Human resource management in British and Hong Kong firms

HRM Policies

Cultural Context of HRM

The hardest biases of all to overcome are those of which we are not even aware of ourselves. Our readings in human resources management and policy demonstrate this: While writers like Collin (2010) acknowledge the fact that they are writing from one specific perspective, at the same time they may not be aware of exactly how limited that perspective may be. This paper examines a number of the assumptions that come into play in establishing human resources management programs and policies in two different cultural contexts not simply as a window into two different sets of practices (although this would be interesting in and of itself) but also as a way (and this is the primary purpose within the context of this paper) to elucidate the ways in which a larger context must be consider.

The first is that outlined by Collin (2010), a perspective that she defines as applying to British firms. The second is that of the ways in which human resources management is structured and conducted in firms doing business in Hong Kong. The two sets of human resources perspectives allows to one to gain insight into the ways in which cultural and social context can be '"read" from (as well as incorporated into) human resources management policies. Such a project draws on theory from a number of different fields beyond the organizational study of businesses themselves to include anthropology, sociology, and psychology among others.

The purpose of providing an international perspective on human resources management is that such a perspective (in terms of both comparison and contrast) allows for a clearer assessment of how each of these perspectives works on its own. When one considers a human resources management strategy only in the context of a single company, a single industry, or even a single country, it can be very difficult to understand its advantages and disadvantages, the origin of its underlying assumptions, or the culturally values embedded within it.

By placing any set of practices (not only human resources management but any set of organizational practices at all) within a cross-cultural or international perspective, a writer can produce an assessment of those practices that is far more accurate and comprehensive. Such an international contextualization makes assessing human resources management (as a set of organized processes that both reflect and shape a set of complex human behaviors) far more productive.

This paper focuses on one particular pair of human resources management policies: Those of the United Kingdom and those of Hong Kong. A profitable analysis that outlined the cultural and social context of any two countries would prove to be both useful and interesting. However, this particular pairing (the author believes) proves especially educational because of the historical connections of these two nations. Hong Kong was, of course, under British control for a number of years. It now lies under the suzerainty of China, a country whose economic practices and business style lie at fundamental opposite ends of the spectrum from each other.

This said, British business traditions still influence the ways in which business is done in Hong Kong. Moreover, business practices (including human resource management) in all areas of China are changing dramatically and at almost lighting speed at the current time while British business practice (including human resources management) are remaining relatively stable -- both products of the current political and economic climates of the country involved. The differing degree of stability involved in business practices of the two countries is also important in providing a detailed cultural context. Such a cultural context can be seen more in the differences than in the similarities, although given the fact that business practices are becoming more and more similar across the world as our economies become increasingly globalized dictates that there are bound to be important similarities as well.

A Four-Stage Process

The larger cultural context of human resources management in the United Kingdom (and this is true as well of a number of other Western nations such as the United States, France, and Germany) has come about in a series of historic stages, according to Collin. The first of these was "scientific management," a philosophy based on the institution of rational work habits and culture -- a philosophy that can be seen as resulting in part as a reaction against the manorial tenor of relationships that existed in the pre-industrial world (p. 89) and was an explicit attempt to move the workplace into a mode in which personal relationships were substantially less important.

Walton (1999) describes this shift, one that occurred in England and not in China because China was not participating in the industrialization of its economy during the 19th century:

During the early part of this century in response to the division of work into small, fixed jobs for which individuals could be held accountable. The actual definition of jobs, as of acceptable standards of performance, rested on 'lowest common denominator' assumptions about workers' skill and motivation. To monitor and control effort of this assumed calibre, management organized its own responsibilities into a hierarchy of specialized roles buttressed by a top- down allocation of authority and by status symbols attached to positions in the hierarchy. (pp.16-17)

This shift from the centrality of the relationship between worker and manager/owner/supervisor/overlord to the centrality of a triadic relationship among worker, work product, and manager occurred scores of years ago in Britain and, because of this as well as because of cultural and social factors that are only indirectly related to this, such a shift never occurred as abruptly in China, even in Hong Kong.

This fact -- that the shift from agrarian and feudal economic relations -- occurred at a different pace and in a wholly different historical context in Hong Kong and the rest of China than was the case in the United Kingdom has implications not just for the ways in which the discourses of human resource programs are developed and implemented in general, but also for the ways in which firms recruit women in particular.

In the early stage of the capitalist mode of production, though female labour replaced male labour, it didn't much affect the gender stereotyping of organizations. And did not uphold feminine values in organizations. And didn't change the ownership of the managing [controlling] from men's hands to women's hands. And therefore, we argue that it merely took time for men [male labour] to adjust to these new changes; and kept it remaining that nurturing as dishonourable, ancillary-kind values. And remained 't[he] organization' as male domain by compelling women to just play men's role. And finally, putting the gender-dynamic of division of labour in feudalist system into a crisis. (Jayawardena & Seneviratne, 2003, p. 3)

Hong Kong firms, when developing human resources policies, and especially when developing those aspects of human resources policies that apply explicitly to recruitment and hiring practices, must take under advisement the ways in which past patterns of gendered work divisions and policies still obtain in the current workplace.

