Introduction

In a recent study Zhu, Warner and Rowley (2007) discussed the possibility of a system of human resource management (HRM) ‘with Asian characteristics’. The investigation looked at the similarities and differences between Western and Asian systems and asked if there was a ‘hybrid system’ in the making. The People's Republic of China (PRC) (Zhonghua renmin gongheguo) may be offered as a successful example of such a genre, for, as a transitional socialist economy (Warner, Edwards, Polansky, Pucko and Zhu 2005), it is clear that its attempts to open its door in order to reform its economy and its system of people-management have broadly speaking ‘paid off’ (see Budhwar 2004; Zhu and Warner 2004a; Zhu et al. 2007). However, China's reformers did not merely replicate foreign models uncritically. Where they have implanted overseas economic management (jingji guanti) practices since the late 1970s, principally from the US, Japan and Europe (roughly in that order), they did so by incorporating them into the Chinese ‘way of doing things’.