Extending the frontier of research on (strategic) human resource management in China: a review of David Lepak and colleagues’ influence and future research direction

Abstract

This review study was conducted in memory of Professor David Lepak, the late Editor-in-Chief of The International Journal of Human Resource Management, for his contribution to the development of strategic human resource management (HRM) research and the influence of his work in strategic HRM research in the Chinese context. Drawing on 133 articles from 49 English journals, we show that Lepak and colleagues’ four major theoretical frameworks (universal and contingency perspectives of HRM, HR architecture, employee-oriented perspective of HRM and multiple dimensions of HR systems) have been the most instrumental in guiding strategic HRM research in China. We also assess the extent to which China-based studies have extended the conceptual arguments and analytical frameworks that Lepak and co-authors have put forward. By discussing some of the changes in the way businesses in China have (re)configured their business models, we draw attention to several avenues to make strategic HRM research more reflective of the societal context and relevant to practice.

Keywords:

• China
• indigenous research
• Lepak
• multilevel
• phenomenon-based research
• strategic HRM

Introduction

This review study was conducted in memory of Professor David Lepak, the late Editor-in-Chief of The International Journal of Human Resource Management (IJHRM), for the significant contribution he has made in advancing the human resource management (HRM) field through cutting-edge research and research capacity building. Professor David Lepak (Lepak hereafter) and his colleagues have published a considerable number of influential studies in the HRM field in general and strategic HRM more specifically (see articles marked by ** in the reference list). His research on strategic HRM includes a wide variety of constructs. These include, for instance, HR architecture, employment modes, HR configuration, human capital, contingent workforce and internal components of HRM systems (e.g. skill-enhancing, motivation-enhancing and opportunity-enhancing components).

In recent years, Lepak and his colleagues were dedicated to unlocking the black box in strategic HRM research, and for that matter, explicating the mediating mechanisms of the HR systems–organizational performance relationship. Specifically, Lepak was among the first scholars to question the HRM content approach and advocate the HRM process approach, positing that it is employees’ attitudes and behaviours, rather than the content of HR systems, that contribute to desirable organizational performance (Nishii et al., 2008). This research provided new insights into the emerging body of literature on employees’ perceptions of HR systems in the last decade, which has advanced the strategic HRM field and extended our understanding of the how and why issues.

Lepak’s publications are highly cited in both the international and Chinese HRM community. Compared with the studies conducted in western countries, research in the Chinese context pays closer attention to the contingency perspective by identifying the impact of contextual cues, reflecting, in part, the pragmatic approach in the Chinese culture. We believe that conducting a review of Lepak and co-authors’ contribution to research in China may provide added value to the strategic HRM field in two main ways. First, Lepak’s theoretical frameworks are primarily based on the western context which differs significantly from China in many, if not most, dimensions of the context, such as labour regulations, national culture, and economic and political systems (Su & Wright, 2012). Therefore, a review of studies conducted in China can uncover novel mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions, which helps refine and expand Lepak’s theories. Second, focusing specifically on China can reflect the rationale for research findings and provide novel theorizing of contextual effects, which is regarded as a ‘theories of context’ approach to advancing the field (Whetten, 2009). It will also help research capacity building in China, with relevance to other developing countries striving to enhance their research capacity – something which Lepak has been very passionate about and supported.

Overall, this review study makes three main contributions. First, this review aims to explore what aspects of, and how, Lepak and colleagues’ academic works have contributed to the development of HRM research in the Chinese context. We find that four of Lepak’s theories, that is, employee-oriented perspective of HRM, multiple domains of HR systems, HR architecture, and the universal and contingency perspectives of (strategic) HRM, have made the most influential impact on research conducted in China. Second, we explore the extent to which Chinese research has extended the conceptual arguments and analytical frameworks that Lepak and his coauthors have put forward. We reveal that discovering novel boundary conditions and mediating mechanisms are the important methods these China-specific studies use to advance Lepak’s theories. Third, given the fact that this review aims for scholars interested in strategic HRM research in general and in the Chinese context specifically, we also address a number of areas where future research efforts may be directed to making strategic HRM research more reflective of the recent societal context and relevant to practice. Indeed, adopting an emerging perspective, the context-driven perspective in this review, is an important avenue for generating theories (Post et al., 2020). We acknowledge upfront that Lepak’s works are intellectual outputs of collective wisdom; by singling out Lepak, our intention is not to underplay the contributions of Lepak’s co-authors. Rather, our article aims to be a tribute to Lepak as the previous Editor-in-Chief of IJHRM, which has been the main home for studies of HRM in China and a source of stimulation to encourage further scholarship in advancing research on strategic HRM in China. For the purpose of this study, we define strategic HRM as HRM systems (including strategy, policy and practice) that seek to have an impact on organizational performance (Martín-Alcázar et al., 2005; see also Paauwe & Boon, 2018).

Data collection and analysis

We focused on English journal articles in this review. We searched the main databases for relevant articles, including EBSCO, Elsevier, Emerald, JSTOR Arts and Sciences, ProQuest, SAGE, Springer, Taylor & Francis, Web of Science and Wiley. The searching period was set with an end date of December 2018. We used, as the search string, the combined HRM-related terms (e.g. human resource management, HRM, recruitment, selection and staffing, performance management, talent management, training, reward, compensation, performance appraisal, international HRM, expatriate management) with China. We curated a database of over 3000 journal articles on HRM in mainland China, that is, the data of the studies come from mainland China. We excluded articles on Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, due to the significant differences of their institutional and business environments from those of mainland China, which have a strong bearing on HRM policy and practice.

We then searched this database for articles that refer to ‘Lepak’ in the main text of the article. This process generated over 200 articles; we screened through each of them and identified a final sample of 133 articles which have referenced Lepak and his co-authors’ works to various extents. The earliest Lepak (co-author) article that we could find was published in Academy of Management Journal in 1996, sample articles included in our review study were published between 2001 and 2018 (see Table 1). While our search method may not have captured all the articles, we are confident that the bulk of the studies have been included in our review.

Table 1. Number of articles referencing Lepak and his co-authors’ works by year of publication (N = 133).

Year of publication	No. of articles	Year of publication	No. of articles	Year of publication	No. of articles
2001	1	2007	1	2013	7
2002	2	2008	3	2014	9
2003	2	2009	6	2015	7
2004	0	2010	8	2016	13
2005	1	2011	5	2017	20
2006	3	2012	10	2018	25
				2019^a	10

^a Our search period was set for December 2018; articles listed in 2019 were originally published in early view in 2016, 2017 and 2018 at the time data were collected.

