between enterprise ownership type and industry
on HRME. (Higher
Education Press and Springer-Verlag 2010)
Introduction
In
recent years, a series of business scandals have occurred consecutively,
including the Sudan Red scandal, Clenbuterol scandal, Fuyang milk powder
scandal and Sanlu milk powder scandal, reflecting the lack of business ethics
in many firms in China. In contrast, business ethics has long become an area of
western managerial research, along with the widespread application of rules and
ideas of business ethics to HR management practices in firms of all sizes. This
study aims to conduct a systematic comparison of ethical characteristics of HR
management among different types of firms in China, identify their merits and
demerits, and provide necessary guidance for enhancing ethical HR management in
Chinese firms. Moreover, a growing number of textbooks have described and discussed
ethics problems in HR management, which, to a certain degree, shows that the
ethical principles in HR management have been accepted by practitioners.
Following this trend, many Western researchers have explored the embodiments of
HRME, including recruitment, compensation and incentives, downsizing practice,
training and career development (Buckley, Beu, Frink, Howard, Berkson, Mobbs
and Ferris, 2001). For example, Deckop (2006) categorized ethical issues of HR
management into 14 types, including social responsibility, human resource
strategy, performance management, employee training, employee motivation,
supervisor-subordinate relationship, sexual harassment, and fair compensation.
Conclusion and Discussion
Based
on the results of this research, They have found there are significant differences in HRME
and its five dimensions among SOEs, private enterprises, joint ventures, and
foreign firms, while there are no significant differences among enterprises of different
types and industries. No interaction is found between enterprise type and
industry on HRME. According to the above results, businesses in China pay
little attention to the development of HRME: About 30% sampled firms failed to
open to the public their employee manuals, disciplinary procedure and rules,
and salary system; only less than 20% sample enterprises have paid due
attention to some specific aspects of HRME, including corporate social
responsibility, work safety training, right to know, employee ethics
evaluation, avoidance of prejudice, employee privacy, exit interview, proper
procedure of employee performance appraisal, and special allowance.
The
results of this study show that there is a significant difference in the degree
of HRME among different types of enterprises. Our results also suggest that
there is a growing tendency for private enterprises to learn from foreign firms
in the practice and construction of HRME. For example, a considerable
percentage of private enterprises used to view integrity as their core values
and employees as mere “instruments” now start to pay more respect to their
employees, encourage staff innovation, emphasize staff development, help staff
improve performance via proper appraisal procedures, etc. Possible reasons
behind this attitude shift might be:
(1)
Under the context of globalization, Chinese enterprises need to learn from
their peer enterprises in developed economics.
(2)
Chinese enterprises are now more aware of the positive impact of better HR
management on enterprise development in the long run. As the degree of HRME in
foreign firms are usually much higher than that of in Chinese enterprises, many
domestic enterprises choose to learn from their peers in developed countries
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