Chapter 12: HRM Strategies in Managing Virtual Organizations in China: A Case Analysis of Banking E-commerce Projects

With the rapid IT development, the structure and process of Chinese organizations are more and more affected by those technical, business and managerial innovations such as E-commerce. Virtual teams and organizations are increasingly adopted in various kinds of E-commerce projects. Given the flexibility and mobility of the virtual organizational structure, new features of HR management strategies are demonstrated in recent Chinese practices. This chapter describes the characteristics, processes and HRM strategies of the virtual teams and organizations, using three cases of cross-functional project teams in the Chinese banking E-commerce development. Several HRM strategies are adopted in solving some key issues in virtual organizations: (1) Strategic objectives setting a process for long-term orientation; (2) Task team regrouping for team compatibility; (3) Competence mentoring for networking and result-orientation; (4) Interactive communication and leadership knowledge sharing mechanism. The case analysis illustrates the effective HRM strategies and discusses their implications in managing virtual organizations.