5/25/12 MNC's Human Resource Management in China

Today we had a lecture with Dr. Wang Jianyou about western MNC's and their practices with human resources in the Chinese market. Dr. Wang explained to us how the major challenge of western MNC's is understanding Chinese culture because western companies try to bring in their policies which do not work very well in China. He also explained to us how the western MNC's use push strategies strategies onto Chinese policies but the Chinese use pull strategies to bring in these corporations into their culture. These strategies are what really shape the policies of the home-countries. Another thing that Dr. Wang talked about is the two key pressures facing western MNC's which are standardization and localization. Localization is influenced by these pulling effects in which the host-countries forces foreign companies to conform to local management practices and policies whereas standardization uses pulling forces. Finally, he explained how the Chinese use Guanxi and Face policies which foreign MNC's must get used to in order to have a successful joint venture although I feel like Guanxi is rather similar to U.S. practices. Overall, I found this lecture to be very interesting and I realized that HR practices and policies are very important for foreign MNC's.