We adopted a manual content analysis approach and qualitative coding method to analyse the selected journal articles for the review study (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Selecting key phrases or brief sentences to sort the information into different categories is in line with what Miles and Huberman (1994, p. 57) call the use of ‘descriptive codes’. One of the authors did the first screen and data coding under the agreed inclusion–exclusion guideline. An excel sheet was used to record the data, including, for example, authors’ names, year of publication of the article, journal title, theories/models used, citation of Lepak’s works, research methods, sample size, sources of data collection, key findings, and our observations and preliminary analysis. This was then double checked by another author. Differences in the screening and coding between these two authors were brought to the lead author for review and decision. This double coding approach enhances the reliability and consistency of the data processing and interpretation of the qualitative data (Miles & Huberman, 1994). We excluded those articles which only referenced Lepak et al.’s work briefly without using it to inform their study or argument. For example, we excluded papers that only made quick references of Lepak et al.’s work without citing their theories or models, especially when these references are listed alongside several others. We acknowledge that this qualitative approach contains a level of subjectiveness, though we were quite generous when applying the exclusion criteria and included as many articles as we could in our final sample.

Main findings

As Table 1 shows, Lepak and his co-authors’ works are being used by an increasing number of studies since the mid-2000s, with articles published in 2018 making up over 25% of the sample articles.

The main publication outlets for articles citing Lepak’s work are journals in the HRM field. As demonstrated in Table 2, The International Journal of Human Resource Management (IJHRM) (35 articles, 26.3%) has published the most sample articles by far, followed by Human Resource Management (15 articles, 11.3%), Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources (six articles, 4.5%) and Personal Review (five articles, 3.8%). This pattern is in line with the fact that IJHRM has published the most articles on HRM in the Chinese context, compared with other journals. Though our sample articles are centralized in HRM-specific journals, a number of articles made their way into general management journals, such as Journal of Management (four articles, 3%), Asia Pacific Journal of Management (three articles, 2.3%), Frontiers of Business Research in China (three articles, 2.3%) and Management and Organization Review (three articles, 2.3%). However, the number of articles published in top-ranked management journals, such as Academy of Management Journal (two articles, 1.5%) and Academy of Management Review (0 articles), remains relatively small. It is also worth noting that a handful of articles appeared in journals in the organizational psychology domain, such as Journal of Applied Psychology (two articles, 1.5%) and Personnel Psychology (two articles, 1.5%). Overall, our sample articles are widely distributed across the fields (see reference list).

Table 2. Top 12 academic journals that have published most of the sample articles (N = 133).

No.	Journal titles	No. of articles in descending order
1.	The International Journal of Human Resource Management	35
2.	Human Resource Management	15
3.	Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources	6
4.	Personal Review	5
5.	Journal of Management	4
6.	Asia Pacific Journal of Management; Employee Relations; Frontiers of Business Research in China; Human Resource Management Journal; Journal of Business Ethics; Journal of World Business; Management and Organization Review	3

Note: Journals that published the same number of articles in the sample are listed in alphabetical order.

As Table 3 indicates, among the 133 articles, 15 are review/conceptual articles and the rest of the 118 are empirical studies. None of the review papers used a meta-analysis approach to explore their research questions. Instead, all of the review papers in the sample adopted a qualitative approach. For the empirical studies, quantitative methods are the dominant approach (100 out of 118 studies, approx. 85%), whereas the other two types of methods – mixed and qualitative methods – are adopted far less. Two-thirds of the empirical studies are designed for a single level. Specifically, although an increasing number of studies adopt the individual perspective to explore the mechanism by which strategic HRM affects workplace outcomes, research on the organizational level is still dominant. Notably, the unit/team level has gained the least attention in extant studies. Given that team and unit constitute an important base for stimulating creativity and innovation at individual, team and organizational levels (e.g. Gong et al., 2013a; Song et al., 2020), this is an area that more research attention can be directed to. We can also observe that about one-third of the empirical studies heeded Lepak’s call for more multi-level studies in the field of HRM (Lepak et al., 2007). In fact, Lepak and his colleagues argued that employees could respond differently to the same HR practices implemented by the management. That is, idiosyncratic employees’ perceptions of HR practices (an individual-level construct) are associated with individual attitudes and behaviours, which, in the aggregate, will exert impacts on unit-level behaviours and outcomes (Nishii et al., 2008). In this regard, Lepak’s call for the adoption of cross-level research design is highly relevant to his contribution to the employee-oriented perspective of (strategic) HRM. In addition, the majority of empirical studies collected data at a single time point, although there is an emerging trend for empirical studies that use multi-wave surveys for data collection.

Table 3. Number of articles by research design and methodology (N = 133).^a

		Methodology
	Review/Conceptual (N = 15)	Empirical (N = 118)
		Qual	Quant	Mixed	Total
Level of analysis
Organization	N/A	3	39	4	46
Group/team/unit	N/A	2	3	0	5
Individual	N/A	0	28	3	31
Multilevel	N/A	4	30	2	36
Source of data
Single source	N/A	1	47	0	48
Multiple source	N/A	8	53	9	70
Time points of data collection
Single	N/A	9	84	9	102
Multiple	N/A	0	16	0	16
Total	N/A	9	100	9	118

^a Only the 118 empirical studies were analyzed for their research design and methodology.

The majority of authors of our sample articles are Chinese. This is perhaps not surprising as Chinese scholars may be more familiar with the Chinese context and have easier accessibility for data collection in China. As illustrated in Table 4, among the 11 top-ranked authors based on the number of articles published, seven are Chinese scholars, four currently affiliated to institutions in Mainland China and Hong Kong and three in overseas institutions. In addition, the four non-Chinese-origin scholars who are amongst the top 11 authors have co-published with Chinese scholars.

Table 4. Top eleven authors based on the number of their articles.

Rank	Author	Current affiliation	No. of articles
1	Jie Shen	Shenzhen University	11
2	Iren Hau-Siu Chow	Hang Seng University of Hong Kong	5
2	Karin Sanders	University of New South Wales	5
2	Patrick Wright	University of South Carolina	5
2	Song Chang	Hong Kong Baptist University	5
2	Stephen Frenkel	University of New South Wales	5
2	Xiaobei Li	Sungkyunkwan University	5
2	Yaping Gong	Hong Kong University of Science and Technology	5
9	John Benson	Monash University	4
9	Kaifeng Jiang	The Ohio State University	4
9	Zhongxing Su	Renmin University of China	4

Note: This table only includes the authors who have published more than four or more articles on the topic.

How has Lepak and colleagues’ work influenced research on strategic HRM in China?

In this sub-section, we provide further analysis to highlight achievements and research gaps. Due to space constraints, we only select a few key areas where Lepak and colleagues’ works have made the most contribution in guiding strategic HRM research in the Chinese setting, although more detailed summaries are included in Table 5.

