Asia Pacic Journal of Human Resources (2012) 50, 15

doi:10.1111/j.1744-7941.2011.00008.x

Editors note: Dynamism and diversity in Asian HRM

This 2012 volume of Asia Pacic Journal of Human Resources marks the journals ftieth anniversary. It is also the start of a publication partnership with Wiley-Blackwell, one of the largest and most professional global publishers of academic journals. We believe readers and subscribers will see benets from the new publication arrangements as the journal goes online. Contributing authors and referees will also nd advantages from using Manuscript Central, the online system for processing and tracking manuscripts. We, the editors, look forward to working with the team from Wiley-Blackwell. When the journal was rst published it was known as the Journal of the Institute of Personnel Management (Australia) and its content dealt mainly with the administrative aspects of the personnel function (Smart and Pontifex 1993). However, growing business competition and economic instability in the 1970s forced business to focus on human resources as a source of competitive advantage and upon the human aspects of change management. The function of managing people was rethought, and in keeping with this the personnel management role was renamed human resources management. This journal was at the forefront of this development. In 1979 its title changed to Human Resource Management Australia. A further revolution took place in the HawkeKeating years as Australia became more aware of its economic place in Asia, and in 1989 the journal became Asia Pacic HRM. Three years later it adopted its present title. While the journals title has remained constant for the past twenty years, a subtle change has taken place in content. In 1992 most articles reported new ideas and research upon Australian and New Zealand HRM; articles upon Asia were infrequent and dealt mostly with Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong. Today the balance has swung in favour of articles upon Asia, and in particular China. The economic dominance of China and India and their near neighbours has triggered enormous curiosity among HR researchers. How is labour treated in these countries? Do HR practices contribute to their economic vitality? Do parallels exist between the HR practices and values of western and Asian economies? This issue exemplies the trend towards including more papers upon Asia. Thus, two articles deal with aspects of HRM in China, two with Korea, and a further paper with Japanese multinationals (MNCs) operating in Vietnam. In contrast only the sixth and seventh papers focus upon issues in Australia and use Australian data. The ve papers upon Asia offer no simple message about contemporary HR issues in the region. The dominant themes are very general. First is economic dynamism, which in turn generates social strain evident in the topics of discussion in the ve papers worklife conict, abusive supervision, unionmanagement distrust over perks, leadership styles, and investment in local skills. The second theme is diversity, which is most apparent in responses to the stresses of
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growth as HR practices are swayed by a mixture of local tradition and the inux of imported ideas. The rst paper, written by Xiao and Cooke, takes the common western concept of worklife balance and translates it into a Chinese context by examining worklife conict among Chinese workers. This is an important issue given rapid economic transformation and growth and the associated trend towards work intensication among Chinese workers. Xiao and Cooke interview a total of 122 key informants including CEOs, senior managers, mid-ranking managers and professional employees. Their ndings demonstrate that Chinese organisational leaders and workers tend to accept worklife conict as inevitable. This may indirectly reect traditional Chinese values in which work and career achievement is given importance over family life or recreational activities. However, the ramications of work intensication may also be exacerbated by an inadequate social security and welfare system and ineffective enforcement of labour laws. How exposed are workers, and how do they cope? Participants in the research reported that their organisations had introduced some human resource management initiatives to compensate for the negative effect of long working hours on key employees and their families. Many of these initiatives reect Chinese cultural values and tend to be collectivist in nature. For example, a tradition persists of organisation-sponsored sports, cultural and other recreational activities. Less common are provisions for employees to manage leisure time. On the one hand, Xiao and Cooke report that nancial and material rewards such as overtime payments were given to employees to make up for the excessive incursions of work into family time. On the other hand, research participants also reported that their organisations were less willing to adopt practices to accommodate family and childcare needs. Unsurprisingly, individuals were forced to develop various coping techniques of their own such as deferring having children or relying upon childcare from grandparents. From these ndings it is clear that worklife conict in China occurs in a unique institutional and cultural context and that the solutions that are possible at present are very different from those found in western countries. These ndings have implications for western multinational rms operating in a Chinese context. The second paper by Wang, Mao, Wu and Liu reports upon a study into the effects of abusive supervision on deviant employee behaviour in Chinese electronics manufacturing organisations. Workplace deviance is an important topic because it has signicant potential negative effects not only for organisational performance but also for employee well-being. The study examines a set of variables that are related to perceptions of abusive supervision and deviance. More specically it looks at the mediating role of employee perceptions of interactional justice and the moderating role of individual-level power distance. These variables appear to inuence the relationship between abusive supervision and workplace deviance. Using regression analyses on 283 employeesupervisor dyads, the authors nd that abusive supervision predicts both organisational and interpersonal deviance. Moreover, employee perceptions of interactional justice mediate the relationship between abusive supervision and workplace deviance. Wang and colleagues also report that individual-level power distance moderates the relationship between abusive supervision and employee perceptions of interactional justice. This relationship was stronger for
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Timothy Bartram and Malcolm Rimmer

