Japanese management in Singapore: Convergence of human resource management practices

This paper discusses the transfer and adaptation of Japanese human resource management practices to Singapore. By comparing Japanese parent companies, their subsidiary companies in Singapore, and comparable local Singaporean companies, the modifications to the practices of the Japanese parent companies and the adoption of local practices by Japanese management are made evident. The findings seem to uphold both the convergence and the contingency theses.Dr. Chong Li Choy is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Management, National University of Singapore. Prof. Hem C. Jain is from the Faculty of Administration, University of New Brunswick.     

Green human resource management research in emergence: A review and future directions

The growing awareness of and regulations related to environmental sustainability have invoked the concept of green human resource management (GHRM) in the search for effective environmental management (EM) within organizations. GHRM research raises new, increasingly salient questions not yet studied in the broader human resource management (HRM) literature. Despite an expansion in the research linking GHRM with various aspects of EM and overall environmental performance, GHRM’s theoretical foundations, measurement, and the factors that give rise to GHRM (including when and how it influences outcomes) are still under-specified. This paper, seeking to better understand research opportunities and advance theoretical and empirical development, evaluates the emergent academic field of GHRM with a narrative review. This review highlights an urgent need for refined conceptualization and measurement of GHRM and develops an integrated model of the antecedents, consequences and contingencies related to GHRM. Going beyond a function-based perspective that focuses on specific HRM practices and building on advances in the strategic HRM literature, we discuss possible multi-level applications, the importance of employee perceptions and experiences related to GHRM, contextual and cultural implications, and alternative theoretical approaches. The detailed and focused review provides a roadmap to stimulate the development of the GHRM field for scholars and practicing managers.     

International human resource management: An Australian perspective

International human resource management (IHRM) is slowly emerging as a field of academic enquiry. There is, however, a dearth of case study material which documents IHRM strategies and experiences of companies-particularly companies which do not have their home base in the United States. This paper reviews current IHRM literature and reports the results of a recent study of four companies operating internationally from Australia: two are Australian-owned; one is an Australian subsidiary of a multinational oil company and the fourth is a regional division of a multinational automobile manufacturer. For the collection of data, a case study approach was used, with structured interviews of each company's personnel director, expatriate line managers (including returned managers and foreign nationals currently in Australia) and spouses. These case studies are analysed and the extent to which they contribute to the international human resource management literature is examined.The authors would like to thank the companies which participated in the study, and Mary Anderson, Hugh Davies, and Helen De Cieri for comments on earlier versions of the paper.     

浅析油气管道企业人力资源的开发与管理

随着中国油气管道建设进入快速发展的高峰期,油气管道企业既面临前所未有的发展机遇,也面临人才短缺的严峻挑战。对于管道企业来说,要鼓励富有竞争意识和创新精神的各类人才的脱颖而出,首先必须破除“官本位”、“论资排辈”等不利于人才开发和成长的障碍,树立“竞争出人才”的理念;其次,应采取人才潜质判断与人才知识结构相结合的方针,积极推行“能上能下”的选人用人机制,既注重人才的知识结构,更重视人才的潜能挖掘;第三,应把员工培训作为一个系统工程,提升到企业战略层面,建立多层次、多渠道的员工培训教育网络,明确培养目标,确定重点培养对象,创造良好的再教育环境。中国石油管道公司锦州输油气分公司在人力资源开发与管理方面进行的有益探索和取得的良好效果说明,企业只有尊重人才,充分挖掘人才的潜能,深化人力资源开发,才能在日益激烈的竞争中奠定长青基业,实现可持续发展。     

Development of Trust: A Study of Interfirm Relationships in Vietnam

The radical political and economic reforms sweeping through former socialist countries during the last decade have opened rich opportunities for privately owned businesses to emerge and develop. Since the market institutions and infrastructures in these countries are largely underdeveloped, private firms in transition economies rely extensively on interfirm partnerships. This raises the question of how—in the absence of institutions that legitimate markets, contracts, and private property—managers of new business ventures develop new relationships. This paper addresses this issue through analysis of multiple subcontracting relationships formed at a private garment company in Vietnam. This analysis suggests that firms in transition economies develop interfirm trust in ways that are quite different from their counterparts in more highly developed economies.     