Table 5. Lepak and co-authors’ research topics most frequently cited by the sample articles.^a

Research topic of Lepak’s work	Lepak and co-authors’ articles cited in the sample articles	Main theories/concepts cited in the sample articles	Example of sample articles	No. of citations by the sample
Employee-oriented perspective of HRM	Liao et al. (2009)	Distinguishing managers’ perspective and employees’ perspective of HPWS The mechanism of managers’ and employees’ perceptions of HPWS relating to individual performance in manufacturing settings Individual human capital, empowerment, perceived organizational support as mediators between HPWS and performance Cross-level model	Fu et al. (2016), Jiang et al. (2017), Liu et al. (2017), Mao et al. (2013), Shen (2016), Wang and Xu (2017), Yang et al. (2018)	34
	Takeuchi et al. (2007)	Dual mediating mechanisms of HPWS–performance: collective human capital route, collective social exchange route	Ali et al. (2018), Chen et al. (2011), Fu et al. (2015), Gong et al. (2010), Zhang et al. (2018), Zhang et al. (2014), Zhang and Jia (2010)	31
	Nishii et al. (2008)	Provide the construct of HR attribution Link the HR attribution with employee attitudes and behaviours Multilevel design (not testing cross-level effects)	Bambacas and Kulik (2013), Khan and Tang (2016), Kim and Wright (2011), Li et al. (2011), Shen et al. (2018), Xian et al. (2019)	28
	Takeuchi et al. (2009)	Establishment-level HPWS relates to employee attitudes with concern for employee climate as a mediator	Chen et al. (2010), Liao et al. (2014), Ning et al. (2018), Xi et al. (2017)	17
	Messersmith et al. (2011)	Connect HPWS to unit-level performance by employee attitudes to organizational citizenship behaviour	Chang et al. (2018), Guo et al. (2014), Jiang et al. (2017), Shen (2016), Shen et al. (2014)	15
	Jiang et al. (2013)	Mediating mechanisms in the HR-performance relationship from multilevel perspective	Ma et al. (2017), Shen et al. (2018), Wang and Xu (2017), Zhang et al. (2018)	7
	Jiang et al. (2017) (this article is also included in the sample)	Employees’ HR perceptions are contingent on coworkers’ HR perceptions, managers’ HR perceptions and demographic dissimilarity to coworkers and managers Differentiate the reference in understanding HR perceptions	Burmeister et al. (2018), Chang et al. (2018), Liu et al. (2017), Wang and Xu (2017)	4
	Meijerink et al. (2016)	Employees’ perceptions of HRM services	Guan and Frenkel (2019), Liu et al. (2018)	2
Sub-total				138
Multiple domains of HR systems (i.e. skill-, motivation-, and opportunity- enhancing HR systems)	Jiang et al. (2012)	Provide a meta-analysis based on ability-motivation-opportunity model Differentiate three domains of HR systems (i.e. skill-, motivation-, and opportunity-enhancing HR systems) and their mechanism linking to proximal organizational outcomes and financial performance	Fu et al. (2015), Li et al. (2015), Liu et al. (2017), Ma et al. (2017), Tian et al. (2016), Shen and Benson (2016), Shen et al. (2018)	35
	Lepak et al. (2006)	Provide an integrated model linking HR systems with organizational performance by bottom-up emergence of compositional constructs (i.e. AMO framework) The conceptualization of HR systems: Objective-specific HR systems, HR systems for strategic objectives Provide a relationship map about HR systems, HR policy domains, and HR policies	Ma et al. (2017), Seeck and Diehl (2017), Su et al. (2018), Wang and Xu (2017), Zhang and Morris (2014), Zhou et al. (2013)	22
	Jiang et al. (2012)	The internal fit of HR systems refers to the construct of HR systems A review of the components of HR systems and their composite effect on firm performance	Ali et al. (2018), Jiang et al. (2017), Li et al. (2015), Madera et al. (2017), Ning et al. (2018), Tian et al. (2016)	9
Sub-total				66
HR architecture	Lepak and Snell (1999)	HR architecture with four employment configurations Employees with different values and uniqueness of human capital have different strategic importance to the firm and may be exposed to different HR configurations within a firm Align HR architecture with business strategy	Beamond et al. (2016), Benson and Zhu (2002), Li and Sheldon (2010), Li et al. (2008), Lin et al. (2017), Liu et al. (2015), Meyers and Woerkom (2014), Zheng (2016), Zhou et al. (2012b)	31
	Lepak and Snell (2002)	Different employment modes function differently with different HR configurations Human capital characteristics associated with choices of employment model	Esch et al. (2018), Gong et al. (2013b), Li et al. (2015), Liu et al. (2015), Lu et al. (2016), Zhang et al. (2009), Zhou et al. (2012a)	23
	Lepak et al. (2003)	The selective (simultaneous) use of different employment modes relates to firm performance distinctly The moderating effect of environment dynamism and technological intensity on the relationship between employment modes and firm performance	Chang et al. (2013), Zhang et al. (2009), Zhou et al. (2013, 2012a, 2012b)	8
Sub-total				62
Universal and contingency perspectives of (strategic) HRM	Youndt et al. (1996)	Universal and contingency views of HR–performance relationship Human-capital-enhancing HR systems–performance contingent on quality manufacturing strategy	Chow et al. (2008), Morris et al. (2009), Takeuchi et al. (2003), Wei and Lau (2010), Zhang and Albrecht (2010), Zhang and Li (2009)	38
	Patel et al. (2013)	HPWS as a systematic tool for enhancing organizational ambidexterity The utilization of certain composite HR practices depends on contextual conditions Companies can produce ambidexterity by achieving the alignment and adaptability that HR systems facilitate	Ali et al. (2018), Fu et al. (2016), Fu et al. (2015), Rao-Nicholson et al. (2020), Su et al. (2018)	8
	Lepak et al. (2007)	The extent to which core and support employees are exposed to HIHR systems is varied Conditions that relate to the variability in HIHR system used for core and support employees include HR philosophy, strategy and industry	Madera et al. (2017), Meyers and Woerkom (2014), Ngo et al. (2014)	3
	Lepak and Shaw (2008)	Three strategic HRM theoretical perspectives: universalistic, contingency, and configurational Conceptualization of HRM system	Latukha and Veselova (2019), Liang et al. (2012), Zhang and Morris (2014)	3
	Jiang et al. (2015) (this article is also included in sampling articles)	The dual routes in HIWS–operational performance National power distance moderates HIWS–operational performance	Engelen et al. (2018), Rao-Nicholson et al. (2020)	2
Sub-total				54
Expatriate management	Takeuchi et al. (2005a)	Differentiate international experience into current and past experience Expatriates’ current experience and past international experiences affect their cross-cultural adjustment Expatriate management	Chen et al. (2010), Selmer et al. (2009), Takeuchi et al. (2019), Takeuchi et al. (2005b)	4
Sub-total				4
Contingent labour	Way et al. (2010)	The impacts of labour cost, contingent labour strategy, employment stability, contingent labour strategy, and high investment HR systems on standard workers’ withdrawal behaviours	Chang et al. (2013, 2018)	2
Sub-total				2

a Lepak and his coauthors’ articles cited by one journal article only in the sample are not included in the table.

Note: AMO=abilities, motivation and effort, opportunities to contribute; HCR=human capital resource; HIHR=high-investment HR; HIWS=high involvement work system; HPWS=high performance work system.

