Human Resource Management in China: An Italian Perspective

Human resources management (HRM) in China requires a different approach from the ones commonly implemented in Europe or the United States. For the casual observer, what stands out are the difficulties that Chinese workers are accustomed to facing, such as overtime work, extreme working conditions due to hazardous materials, a lack of safety regulations, and an increasing unemployment rate in low technology energy-intensive industrial sectors that is casting a shadow over the near future. The Western media tends to focus on the negative consequences such as environmental and social degradation after three decades of China’s so-called ‘economic miracle’ accompanied by double-digit GDP growth. However, it is imperative to contextualize these and other related issued within the country as a whole. While China has been evolving at breakneck speed, this fast-changing process has led to China becoming the ‘world’s factory’, it was able to reinvent itself during past and current global economic and financial crisis. This chapter introduces some case studies of Italian businesses operating in China, analyzing different phases of HRM, starting from the past financial and production crises that have led to the bankruptcy of thousands of small and medium—sized companies to the most recent collapse of Chinese stock markets. The analysis will take account of the different categories of Chinese companies such as state-owned companies (SOEs), companies that operate with other companies through joint ventures and wholly foreign owned enterprises. China’s historical and cultural background and cultural information too are considered in order avoid a mere Western interpretations of phenomena and realities that need to be understood in a local context.