Human resources policies have to be set in the current context in which they are formulated and enforced; however, it is imperative for human resources managers to bear in mind at all times that a significant part of the process of providing appropriate context in both the creation and maintenance of human resources policies is that the past history of work relations in a particular culture must be acknowledged. This is one of the most helpful aspects of Collin's summarize of human resources philosophies in the United Kingdom: She makes it quite clear that each stage has been built upon the previous one and that current policy makes no sense if it is not also considered within the context of historical values.

Another factor to be considered in this area of cultural and historical context of human resources policies is that the pace of change in China today is actually more dramatic and thus more traumatic than it was for workers in the first generation of industrialization in Europe. One of the key functions of human resources policies is to reduce the trauma that outside historical and economic forces have on employees in the context of how productive they may be in their current situation (Clegg, 1998, p. 48).

The second important stage of human resources management can be labeled as the human relationship stage, a stage that reflected larger cultural concerns that dictated that individual workers have clear rights, and that one of these rights is to a job that is rewarding as possible (p. 90). The next stage in the development of human resources management concepts in the West is the approach that is generally referred to by the phrase 'human resources management' and emphasizes the importance of mutual respect and the greatest reasonable degree of flexibility in an organization. The fourth stage -- one that is essentially unrealized -- is that of a humanistic response, is a workplace in which each individual is considered to be an equal to all others, participating collaboratively in work to the extent that each person is fulfilled on a personal level (p. 90).

These differing approaches to the issues of human resources management can be seen to arise from different historical moments in British economic and financial development. As such, they are indeed very much reflective of a British point-of-view of how companies should be run and how people should interact with one another in a professional, corporate context. This view is embedded in human resources management across the industrialized West in such a way that many people are likely not even to recognize that there are other ways in which to run a company in terms of the relationships among workers and between workers and managers (Legge, 1999).

Collin makes an additional point that one of the key elements of the most recent developments in human resources management is the integration of philosophical and epistemological ideas from postmodernism into the workplace. The sine qua non-of postmodernism is that there are differing but equally valid views of how a task should be accomplished: Such an idea is hardly radical within many spheres of life in the United Kingdom such as art and literature. It is still, however, seen as somewhat radical in many human resources offices because of its radical claims about the democratic way in which work should be organized. In Hong Kong, as in other parts of China, it would be seen as so radical as to be absurd.

Jayawardena, D. & Seneviratne, P. (2003), for example, address concepts of HRM in Sri Lanka; however, their application of concepts of postmodernism to the workplace are relevant here. They argue, for example, that traditional ways of designing human resources programs have tended to favor patriarchal cultural perspectives. This has significant applications for the ways in which women are recruited in British as opposed to Chinese firms. Gender is a cultural category that is highly influenced in terms of cultural context. In fact, gender is entirely cultural.

If Hong Kong firms wish to hire women in such a way that they can benefit to the maximum extent from the talents of these female workers they must consider the ways in which human resource policies will be assessed and understood within the cultural context of the current labor market. One of the greatest challenges that human resources manager face in any context must balance a number of value systems -- that of the company, that of the company's idealized sense of itself, that of the legal system, that of the larger cultural context, and that of an increasingly globalized economy and business culture that affects all companies.

Another consideration that must be made by the human resource departments of firms is that the cultural context of the relationship between labor and managers now includes a globalized element that it did not before. While human resources management policies still reflect local and national values and standards, those local and national values and standards are ever more deeply affected by global ones.

This fact -- that human resources value currently balance local and global values in a way that has never been true before -- has important implications for recruiting policies in Hong Kongese (as well as other Chinese) firms vis-a-vis Western companies. In order to understand this, we have to look more deeply at the very nature of patriarchy:

The term 'patriarchal' refers to power relations in which women's interests are subordinated to the interests of men…Patriarchal power rests on the social meanings given to biological sexual difference. In patriarchal discourse the nature and social role of women are defined in relation to norm, which is male [T]o say that patriarchal relations are 'structured' is to suggest that they exist in the institutions and social practices of our society and cannot be explained by the intensions, good or bad, of individual women and men. (Clegg,1998, pp. 149-150).

The above statement must be interpreted in both ways: Both in the United Kingdom and in Hong Kong companies and their human resources managers must be constantly aware of the ways in which they must balance several sets of values about the workplace with the fact that at each level these sets of values are interacting with each other and constantly changing.

Human resources management is always a challenge: It is most challenging when the conditions in which a business is working are changing rapidly and fundamentally, as is the current case in Hong Kong.