Citation analysis has been frequently used to identify the influence of articles (e.g. Luo & Zhang, 2016). Following the previous citation analysis research, we identified Lepak’s most influential articles based on the number of citations by our sample. We then categorized Lepak’s articles by topics based on their main theories or arguments. As shown in Table 5, there are eight articles related to the employee-oriented perspective of HRM. It is the most influential topic because of its highest citation number (138 citations). We can also observe that the topics on multiple domains of HR systems (66 citations), HR architecture (62 citations), and the universal and contingency perspectives of (strategic) HRM (54 citations) are widely cited by our sample articles. Hence, we can draw a conclusion that these four topics are the most important contributions, or influence, that Lepak has made to the strategic HRM scholarship in China. In this sub-section: (1) we summarize these topics in a chronological sequence; (2) discuss why they are favoured in China; (3) evaluate how far China-based research has built on and extended Lepak and colleagues’ works and (4) outline a number of unique contributions that China-based research has made to the strategic HRM field in general.

Universal and contingency perspectives of (strategic) HRM

In their seminal study published in Academy of Management Journal, Youndt et al. (1996) cogently argued that two alternative perspectives (universal versus contingency) are not necessarily contradictory. On the one hand, they lent support to the universal perspective, which proposed a direct relationship between HR systems and firm performance. On the other hand, they revealed the moderating effects of business strategies (e.g. cost, quality and flexibility strategies) on the link between HRM and performance, supporting the contingency perspective.

Their findings are vigorously echoed by China-based literature (see Tables 4–7), at least in part because the contingency perspective can provide a fertile ground on which to assess the generalizability of the conventional HRM-performance framework based on the western setting. At a deeper level, the contingency approach and the HR architecture approach (see below) that provide differential HR interventions according to different employment modes are particularly well-tuned to the Chinese culture (pragmatism) and labour market conditions (a large proportion of non-standard employment to lower labour costs in the pursuit of economic growth). Indeed, there is a notable tendency in the strategic HRM in China studies to treat China as a specific case country, and, in the meantime, discover the ever-expanding China-specific mediating variables or boundary conditions which may modify or expand Youndt et al.'s (1996) initial theory. These contextual factors have been framed across different levels.

At the organizational level, it is well-documented that specific business strategies and firm characteristics, in terms of, for instance, innovation strategy (Zhang & Li, 2009), organizational culture (Chow & Liu, 2009) and autonomy in staffing and market orientation (Wei & Lau, 2008), are expected to exert a subtle and powerful influence on HRM implementation in Chinese firms.

In comparison, the broader societal and cultural context within which the Chinese firms are operating remains less explored. This problem may originate, in no small measure, from the dearth of inductive qualitative studies to tease out the multitudes of contextual cues in the Chinese setting. One of the exceptions is Zhang and Albrecht's (2010) comparative case study, which examined the cultural differences between the two Spanish subsidiaries located in China. They demonstrated that cultural differences could influence the organization’s strategic HRM development, and ultimately, the overall performance. Their study is important given the fact that western-oriented HR systems should be modified to be matched with the specific contextual environment in China (Chow et al., 2008).

HR architecture

Lepak and Snell's (1999) early work on HR architecture is another influential component of the theoretical foundation, sowing the seeds for research on employment modes as part of the strategic HRM. The underlying logic of the HR architecture framework is the proposition that not all employees possess knowledge and capabilities that are equally valuable to a particular organization (Lepak & Snell, 1999). As such, an organization needs to adopt distinct employment modes (i.e. internal development, acquisition, contracting and alliance) for different groups of employees in order to increase its competitive advantage (Lepak & Snell, 2002).

HR architecture theory is gaining traction among Chinese scholars, as it provides practical implications for the labour market transition in contemporary China (e.g. Zhou et al., 2012b). Several studies on China advance Lepak and Snell's (1999) theory by taking into consideration the external labour market conditions. Lepak and Snell (1999) originally presumed that qualified human capital can be available in the open labour market. This presumption, however, is not valid at all time points and across labour markets. Li and Sheldon (2010), for example, documented that there are chronic shortages of skilled employees in China because of labour market pressures and the inadequacy of vocational education and training systems. In this regard, organizations resort to use internal training programs to develop qualified employees, rather than adopting the externalization approach as Lepak and Snell (1999) suggested. In other words, the adoption of employment modes should not only be based on the strategic values of the employees inside an organization, but also the external labour market situation. Indeed, the Chinese labour market is now highly fluid and flexible, with labour shortages across both the skilled and semi-skilled spectra. This makes the proposal, developed in the late 1990s, of differentiating the workforce into core-peripheral (skill–semi-skilled) segments and applying differential HR practices to them to remain cost-competitive, difficult to implement.

There are plenty more research opportunities to extend and revise the HR architecture thesis. For instance, as the Chinese economy is shifting towards a knowledge-based economy underpinned by innovation, as aspired to by the government (Fu et al., 2020), how are firms responding to this strategy? How do they acquire their strategic HR capability in light of the practice of poaching (Cooke et al., 2014)? How have internal development programs been provided, if at all, to enhance employees’ ability, knowledge and motivation? Which external and internal factors can shape employers’ decisions on innovation-driven employment modes? Can the internal employment mode yield the best innovation performance from employees? What may be the alternatives? We will return to these questions in the next section.

Employee-oriented perspective of strategic HRM research

As indicated in Table 5, another key strand of influence of Lepak and colleagues’ research into strategic HRM in China is their employee-oriented perspective, through the lenses of HR attributions (Nishii et al., 2008), employee-related mediating mechanisms of HPWS-performance (Takeuchi et al., 2007) and distinctions between the managers’ and employees’ views of HPWS (Liao et al., 2009). These studies reflect Lepak’s broader interest in the employee-oriented perspective of strategic HRM, which has two related implications in the Chinese setting.

First, as discussed above, employee-related variables (i.e. employee attitudes and behaviours) play an important mediating role in the link between HRM and organizational performance. Following Lepak and colleagues’ works, a growing number of studies on China cast light on an expanding set of mediators, including employee relations climate (Ali et al., 2018), organization-based self-esteem (Zhang et al., 2018) and collective affective commitment (Gong et al., 2010). The major contribution of this body of research, as the authors claimed, is to conduct a cross-cultural comparison of western-oriented mediating mechanisms in a different cultural setting. However, contextual implications in these studies are only discussed in a cursory way, such that China-specific employee-related mediators have not been fully understood. In order to identify how and why employee-related mediating mechanisms may vary across contexts, we need to consider a bundle of key facets of context (Johns, 2006). These include, to list a few examples of questions:

1. Who are the respondents studied in the research (e.g. individual demographics, China-specific personal characteristics: power distance, Chinese traditionality and cultural values)?

2. Where is the study conducted (e.g. rural or urban areas; northern or southern regions; state-owned or private-owned enterprises; manufacturing or services industry)?

3. When does the research occur (e.g. during or after working hours; before or after important Chinese holidays; before or after financial incentives)?

4. Why are the data collected in such a manner (e.g. qualitative or quantitative methods; cross-sectional or longitudinal; purpose or rationale of the study, data collection and analysis)?

