Five years into World Trade Organization membership, how is China’s system of people-management adaprting to the changing world? This edited book provides an up-to-date, state-of-the-art overview of current theory and practice of human resource management, ‘with Chinese characteristics’. The latter is a phrase used to refer to the specific cultural, institutional and social setting in which such management structures and processes are to be found in the ‘Middle Kingdom’.

As the People’s Republic of China becomes inexorably linked to the international economy and increasingly faces the challenges of globalization, its enterprises and their managers have to adapt to pressures to conform to external human resources and employment norms, whilst at the same time conforming to internal labour laws and socio-political demands. The tension between these two sets of factors provides an arena in which human resource managers, as well as workers, have to cope, perform and survive.

The papers included in this collection are all based on empirical on-site research by specialists in the field. They deal with such HRM-related topics are expatriates, family demands, human capital, joint ventures, labour disputes, organizational commitment, psychological contracts, social networks, work behaviour and the like. The authors of the papers covered in the book come from a variety of backgrounds and university affiliations in Australia, Canada, Finland, Hong Kong, Japan, People’s Republic of China, United Kingdom and United States of America.