China and India combined consist of > 40 per cent of the world population. The two countries are playing increasingly important roles in the globalized world economy. It is imperative for researchers and practitioners to develop an accurate understanding of current human resource management (HRM) practices in both countries. Nankervis, Cooke, Chatterjee and Warner offer a timely contribution by focusing on new models of HRM in China and India. With intensified engagement in globalization, HRM has become increasingly crucial for economic and societal development by integrating with the two nations' rich history, unique cultures and changing demographics. The authors establish China and India as partners with a shared mutual interest in development. Meanwhile, they are also competitors with a collaborative and cooperative bilateral relationship accompanied by a degree of pragmatic agreement. Analyzing connections and detailing with non-economic factors, this book offers readers an opportunity to understand the uniqueness of both giants.
Starting with a brief but comprehensive discussion on historical and cultural differences, Chapter 1 describes societal and economic growth as determining principles for organizational and HRM management. China and India, countries with long histories and rich traditions, are aware of developing a reliable and healthy labor market to leverage labor intelligence and cost efficiencies. By presenting a holistic picture of the two countries in prevailing cultures, legacies and values and differences in ideological, geopolitical and economic development status, as well as the demographic and infrastructural changes experienced by them in recent years, the authors lay a solid foundation to offer a meaningful comparative analysis of HRM between the two.
Chapter 2 begins with national contexts for paradigm shifts in both nations and logically extends to context-based leadership perspectives. “The legacy of communist ideology in China and colonial administrative heritage followed by parliamentary democracy” (p. 28) have led to different HRM principles in the two countries. Currently, foreign investments are seeking talented local management professionals who understand the Western knowledge and can maintain the success of implementing evolutionary changes to business operations. The book emphasizes how Western HRM approaches and practices can be adopted in both Chinese and Indian contexts. Although the majority of executives are foreigners, in most Chinese and Indian multinational companies, human resource (HR) leaders are chosen from local talent and are required to understand the Western HRM practices and to adopt the corresponding local contexts.
In HRM methodology and implementation of HRM practices, we see a trend toward convergence in HRM practices adopted by foreign-invested and state-owned firms. This book's study on Chinese and Indian contextual HRM issues covers national social, cultural and demographic issues while examining the diversity of the organizational unit by a detailed look at the organization's ownership forms, industrial sector and employee characteristics.
Chapter 3 presents the transitioning contexts and their relevance to HRM practices in relation to organizational performance. It explains how the transitions remain in an uneven pace between different state-owned and multinational organizations, between traditional and new high-tech industries, between labor-intensive and well-educated workforce and between firms connected with the global market and those serving domestic markets. It also highlights the influences of the evolving social culture and demographics of the labor force on the HRM outcomes.
Coupled with the transitioning contexts and globalization, industrial and labor relations in the two nations have been undergoing significant transformation. Chapter 4 examines how the changing institutional context and conditions have influenced the IR systems as well as the evolving role of the states and trade unions as institutional actors in both countries. In China, the emerging IR issues are related to leveraging a large rural workforce that is migrating to urban areas with protections and restrictions, engaging women into the labor market and fitting political ideology to build a harmonious society. Thus, these issues are subject to democratization of the political ideology and economic development. Similarly, the labor market in India is divided into a small portion of an organized sector with < 10 per cent of the labor force and a large portion of the unorganized sector comprising > 90 per cent of the labor force. The former is highly regulated with the world's most rigid labor law, causing a slow employment growth in the high paying organized sector. The majority of the labor workforce employed in the “unorganized” sector have led to the labor market rigidity encouraging a shadow economy for entrepreneurs and an economy preferring to employ informal labor. From the differences in the labor market structure, the author further presented differences in the evolving roles of the states, the changing roles of trade unions and workers' representation and collective bargaining in the two countries. However, as evidenced by Sen, the Nobel Prize winning scholar, India has shown significant evidence of progress toward a prevailing sense of justice. “the concepts of ‘rationality’, ‘liberalism’, and ‘justice’ had been the core of Indian heritage long before they became popular in the West.”
