Understanding Western Human Resource Management Style

Multinational corporations that employ Western style ofThis paper analyses the relationship between human
human resource management strategies arerelation management incentives in Chinese companies
perceived by Chinese workers as a significantly moreand the level of turnover. We present a case study of
perspective path for carrier development. The top fivePing An Insurance (Group) Company, Ltd., the
methods that can be used successfully to attract andcountry’s first joint-stock insurance company that
retain Chinese staff and in such way decrease laborintegrate securities, trusts, banking, asset management
turnover rates include: attractive salary and benefitsand annuity services. Analyzing human relations
packages, about 23 per cent, opportunities for futureincentives and labor turnover from years 1999 to 2005,
carrier development, about 19 per cent, creative workwe estimate existence of correlation between job
that creates meaning to workers, 7 percent, andlevel and time employed in the company, and salary
company location, 3 per cent.and time employed of company employees. We
There are considerable differences between Westernsubdivide the sample period into five sub periods: from
human resource management style and Chinese1999 to 2001, 2000 to 2002, 2001 to 2003, 2002 to
human resource strategies: while Chinese HR2004, and 2003 to 2005 in order to analyze the
practices tend to be more autocratic as comparedinfluence of specific human relations incentives on the
with similar strategies in the West. Despite the factlabor turnover rates. The paper is organized as
that multiple studies report high degree offollows. In the next section, we present a literature
effectiveness of human resource strategies used inreview of the recent studies on the differences
Chinese companies, there is some controversybetween human resource management strategies in
surrounding the issue fur to methodology employed. Asthe Western countries and China; we also provide a
such, there is a distinct need to take an insight into thetheoretical background on the issue of labor turnover.
management practices employed by WesternNext, we discuss the method used for assessment of
companies and Chinese enterprises in order tothe risk of portfolios and present information about the
estimate existence of the correlation betweensource of data used, longevity of the period, and
management strategies and labor turnover.frequency of the data.