ABSTRACT
The study of employer associations receives less scholarly attention, across the world, than trade unions, industrial conflict or enterprise-level HRM. This is even more obvious for contemporary China, where employer associations have largely escaped notice until very recently. Indeed, recent literature surveys of HRM and industrial relations in China do not mention them or even seek them out (Clarke, Lee and Li 2004; Poon and Rowley 2007; Cooke 2009; Warner 2009). Only a very few researchers have mentioned them in passing, usually in the context of much broader projects (Zhang 2007; Wang 2008). In reality, again until recently, there have been few very signs of genuine employer association behaviour to study, reflecting state policy discouraging such associations and other factors deriving from China’s transition.
