Western high-performance HR practices in China: a comparison among public-owned, private and foreign-invested enterprises

Abstract

The current study is a comparison of the status of high-performance human resource (HR) practices and organizational goal priorities (economic and humanistic) in Chinese domestic-owned (public-owned and private-owned) and foreign-invested enterprises. This study also investigates the relationship between organization goal priorities and the adoption of high-performance HR practices. The study sample included 167 different organizations in China. The results indicate that, as predicted, humanistic goals were emphasized most in foreign-owned enterprises, least in Chinese public-owned enterprises and the emphasis in privately owned enterprises fell in between the other two types of enterprises. However, the three types of organizations did not differ from each other on most of the high-performance HR practices, except in their levels of recruitment autonomy. We also found that the link between organizational goals and HR practices was the strongest for private-owned enterprises, followed by foreign-invested enterprises, and then public-owned enterprises. The implications of these results are discussed.