In traditional Western HRM systems, talent recruitment and retention are critical components to support organizational business success. On presenting the challenges of supply shortage in the quantity and quality of talent in the two countries, Chapter 5 integrates international HRM research and shows the convergent and divergent approaches to talent attraction and retention and discusses strategic talent management in China and India. It further links talent management to employer branding, leadership and attraction and retention of talent based on broad talent management concepts and approaches. The differences in recruiting and retaining talent between influences of traditional legacies and Western HRM practices are also discussed.
With respect to interconnected HRM aspects in performance management, human resource development (HRD) and rewards and remuneration systems, the differences between the historical experiences of both countries are complex and subtle. Chapter 6 reviews the evolution of HRM systems and practices in the two countries and describes how these systems can affect organizational productivity, efficiency and effectiveness in China and India, for example, the increasing focus of HRD due to the talent shortages at both the macro and micro levels.
In the adoption of Western performance management practices, India has arguably advanced further than China in accepting similar concepts from the colonial heritage. But China has gone beyond India in providing legislative support for education, training and development. Finally, the authors discuss how learning Western concepts and methodology is substantially different from adopting them into the local context and how wholly upgrading labor capacity and competency at the national level proves to be a challenge. Thus, large-scale integration becomes a crucial aspect of integration to both Chinese and Indian revival.
Building on earlier discussions, the authors present an emerging HRM framework for China and India in Chapter 7. Comparison between Western approaches to HRM practice and application in China and India shows two factors: how general HR competence may be underdeveloped in China and India, and how Indian cultural values may actually be more conducive to the adoption of Western HRM techniques than believed. Based on these important factors, the challenges facing HRM in China and India include:
global expansion requires global talents;
new business models in new markets demand innovative HRM approaches;
social and organizational cultures are under significant pressure to change; and
HRM's contributions to building and sustaining future-oriented organizations.
China and India can seek synergies between “deductive” processes of Western management and their own cultural and legacy-related “inductive” emphasis.
The concluding chapter emphasizes the significant pressure to change due to macroeconomic forces and cultural practices experienced by both cultures by identifying social and legislative venues. It pulls together the components of “traditional foundation”, “foundations of corporate culture” and “global convergent forces”, which are mediated by combining indigenous and exogenous practices. The dynamics of the three components trigger a reassessment of Western HRM modes within the diverse contexts of China and India. The model intends to assist in identifying characteristics constituting a new HRM model in China and India and provides a glimpse into the future for the reader by suggesting how both China and India will also influence Western HRM practices in the future.
A key feature of this book is presenting China and India side-by-side to illustrate their HRM practices in a consistent and comparative way, integrated with recent research literature. The comparative presentations also address how their HRM practices have progressed in relation to Western management philosophy and practices across a wide range of cultures, environments and markets. A particularly interesting aspect of the book is taking advantage of the case studies showing significant variations in the detailed HRM architecture, intra- and intercompany practices. The cases reflect how companies create business opportunities and leverage the advantage of HRM practice from economic reform and development, integrating local context and the globalization realities.
A few recommendations are as follows. Chapter 2 and Chapter 6 show considerable differences within operations in both countries. Perhaps adding case studies in both chapters on state-owned enterprises and SMEs showing a full picture of the HRM status, characteristics and uniqueness of each country would seem to be beneficial for practitioner readers. The discussion in Chapter 5 on strategic management may prove to be more useful to professional readers if it is specified how governmental and organizational leaders can help in strategic talent management.
In summary, we recommend this book to those working in the HRM area related to China or India for understanding not only the two nations' historical and cultural roots of HRM practice but also for their current developmental status and future trends with meaningful comparative analysis. It offers a balanced presentation of HRM issues at national, organizational and individual levels. For busy HR executives working in China or India, this book provides a briefing on critical and emerging HRM practices and trends integrating latest research findings.