Future research on human resource management systems in Asia

Re-emphasizing the need to examine human resource management (HRM) in context, this article builds around four themes. First, it analyses the main issues discussed in the existing literature regarding HRM in the Asian context. Second, it highlights the critical challenges facing HRM function in the region. Third, along with the analysis, it presents an agenda for future research. Fourth, it presents a framework useful for highlighting the context specific nature of Asian HRM functions and the main determinants of HRM policies and practices from a cross-national comparative perspective.

R&D networking in a pharmaceutical company: Some implications for human resource management

A case-study of the R&D networking activities of Glaxo Group Research was carried out between June and November 1993. Different types of networking situation were identified using a simple 2times2 matrix –- the ‘networking uncertainty map’. This paper describes the background to Glaxo's R&D networking activities, introduces and illustrates the uncertainty map and then suggests the implications of each type of network. There are implications in general for R&D management and more specifically for the management of human resources in R&D. Managers might easily apply the uncertainty map to their own R&D networking situations.     

国有建筑企业中的人力资源开发与管理

在现代管理中人力资源开发与管理日益成为企业的一项战略性工作，赢得了人才就赢得了企业的持续发展的后劲。本通过选择一个传统的建筑行业为出发点，结合笔较长时期在该行业从事人力资源管理工作的实际，从建筑企业自身具具的特殊工作性质来概述人力资源开发与管理工作的现状、面临的难题，分析其原因、并着重从具体的人员培训、绩效考核、薪酬管理以及企业化建设几个方面来提出如何建立、实行高效的人力资源开发与管理体制，从而为企业的发展提供强大的人才保障。     

Strategic human resource management,institutionalization, and employment modes: an empirical study in China

This study compares the predictions of institutional theory with those of the contingency perspective of strategic human resource management (SHRM) on the selection of an employment mode. Empirical data were collected from multinational enterprises, including the electronics and garment industries, that operate in China to test the relative importance of the determinants of the selection of an employment mode. The results provide greater support for the SHRM predictions than for the institutional theory predictions. The implications of the findings for researchers and practitioners are discussed. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Incorporating human resource management initiatives into customer services: Empirical evidence from Chinese manufacturing firms

The existing operations management literature has extensively investigated the associations between customer satisfaction and firm performance. However, how to improve customer satisfaction through employee empowerment, service reward, and service training has rarely been investigated. In this research, we tied human resource and service operations management to each other and examined the relationships among employee empowerment, service reward, service training, employee satisfaction, customer service and customer satisfaction based on empirical study of 214 Chinese manufacturing companies. Using structural equation modeling, we found that both employee empowerment and service training have significant impacts on employee satisfaction and customer service, while service reward only has significant impact on customer service. We also found that both employee satisfaction and customer service have significant impact on customer satisfaction. However, the impact of employee satisfaction on customer service is insignificant. The findings suggest that employee empowerment, service reward and service training are important considerations for operations managers to boost employee satisfaction and customer service, which in turn improve customer satisfaction. We provide empirical evidence that employee empowerment, service reward and service training play significant roles in increasing customer satisfaction in the context of manufacturing businesses.     

A conceptual review of human resource management research and practice in Taiwan with comparison to select economies in East Asia

Human resources are increasingly crucial to the growing economies of East Asia, which are striving to diversify economically toward higher value-added product-markets to continue their growth. Human resource management (HRM) in Taiwan, based on Confucianism and influenced by Western management research and practice, has been experiencing a major paradigm shift of sorts in recent years. With Taiwan’s rapid economic growth followed by its industrial and institutional transformation, HRM in the region has been developing to cope with the increasingly competitive and fast-changing business world. As such, this study reviews HRM’s development in Taiwan over the recent decades. The reviewed studies were gathered from work published from 1990 to 2016 appearing in the Social Sciences Citation Index or Taiwan Social Sciences Citation Index Chinese journals. A detailed discussion of HRM development in Taiwan is made, along with a summarizing scheme and some comparison to HRM in other select economies in East Asia, including those of Mainland China and Hong Kong which share the same cultural lineage and values.     

煤炭企业人力资源管理问题及对策

企业的可持续发展和核心竞争力,人才是关键的决定因素。同煤集团四老沟矿是老煤炭企业,由于井下工作环境较艰苦,劳动强度较大,加上世俗偏见,造成人才引进困难。而工资待遇偏低,使人才引进更是难上加难,在人才竞争中处于弱势。怎样引进人才、留住人才,使人才特别是同煤集团四老沟矿主体专业人才呈现正增长,对目前四老沟矿来说尤为重要和迫切。     

人力资源管理中的激励机制

本文认为,人力资源是现代企业的战略性资源,也是企业发展的最关键因素.企业激励机制的最根本目的是正确地诱导员工,使他们在实现组织目标的同时实现自身的需要,增加其满意度,从而使其积极性和创造性继续保持和发扬下去.     