Second, Lepak and colleagues recently paid special attention to the variability in employees’ perceptions of HR practices. As Lepak and his colleagues observed, due to the divergent organizational contexts and individual characteristics, employees exposed to the same HR practices tend to develop their perceptions of these practices in different ways (Jiang et al., 2017; Meijerink et al., 2016). Again, subsequent research repeated Lepak and colleagues’ works in the Chinese context with the intention of assessing the generalizability of existing theories (e.g. Shen et al., 2018). Their strategy is reasonable in the sense that replicates studies on the well-established theoretical underpinning may be an easier and safer route to move the field forward than pioneering research aimed at a substantial breakthrough. Nonetheless, there remains plenty of scope for future research on China to produce new theoretical insights. To advance our knowledge of the employee-oriented perspective of strategic HRM, researchers may broaden their research questions, adopt multi-level methodologies and establish context-driven theories. Li et al.’s (2011) study provides a good example. Li et al. (2011) framed their hypotheses across diverse domains (e.g. perceived HR system features, organizational climate and employee attitudes) rather than a single specific area. Using multi-level methods and theoretical frameworks, they showed that organizational climate strength, as a unit-level construct, could augment the positive link between consensus and job satisfaction, and the negative association between consensus and employees’ turnover intentions. This cross-level research is valuable because it opens up an avenue for researchers to identify the potential and dynamic interactions between individuals, units, organizations and external contexts.

Multi-dimensional nature of HR systems

Since its publication, Jiang et al.'s (2012) study of three dimensions of an HR system, also described as HR sub-systems (e.g. skill-enhancing, motivation-enhancing and opportunity-enhancing), has gathered strong momentum in China (34 citations, see Table 5). It is not surprising, considering that this study uncovered the multi-dimensional nature of HR systems, which were conceptually and empirically under-researched. Prior work considered HR systems as a uniform construct and assumed that HR systems could exert an identical impact on individual and organizational outcomes. Lepak and colleagues challenged this presumption by revealing that different HR sub-systems may influence performance in a heterogeneous fashion (Jiang et al., 2012).

Subsequent research on China has made two main contributions to extending the knowledge of HR sub-systems. First, a large number of studies went beyond these three sub-systems and identified many other HR sub-systems. HR sub-systems differ from the general HR system as they promote the interests of various stakeholders beyond employers (Shen & Benson, 2016). For example, the ability-enhancing HR systems (Tian et al., 2016) and human capital-enhancing HR systems (Li et al., 2015) provide managerial support to address employees’ interests, whereas socially responsible HR systems (Shen & Benson, 2016) aim to satisfy the needs of external stakeholders.

Second, responding to Jiang et al.'s (2012) call for investigating the potential interactions among divergent HR systems, a few studies on China have recognized that different dimensions of HR systems may not operate in silos. Liu et al. (2017), for instance, found that maintenance-oriented HR systems would moderate the positive association between performance-oriented HR systems and employee domain-relevant skills in the private-owned enterprises more than in state-owned enterprises. This research suggests that the impacts of HR systems on both individual and organizational outcomes vary significantly and depend on the organizational context (e.g. firm ownership).

Overall, studies of strategic HRM in China have relied heavily on sophisticated quantitative methods, and applied well-crafted western theoretical propositions in the Chinese context to refine and extend Lepak and colleagues’ initial works. Despite the considerable progress that China studies have made in contextualizing Lepak and colleagues’ initial framework, the way in which context is captured appears to be relatively stylized. The Chinese context, mentioned in extant studies, mainly informs the research background (e.g. region, ownership type and industry), rather than reflecting the rationale for research interpretation (e.g. hypothesis development, data analysis and research contribution) (Johns, 2006). This ‘theories in context’ approach is of great value to empirical establishment of contextual effects. However, a ‘theories of context’ approach in considering ‘context as a source for novel theorizing’ is also important to advance the field (Whetten, 2009, p. 29).

As Jackson and Schuler (1995) suggested, HRM needs to be captured based on the internal (i.e. organizational size, corporate structure and business strategy) and external contexts (i.e. trade union, labour regulations, national culture, and economic and political systems) where enterprises are operating (see also Jackson et al., 2014). Based on Jackson and Schuler's (1995) context-driven framework, China’s management context can differ significantly from its foreign counterparts in various ways (Su & Wright, 2012). For instance, the enforcement of labour legislation in China is weaker than that in the western nations in that Chinese trade unions are directly responsible for the governmental agencies rather than front-line employees (Friedman & Lee, 2010). Furthermore, the Chinese culture is characterized as high power distance and traditionality, hence employees are more inclined to show obedience to managers and the hierarchical structure (Chen & Aryee, 2007). As such, high-involvement work systems and self-managed teams may not be suitable in China. In addition, due to the on-going market transformation, Chinese firms are more likely to adopt the cost-reduction business strategy, undermining the use of commitment-oriented HR systems as their western counterparts may do (Su & Wright, 2012). China, therefore, provides a novel and dynamic research site where researchers can build home-grown theories and make a substantial breakthrough. We suggest that future research should extend Lepak and colleagues’ contributions in various ways, including subject matters and research approach. We elaborate this further in the next section.

Discussion: Towards a more indigenous approach to strategic HRM research

Research on strategic HRM in China has made significant progress over the last decade or so in terms of quantity and quality (measured by the number of publications in the top English journals). However, the bulk of this body of research is quantitative snapshots, with superficial, if any, engagement with the context within which the data were collected. Some authors even acknowledged apologetically that the collection of the data in China limited generalization. The main reasons for the relentless pursuit of a ‘scientific’ approach to strategic HRM research have been pointed out by a number of influential scholars (Kaufman, 2015; Wright et al., 2015; see Jewell et al., 2020, for a critique and illustration of how practice-oriented strategic HRM research may be designed and conducted). For China, the Chinese government’s strong desire to build a ‘double first class’ (first class universities and first class disciplines) has meant that HRM researchers are eager to get into top business and management journals and as quickly as possible, for the purpose of performance assessment and reward.

As the top business and management journals have increasingly emphasized the need for sophisticated research design and statistical rigour in data analysis in theoretical contributions, Chinese researchers have shifted their attention to these important and universal criteria at the expense of developing rich and in-depth understandings to capture and conceptualize the HRM phenomena exhibited in practice. Research design has also often been premised on a set of artificial hypotheses of particular types of organizational settings and framed with adapted western models. While these studies have contributed to extending strategic HRM knowledge and enabled Chinese researchers to gradually integrate into HRM scholarship internationally, they have achieved much less in revealing the opportunities and challenges faced by organizations and employment practices/HR interventions they have adopted to sustain their performance. This is because much of the strategic HRM discourse stems from western and predominantly US perspectives.

There is nothing wrong with adopting a US-oriented perspective to studying HRM issues in the Chinese context, but such an orientation has led authors to opt for theories and subject matters that are familiar to, and more likely to be accepted by, western journals. It also undermines the prospect of developing a practice-based HRM system and theorization informed by the Chinese political system, historical tradition and cultural values. While, arguably, the theorization of HRM practices may be a universal intellectual process that transcends national boundaries, and such a process may yield universal outcomes, without exploring HRM practices in China as a starting point of conceptualization, we do not know if there are specific Chinese HRM theories or theoretical paradigms.

