The core issue underlying both these books is the management of enterprises in China. Sheldon et al. have brought together 25 contributors to highlight the emergence of dynamism and diversity in the Chinese workplace. The result is a well-organized book that provides important knowledge to the non-China specialist and significant insights to China labour scholars. Kim's approach is ethnographic, interesting – even exciting at times – and, in common with Sheldon et al., challenges the stereotype of globalization that has local actors falling under the sway of uncompromising foreign capital.
China's Changing Workplace: Dynamism, Diversity and Disparity comes as an addition to the Routledge Contemporary China Series and presents the reader with a rich set of empirical data that for the most part is reasonably up-to-date. Despite the large number of contributors, the book is structured so that the inevitable cross-over between the four different sections covering context, labour markets, workplace management and agency is justified, acknowledged and only occasionally repetitive. The editors have succeeded in adhering to the key themes signalled in the title and challenge the reader with the idea that while “transition” remains conceptually relevant to many places in China, there is evidence of “interactions between labour market contexts and actors that suggest that they are either beyond transition, or are on their way there” (p. 3).
This is important stuff: the idea that some areas of China have already “arrived” and that the stultifying sameness associated with globalization and brand dominance is not only not reproduced, but even avoided by the “complex adaptive system” that hallmarks any society (Gordon Redding and Michael Witt, p. 43) is appealing. On the other hand, if we skip forward 200 pages to the chapter on trade unions we find – thankfully – authors Mingwei Liu, Chunyoon Li and Sunghoon Kim concluding that that Chinese trade unions remain firmly in a transitional phase. The danger of contradiction is neatly avoided by the inclusion of “disparity” as a theme in the book. Nevertheless, one is left pondering the difference in meaning between diversity and disparity.
Section one sets the scene for the proceeding sections. Malcolm Warner and Grace Lee re-navigate the route from the command economy's rigid personnel management to the flexibilities of modern HRM – albeit with those mysterious Chinese characteristics. It is to the credit of all the authors that the book reveals these mysteries to be mostly good old power relations subject to pressure from top-down authoritarian rule and, crucially, the decentralized nature of institutional reform. In other words, power in China does not emulate the four circles which, as cited by Youngok Kim, Xiaobei Li and Fei Yi Gao in section three, characterize decision-making in Chinese family firms where power diffuses out from a core circle of core family members to the last circle of (powerless) hired hands. Section one goes on to name three main forms of business systems – state, private and local corporate – and discuss the legislative frameworks in which they operate. Hans Hendrischke's contribution rather confines itself to the now familiar Labour Contract Law but is spiced up by data gleaned from a survey of 800 enterprises that appears to be taken directly from the Zhejiang section of Xinhua's internet site.
Section two takes us into labour markets. Luigi Tomba's contribution implies that the binary division of urban hukou-possessing current or former state workers and rural migrants remains valid in the on-going remaking of China's working class. He does not discuss the possibilities of convergence that may eventually emerge from China's on-going expansion of non-agricultural employment and urbanization project, but perhaps this is a result of his defining their differences primarily via distinctive relations with the state (p. 147) rather than a focus on emerging labour relations. The chapter on local labour markets and their dynamic nature reveals the degree of diversity across labour markets, and the implications for skills-training and educational challenges are explored in detail. Curiously, the discussion of informalization is postponed to section four and Fang Lee Cooke's chapter on labour market inequalities – a contribution that may possibly fit better in this section.
In section three, Sunghoon Kim and Sunwook Chung explain a “lessening divergence” in the HRM of foreign-invested enterprises and local companies as a result of increasing divergence in regional investment flows (p. 197). The section as a whole falls under the heading of “emerging divergence” and certainly opens up pathways for further research. Shuming Zhao and Wansi Chen introduce us to the operations of Party mass departments in SOEs via a case study of Baosteel Group Corporation subsidiary Baote. Many scholars, including this reviewer, have commented on the withdrawal of the state from the day-to-day running of industrial relations. Yet with 4,350 employees, Baote still boasts 14 secondary Party organizations, 65 Party branches, 147 Party groups and 1,480 Party members. While their impact on daily lives will not compare with the command economy's danwei, the authors note an important role in “respect to politics and cohesion” (p. 168) in the company. I should say so!
The final section assesses labour relations and conditions of work. Steve Frenkel and Jörg Sydow argue that the presence of global production networks offer a chance of improved trust between employers and employees via “quasi obligational relationships” between supplier and brand. It is not clear how this fits with what I have stated as a key argument of the book – the powerful influence of local governments on local economies (p. 42) and, by implication, brand-supplier contractual relationships and labour relations. But the point is well put, if somewhat undermined by the recent widely-reported antics of Apple and their supplier Foxconn in the rush to produce the latest IPhone 5S. Chang-hee Lee, Peter Sheldon and Yiqiong Li round off the section with a fascinating chapter on the neglected field of evolving collective agency among employers, not least via the emergence of sometimes autonomous, sometimes strategically integrated employers' associations.
Management agency – management – is the subject of Jaesok Kim's ethnographic field work at a pioneering Korean-owned factory in Qingdao that first set up shop in 1993. The book is a fascinating account of the strategies and tactics employers by Korean managers in their attempt to forge a workforce deemed capable of withstanding the demands on their minds and bodies resulting from participation in global supply chains. Kim was able to use the social capital derived from his Korean nationality and language skills to gain employment at the factory and access to Han Chinese workers as well as Korean-Chinese interpreters who emerge as a crucial component of management strategies.
The account is shocking in places: sexism, racism, violence and exhaustion all play their part in disciplining a workforce of overwhelmingly young rural women seeking to improve the economic prospects of themselves and their families. Kim provides diagrams to illustrate the spatial implications of both Taylorist-inspired efficiency (pp. 71, 99) and racially motivated planning deemed necessary to maximizing profits.
Most illuminating is how the profit motive provided the impetus for the Korean managers to abandon partially their stereotypes of racial superiority over their hosts and increase interaction with local actors, namely the local village committee and foster contacts with senior district-level government officials. Faced with aging equipment and increasing demands for flexibility, improved quality and shorter lead times from international buyers, Korean managers decided on a strategy that informally sub-contracted labour discipline to village-level officials on the racialized basis that “the villagers treat the Han-Chinese [migrant] workers just like foreigners” (p. 172).
While the book makes a valuable contribution to the globalization literature and challenges assumptions of foreign power exercised via investment, what is missing from Kim's account is an engagement with feminist research on workers in the global supply chain. While gender relations are discussed, they are done so with anecdotal references to sexualized intimidation of women workers by local hooligans rumoured to be connected to village officials. Given the author's access to the workforce and extended time in the factory, an opportunity for a more comprehensive mix of theoretical insight with empirical information appears to be passed up. But perhaps the constraints on social interaction between men and women prevented Kim from exploring how the women workers analysed their situation.