The food system transformation in developing countries: A disaggregate demand analysis for fruits and vegetables in Vietnam

Food systems in developing countries are currently undergoing a rapid transformation towards high-value products and modern supply chains. While supply side aspects of this transformation have been analyzed previously, issues of consumer demand have received much less attention. This article analyses demand patterns for fresh fruits and vegetables in Vietnam, using household survey data and a demand systems approach. Demand for products from modern supply chains – particularly supermarkets and non-traditional imports – is highly income elastic, and the income effect is stronger than the impact of prices and supermarket penetration. This highlights the importance of considering demand side aspects when projecting future trends. Our results imply a continued restructuring of the food sector in the further process of economic development.     

基于主成分的河北省人力资源可持续发展研究

依据可持续发展的核心观点,利用"系统-目标-指标"的结构模式,从人口结构、人口素质及政府管理能力3个层面构建人力资源可持续发展的评价指标体系,并运用主成分分析法进行综合分析,最后对河北省人力资源可持续发展作出了评价。     

我国油气资源管理改革探讨

针对目前我国的油气资源管理仍存在的主要问题，借鉴国外的成功经验，提出我国油气资源管理改革的总体思路应是：全面贯彻科学发展观，按照《国民经济和社会发展“十一五”规划》的统一部署，认真落实《国务院关于加强地质工作的决定》，以促进油气资源勘查开采，增强油气资源对经济发展的保障能力为目的，本着“公平、透明、规范”的原则，统筹考虑，循序渐进，分步实施，积极推进油气资源管理体制改革，进一步引入市场竞争机制，加快油气资源勘探开发市场主体多元化；以改革和完善油气矿业权管理制度为切入点，逐步培育油气矿业权市场，搞好油气勘探开发市场化改革试点工作，逐步适度放开上游市场，加强市场监管，形成有效、合理、有序的油气资源勘探开发市场竞争格局，加强资源保护，提高资源开发效率，实现油气资源可持续发展。为此，提出了深化改革的4项举措和5项建议。     

Human resource management in Japanese enterprises in the Philippines: Issues and problems

Since the latter half of the 1970s, interest in Japanese management and industrial relations increased in developing countries aiming to emulate the success of Japan. The entry of foreign investment to the Philippines also involves tensions related to human resource utilisation. This paper, using primary data, surveys the issues related to human resource utilisation among Japanese firms operating in the Philippines. The paper focuses upon labour market internalisation policies: hiring and recruitment, skills formation through on-the-job training, job assignments, job rotation and wage determination.This paper was written while the author was on study leave as a PhD Candidate (Mombusho Fellow) at the Faculty of Business and Commerce, Keio University in Tokyo. Acknowledgements are due to Prof Yoko Sano, Prof Hideo Ishida, Prof Haruo Shimada, Prof Ryohei Magota, Mr Hiro Nagai, and Mr Masahiro Abe, and colleagues from the U.P. SOLAIR for their advice and suggestions. The Japan Foundation supported part of the research, and is gratefully acknowledged.     

User participation and management information system use: A path analysis

This article proposes and empirically tests a causal model of user participation and management information system use. Based on a review of available literature, three variables including user understanding, system quality and user acceptance are identified as intervening in the relationship between user participation and system use. Causal orders among these variables are assumed and a causal model is constructed for empirical testing. Task complexity is introduced as a contingent variable affecting the structure of these causal relationships. The data are collected from 134 users of 77 different information systems in 32 Korean business firms. The results of data analysis support the causal model in general, but suggest that causal relationships among the variables are different according to task complexity. Two separate models of user participation and management information system use, based on the empirical results, are presented for further research, one for more complex and the other for less complex systems.     

Human resource planning and organization performance: An exploratory analysis

In a study of the impact of human resource planning an organization performance, statistical tests did not indicate significant differences between the performance of firms using formal human resource planning and firms that do not. There was an indication of a positive change in performance after the initiation of human resource planning, relative to non-users of such systems.