How should research on strategic HRM in China move forward? What may be some of the China-specific subject matters that are worth investigating? We address these two related questions in the next two sub-sections.

Research on strategic HRM in China needs more local orientation

Over the last three decades, HRM as a discipline and research field has emerged in China, and Chinese researchers have benefited enormously from learning from and collaborating with western scholars. Many western developed HRM concepts and practices have also been promoted and adopted in Chinese firms in various ways. This development has laid the necessary foundations to connect research dialogues between the Chinese researchers and the HRM research community in the world. It has also facilitated the rest of the world to develop an appreciation of what is going on in China. Nevertheless, how should research on HRM in China move forward vis-à-vis an increasingly salient trend of psychologization and decontextualization of HRM research (Cooke, 2018; Kaufman, 2015, 2020)? This is a question that requires serious consideration and debate among the HRM research community in China. It concerns the future direction of HRM research and research capacity building. It also involves how Chinese HRM researchers can absorb western theories and analytical techniques and apply intellectual wisdom, skills and tools to develop Chinese HRM research that reflects its reality, and feel less compelled to use the latter as subject matter to serve the needs of the former.

Strategic HRM, and HRM more generally, is a management practice underpinned by strong cultural, historical, time-specific and regional characteristics, and requires deep-level and longitudinal investigations. Quantitative research collects relatively superficial and standardized data based on specific questions that do not shed light on the diverse backgrounds of organizations and the rapid and profound changes that many firms are undergoing. An urgent task for HRM research in China is, therefore, to develop more in-depth qualitative research through well-designed research questions and rigorous data analysis, but without truncating the data into ‘scientific’ cubes that render the story line broken in the pursuit of ‘scientifically rigorous’ analysis. This means less research that, as the Chinese say, ‘cuts the foot to suit the shoe’, that is, cherry picking certain HRM practices and framing them in western theories that may be more appealing to the (western or western trained) journal editors and reviewers, in order to make the research published (in top journals). Here, the primary objective of HRM research should be about establishing a comprehensive and holistic understanding of HRM systems in China, and developing constructive dialogues with communities of researchers and practitioners in other parts of the world, in order to contribute to HRM knowledge accumulation and theory building. The value of HRM in China research is to bring to the world what is unique, as well as what is similar to, and converging with, the rest of the world. This requires researchers to examine existing HRM practices as a starting point of research.

There are several reasons why we need to adopt a practice-focused approach to researching HRM. First, certain western-developed HRM practices and HRM concepts promoted by researchers and consultants may be underpinned by particular political ideologies and assumptions that may not have taken ground in the Chinese setting. For example, the promotion of diversity management and inclusion is premised on the political ideology of individual rights, social justice and equal sharing of opportunities, power and outcomes. It calls for political pluralism, cultural pluralism, and promotes the notion of multiculturalism as one of the defining features of democracy. Why has diversity management attracted so little interest in China as a topic for strategic HRM research and practice, compared with leadership? As a matter of fact, a search of journal databases shows that diversity management has featured far less in strategic HRM research than leadership in general, not just in China. That said, Liu et al.’s (2003) contingency perspective that links strategic HRM and leadership by matching leadership styles with employment modes has so far attracted little research that tells us if their typology is suitable in the Chinese setting. Second, the same concept may invoke very different meanings in different societal environments and labour market arrangements. For instance, as Nishii et al. (2008) observed, employees in the western countries are unlikely to attribute meaningful explanations to managerial efforts to comply with the external union requirements (described as external HR attributions) because managers are interpreted as passive recipients of external requirements. However, in the Chinese context where workplace exploitation is not unusual and the enforcement of labour laws is relatively weak (Friedman & Lee, 2010), management’s concern to respond to external regulations may be perceived as a positive and meaningful signal which demonstrates that managers are actively engaged in protecting employee well-being. In addition, the notion of work-life balance in China largely means how to reduce work intensification, especially against an endemic practice of 996 (a work pattern of 9 am–9 pm 6 days per week) for many. Third, HR practices, challenges and solutions that exist in China may be unheard of in other parts of the world, but may be of relevance, for example, in helping multinational firms to be prepared for what they may encounter in China. Su and Wright (2012), for example, suggested that the high-performance work system in China could differ from its western counterparts because of China’s distinct institutional trajectories. Specifically, China-based HRM system is characterized as a ‘hybrid system’ combining both commitment- and control-oriented HR systems, which may exert more significant positive impacts on organizational performance than western-based high-commitment HR systems (Su & Wright, 2012). This research can theoretically extend Lepak and his co-authors’ research on variations of HR systems (Lepak & Snell, 2002), as it develops a context-specific measure of high-performance work system (i.e. employee discipline management), which is highly relevant to multinational firms operating in China.

What we are highlighting or critiquing here is not so much about the search for and claim of universal HRM practices and effects. Rather, we draw attention to a more subtle form of universalism; that is, ideologies and preferences that have been driving HRM research in certain directions, in terms of theoretical mobilization, choice of subject matter (HRM phenomena) and the way findings are interpreted. Only by realizing this reality can we then contemplate how this trend may be rebalanced through more informative and relevant research to develop a more rounded and expanded understanding of Chinese HRM practices and experiences, their inherent nature, and theoretical and practical implications. This does not imply China exceptionalism, rather, it calls for more academic space for stories from China, and indeed, space for stories from other countries that remain less heard, through well designed and executed research. As Post et al. (2020) suggest, an important approach to advancing theories is adopting an emerging perspective. In the next section, we take the context-driven perspective to focus on the recent societal contexts and novel China-specific HR practices. In addition, based on Pisani et al.'s (2017) ‘antecedents-phenomena-consequences’ framework, we draw together an integrated framework for strategic HRM research which summarizes existing developments and future avenues (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. An integrative framework of strategic HRM research in China. Note: KSAs= knowledge, skills and abilities; KASOs= knowledge, abilities, skills and other individual characteristics.

Evolving business environment, challenges faced by organizations and research opportunities

China is experiencing some major changes as a result of government initiatives, technological development and public health events. These incidents and developments are happening at the national, some even at the international level, with profound implications for strategic HRM. What may be some of the China-specific subject matters that are fruitful to investigate? Table 6 provides a set of examples of research topics, research questions and empirical/practical considerations for future research. These are by no means exhaustive and some of them have overlapped HRM implications, and ALL of them have implications for theorization.

Table 6. Examples of directions for future research related to strategic HRM in the Chinese context.