employees who perceived they had lower power distance. These ndings are important because they demonstrate within the Chinese context that abusive supervision may lead to an increase in deviant workplace behaviours and adversely affect performance. It is important for Chinese organisations to strengthen formal channels and regulatory frameworks and also to encourage employees to voice concerns informally if abusive supervision is to be dealt with effectively. The third paper by Cho, Cho and Woo is an unusual one examining the relationship between unionism and corporate perks in Korea. The study uses census data on the nancelabour information of unionised companies in Korean manufacturing industries from 2002 to 2006. This data is analysed to show how effective unions are in regulating corporate perks. The results of the empirical study demonstrate that unions reduce corporate expenditure on perks and also decrease the probability that perk expenditure will exceed tax exemption limits. The study seeks to differentiate the impact of different industrial relations climates upon corporate perks. Thus, Cho and colleagues report that the negative inuence of unions on corporate perks is positively associated with higher levels of union membership and a higher propensity to take strike action at the organisational level. These results are valuable because they demonstrate the impact of trade unionism in Korea and in particular the ability of trade unions to intervene in what might normally be an area of management prerogative to curtail corporate abuses. The fourth paper by Choi, Yoon and Jeung examines leadership competencies for managing employees in Korean organisations. The study investigates the characteristics of leadership development practices used to develop particular leadership competencies. The authors utilise the Delphi technique to obtain agreement among Korean leadership development experts to identify and prioritise critical leadership competencies. Their ndings demonstrate that some universal leadership competencies identied in the global leadership literature are vital for effective contemporary leaders in Korea. These include the ability to lead and manage change and communicate the organisations vision, values, and strategy. However, the ndings also showed that some leadership competencies reect both longstanding Korean tendencies towards hierarchical structures and traditional Korean cultural values. These traits include demonstrating enthusiasm for achieving business goals, acting as a role model for subordinates and demonstrating responsibility characteristics that are not emphasised in the global leadership literature. Many Korean organisations have adopted western leadership development methods such as coaching and 360-degree feedback. These innovations are considered by Korean experts to be more effective than traditional Korean leadership development techniques. The fth paper by Vo and Hannif investigates the training and development strategies for local managers applied by a sample of Japanese MNCs operating in Vietnam. The authors use qualitative analysis to investigate six case study organisations in both the automobile manufacturing and fast-moving consumer goods industries. The paper presents clear evidence of the transfer of Japanese home-country practices especially technical knowledge. However, differences in industry sector emerge as a key determinant of variations in the transfer of Japanese HRM practices. For example, Vietnamese subsidiaries are
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more likely to follow the Japanese model of implementing comprehensive training and development programs in the automotive sector than in fast-moving consumer goods industries. Vo and Hannif argue that developing host countries such as Vietnam pose few formal constraints upon the transfer of foreign HRM practices. However, they also note that the instability and weakness of Vietnamese institutions including the business, education and employment relations systems sometimes inhibit the ability of MNCs to maintain and transfer comprehensively their home-country HRM practices. Moreover, Japanese MNCs may consider the transfer of HRM practices unnecessary for successful operation in Vietnam. To ensure adequate skill formation among Vietnamese workers employed by foreign MNCs, Vo and Hannif argue that the Vietnamese government may need to consider imposing minimum training budget requirements. The sixth paper by Clissold, Buttigieg and De Cieri is a theoretical one that presents a psychological approach to occupational safety based upon two perspectives the behaviour-based and the person-based perspectives. The authors argue that these two perspectives are usually applied separately in academic research, leaving uncertainty over their respective roles in the explanation of safety-related behaviour. In this paper, Clissold and colleagues argue that an integrated approach to occupational safety is required and that Banduras social cognitive theory can be used as a basis for lling this gap. The paper is a novel conceptual contribution, integrating several bodies of literature and theoretical approaches to better help academics and policy-makers understand safety-related behaviour at the workplace. The authors also outline implications for management practitioners, arguing that there is a need to facilitate discussion between management and employees to encourage a system of self-regulation and improve organisational learning to support safety management systems. Critically, the person, the behaviour and the environment must be incorporated into management strategy. Governments can also draw on the theoretical framework offered in this paper when they are considering the legislative framework that supports effective occupational health and safety management systems. Our nal paper by Sitlington investigates the impact of knowledge sharing and associated organisational knowledge on organisational effectiveness after downsizing and organisational restructuring. This is a timely paper given the growing importance of knowledge management for HR practitioners and the dearth of systematic research in this area. Sample data were obtained from 141 managers and 505 employees affected by downsizing or signicant organisational change in 81 public and private sector organisations operating in Australia. The research ndings demonstrate that the decisionmaker/managerial group places greater importance on formal knowledge-sharing mechanisms. In contrast the larger population of employees tends to rely more on informal networks. Dissonance between the two is of considerable importance in a context where managers want to get their message across. The mechanisms for knowledge sharing that work best are not necessarily the ones most accessible to managers. This is an important nding for HR practitioners involved in implementing downsizing and restructuring because effective knowledge sharing is important to minimise the adverse impact on both individuals and the organisation.
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As demonstrated by the papers published in this issue, it is clear that the Asia Pacic region represents a fertile ground for high level HRM research. To this end, we welcome further research on unpacking the relationship between the diverse contextual settings that exist with the Asia Pacic region and the practice of HRM in contemporary organisations. Timothy Bartram and Malcolm Rimmer Editors Reference
Smart JP and MR Pontifex. 1993. Human resources management and the Australian Human Resources Institute: The profession and its professional body. Asia Pacic Journal of Human Resources 31(1), 119.

2012 Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd