HRM Practices in Chinese MNCs: Rhetoric and Reality

Abstract

This article analyses the HRM systems of three of the best-known global Chinese MNCS – namely, Haier, Huawei and Lenovo – with a view to exploring their HRM practices, and understanding whether they demonstrate global convergence or divergence, and whether their rhetoric matches the reality of these practices. A qualitative comparative case study research design was used based upon an analysis of company documents, scholarly articles and internet sources. It concludes that the HRM systems of these companies are both similar and different from each other; that they represent both partial convergence and partial divergence depending on the activities studied, compared with Western HRM models, and that the rhetoric of such systems is sometimes at odds with the reality of their practices.