Examples of topics	Examples of research questions	Indicative empirical and practical considerations
Organizational design and strategic capability in a customer-oriented era	What patterns of strategic HR configurations may exist or be created that are responsive to changes in the business environment? What are the requirements for strategic HRM to support a customer-oriented business strategy and business reconfiguration? What may be the long-term organizational and HRM implications?	Types of organizational design (e.g. structure, functions, employee skill sets, talent flow, leadership roles, flexible employment mode, modular patterns of human resource supply) Types of HR competence needed (e.g. developing more strategic capability in addition to operational excellence) Long-term risk assessments for organizations and human resource development needs (e.g. Haier’s rendanheyi initiative)
Digitalization and employee-centred strategic HRM	How can digital technology be used to capture real time HR information feedback to inform HR strategy adjustment? How can firms design an overall HR strategy to capture and improve individual employees’ experience to systematically track their life-cycle with the company? How can different components of HRM be integrated to deliver an employee-centred HR service? What leadership styles are needed?	What are the needs and expectations of different groups of the workforce, esp. the post-90 generation? Types of data that can be captured to measure individual employees’ experiences on various aspects of the HRM, and link them to employee behavioural outcomes (commitment, engagement, organizational citizenship behaviour, productivity, creativity), and employee rewards (e.g. promotion, financial rewards) How can different functions of the HRM (e.g. recruitment, training, performance management, employee competence model, employee pay and benefits) be joined up to deliver a beginning-to-end experience for individual employees to create a total experience that is responsive/tuned to their different needs at different stages? Types of competence needed for HR professionals/department (e.g. developing more strategic capability in addition to operational excellence)
Belt and Road Initiative	What strategic capability do CMNEs need to develop in managing their international operations, with strategic HRM as an integral part? How do/should CMNEs formulate and implement their HRM strategy, policy and practice to balance the needs and interests of multiple stakeholders to maintain efficiency and fairness? What are the roles of the external institutional actors in facilitating and/or restricting CMNEs to fulfil their strategic intents?	Cultural and institutional differences between China and host countries (e.g. role of the informal institutional actors, patriarchal system, community, family and kinship ties) Potential conflicts among diverse demands from various stakeholders that drive or hinder CMNEs’ capacity to adopt socially and societally responsible HRM policy and practice Types of employment strategies to reduce temporary workers’ turnover and motivate them to be committed to the organization and improve productivity and human capital for the host country for sustainable development Multi-level and in-depth investigations with a stakeholder perspective
COVID-19 and organizational sustainability	How can organizations respond during crisis period to sustain the business? How can organizations across different industrial sectors collaborate to survive and thrive in hard times? What may be the implications for organizational leadership? What strategic HRM practices may be adopted to help employees reduce their stress and increase resilience?	New forms of employee sharing across organizations and sectors; employee training needs; organizational risks; HR challenges in managing temporary employees from very different industrial backgrounds Corporate entrepreneurship and management mindsets Managerial capability and development needs From ‘owning’ employees/talents to ‘sharing’ employees/talents across organizations and business sectors Training and development needs to develop the workforce’s aptitude and attitude to work across different types of jobs Strategic risk management for business and HRM Employee identity and job crafting in sharing employee mode of work Employee well-being support system as part of the strategic HR system that is under-developed in China

Source: compiled by the authors.

Organizational design and strategic capability in a customer-oriented era

With the rise of business competition aided by e-commerce and the Internet of things, customers now have many more choices in sourcing their goods and services. They have also become more demanding and individualistic in their consumption. This requires firms to respond to changing customer behaviours and organize their business functions and services accordingly. Leading firms in China have been at the forefront in developing new initiatives to align their business and HR strategy more closely with users’ needs. This contingency perspective echoed Lepak and co-authors’ work on the role of business strategy on the HRM–performance relationship (Youndt et al., 1996). Haier, a world leading white goods manufacturing firm, offers some good examples of initiatives, including its Rendanheyi (matching employee with the customer order) and Haier Smart Home initiatives (http://www.haier.net/en/). These initiatives, powered by fast and novel applications of the latest technology, require employees to be highly creative, innovative and responsive to user needs. To facilitate this business model, Haier has dismantled its traditional management structure and reorganized some of the workforce into small de facto self-employed teams who are responsible for their own market, finance, technology and business solutions. Such a cost- and agility-oriented business strategy has far-reaching organizational implications which may only become evident a few years down the line. By contrast, Huawei, the leading 5G technology company, seems to adopt a different business model and HR strategy, with growing success and organizational resilience. Future research may adopt Lepak and colleagues’ contingency perspective of strategic HRM (Youndt et al., 1996) to address the following questions. What may be the key success factors? What may be the key challenges, and how do they overcome these? To what extent does Huawei’s performance management system that is linked to its heavy financial incentives contribute to Huawei’s R&D performance? These and other business initiatives/models underpinned by similar business philosophy, in the pursuit of lower cost, faster customer response and more efficient use of human capital, warrant in-depth and longitudinal studies.

Digitalization and employee-centred strategic HRM

Digital technology and its applications have been developing rapidly in China in the last few years. Large technology-based firms such as Tencent has been at the cutting edge in harnessing the benefits offered by HR analytics to map HR statistics in order to refine their HR policy and practice more strategically and effectively to support their business. Due to the nature of the business, the majority of the employees in the ICT industry are university graduates in their 20s and early 30s, that is, the post-80 and post-90 generation. They are the employees who create the most value (e.g. new product development, customer retention and profit) for the company. For many employees, 996 working mode, as mentioned earlier, is common. At the same time, these young employees have their specific needs and personality characteristics. For example, many managers interviewed by the lead authors have disclosed that post-80 employees are more willing to accept the three-high management style: high pressure, high performance and high returns/rewards. In comparison, as the only child in the family, the post-90 generation tends to be more individualistic and self-centred compared with their older counterparts; they desire love, pursue the quality of life, seek stimulation in their work and defy authority. HR practitioners may need to contemplate Lepak and his colleagues’ employee-oriented perspective of HRM (Liao et al., 2009; Takeuchi et al., 2007) in order to develop a more fine-grained understanding of the role of employees in enhancing organizational performance. In doing so, the following research questions may be explored: how sustainable is the three-high management culture in motivating employees to achieve high performance in the ICT and other industries operating with similar management styles? When will the positive effects tail off, and what may be the negative effects? How can digital technology be used to capture (real time) HR information in order to develop HR interventions tailored to employees according to their life-cycle stages at the company? What leadership styles are needed, and how may the generational gap create challenges to organizational leaders?

Extant research shows that the positive effect of certain HR systems is contingent on employees’ own attributes, such as adaptability and competency, and not just on the design and implementation of HR systems (e.g. Esch et al., 2018; Wei & Lau, 2010). Skill shortage, and the need to retain and motivate high value post-90 generation employees requires firms to rethink how they can design and deliver their HR services effectively. Here, Meijerink et al.'s (2016) suggestion is highly relevant: that employees can be regarded as active ‘consumers’ of HR services because their own characteristics may influence their perceptions of HR services, rather than being passively influenced by environmental factors such as coworkers’ or managers’ perceptions of HR (Jiang et al., 2017). So far, few studies have adopted the notion of employees as ‘customers’ and investigated how to improve their satisfaction and performance.

Belt and Road Initiative

The ‘One Belt, One Road’ Initiative (BRI) was launched by the Chinese government in 2013, in an attempt to enhance connectivity and cooperation among the continents of Eurasia, Africa and Oceania, and to stimulate production demands and employment in China through international collaborative projects under the BRI umbrella. Following the active promotion of BRI, an increasing number of Chinese multinational enterprises (CMNEs) are actively engaging in various infrastructure and facilities projects (e.g. mining and energy systems, railways and roads, and telecommunications) in host countries (Chinese Government Website, 2015). BRI projects are expected to increase CMNEs’ demands for hiring local employees, in particular, temporary and contingent employees. According to Lepak and Snell's (1999) HR architecture framework, HR managers tend to establish the compliance-based employment mode to ensure temporary employees’ compliance with the terms of the contract. An important question, however, remains to be explored at the local level: what kind of regulations or rules should the contract comply with?

In less developed countries where informal ties (e.g. family and kinship ties) are powerful, CMNEs may need to work with a wide range of stakeholders, including not only the formal actors (i.e. government, trade unions and media), but also the informal institutional actors (i.e. local communities) in recruiting and managing their local workforce (e.g. Cooke et al., 2018). In this situation, we anticipate that employment practices may need to conform not only to the formal rules established by the host countries, but also to be consistent with the informal and local customs and practice, which may be unequal, or even contradictory. Adopting these rules and norms may subject CMNEs to scrutiny and criticism. How may CMNEs balance the tensions inherent in these rules on the one hand, and the need to adhere to their corporate social responsibility and legal and ethical compliance on the other? How can CMNEs maintain long-term and cordial relationships with temporary employees as well as the local communities in order to receive their sustainable support? In other words, the establishment of HR architecture may be subject to not only internal stakeholders (e.g. employees and employers), but also a wide range of external stakeholders (e.g. governmental agencies, local communities and unions). We, therefore, suggest that future research should hold a multi-stakeholder perspective to extend the HR architecture framework originally proposed by Lepak and Snell (1999).

More broadly and fundamentally, what strategic capability do CMNEs need to develop in managing their international operations, with strategic HRM as an integral part? How do CMNEs formulate and implement their HRM strategy, policy and practice to balance the needs and interests of multiple stakeholders to maintain efficiency and fairness? What are the roles of the external institutional actors, not least the governments at various levels, in facilitating and/or restricting CMNEs to fulfill their strategic intents? What theoretical perspectives, such as meta-governance theory to capture the working of multiple stakeholders, can be mobilized to inform investigations in these areas?

COVID-19 and organizational sustainability

The COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak in China at the end of 2019, which has led to the restriction of travel and extended Chinese New year holiday for one month, has led to mass laying-off of staff in many (small) companies due to the lack of businesses (e.g. hotel and catering) on the one hand, and the surge of demands in other businesses (e.g. on-line shopping, courier and takeaway delivery) which have become heavily understaffed, on the other. Some leading companies such as JD (the largest Chinese (on-line) retail firm and a Fortune Global 500 company), took the initiative to source employees urgently from the hotel and catering industry and quickly turned them into couriers. This practice reduces the pressure for the employers in the hotel and catering industry to continue to pay for the social security to the employees on their books while the business is in temporary closure, and avoids laying off the employees, while enabling the latter to have a temporary job and income in the interim period.

This kind of cross-industry temporary hiring creates a new ‘sharing employee’ model of labour deployment strategy. While part-time work across different employers in different industries is not a new practice, what is new in this circumstance is the role of the employers in organizing such a form of flexible employment collectively, and the potential momentum this may create among employers across very different industries to consider their HR strategy and practices in a more creative and collaborative manner so as to overcome hard times together. It signals the emergence of a new management mindset and sense of social responsibility. It demonstrates the possibility of flexibly combining HR sub-systems (Jiang et al., 2012) across industries. It prompts businesses to consider contingency plans more innovatively in adversarial times. Incidents like COVID-19 trigger businesses to consider their HR strategy, especially ways to increase flexibility in labour supply, such as sharing staff and home-working. They also force firms to seek alternatives to become less dependent on humans by, for instance, investing in AI and robots. Further, fatal national disasters such as COVID-19 require firms to develop employee support systems, including resilience-building practices and spiritual care provisions to help employees navigate through hard times. Lepak and colleagues’ research on HR sub-systems (Jiang et al., 2012) can inspire management to balance the interests of both employees and employers. For example, managers are advised to implement well-being-oriented HR sub-systems with the purpose of promoting employee well-being while adopting performance-oriented HR sub-systems in order to get through the difficult situation. This may be challenging for many employers in China, due to the under-development in this area.

The above examples of developments in businesses suggest that strategic HRM in practice is more complicated than identifying/narrowing down a set of HRM practices and testing them in the HRM practices → employee perception → individual outcomes → HR outcomes → organizational outcomes chain, with increasingly novel mediation, moderation and associated interactions across levels.

While these studies are important in extending our conceptual knowledge, we also need other empirical investigations to capture the added value for the strategic HRM domain. As Figure 1 indicates, in terms of contextual cues, the following examples of questions may be explored: how to capture the evolving but less researched contexts, such as the COVID-19 crisis, the ‘One Belt, One Road’ Initiative, and the US–China trade war? How do these emerging contexts shape the processes through which businesses are operating? What the business motivations are for adopting certain strategic HRM practices? What implications there may be in the long term for strategic HRM, not just at the firm level, but at the industry and national level? In terms of HRM phenomena, what are the novel HR sub-systems beyond the traditional HR architecture framework which are implemented to respond to the current hard times? Are these sub-systems contradictory or complementary? How can firms align the divergent HR sub-systems more closely with their overall HR strategy? In terms of consequences, what are the cross-level mediating mechanisms through which individual outcomes are shaped by the HR strategy? Will the use of three-high management style and 996 working practices actually lead to superior individual and organizational performance? If not, how can firms develop and deploy human capital effectively to achieve sustainable competitive advantage? We invite researchers to extend this further, conceptually and empirically.

Limitations

This review study has limitations. First, it only included articles published in peer-reviewed journals in English, without including relevant work published in Chinese-language outlets. Nonetheless, we believe that the omission of Chinese outlets would not alter our conclusion, in part because the size of our sample (N = 133) is sufficient to enable us to identify Lepak’s main contributions to strategic HRM research in the Chinese context. Second, our searching key words focused on traditional HRM-related terms, while OB-related concepts (e.g. motivation, well-being and organizational citizenship behaviour) were not used. Hence, our sample may not have captured some of the relevant articles. We suggest that future reviews should combine both HRM- and OB-related studies to tease out the multi-disciplinary nature of Lepak’s works. A different search strategy may be adopted, for instance, by identifying publications citing Lepak first, and then narrowing down to those cited in studies on China. This approach, though might be more time consuming (e.g. over 23,000 items came up on the database after searching for citations of Lepak). Third, this study only reviewed HRM research conducted in China as the starting point to review Lepak’s contributions to a specific context, while HRM studies conducted in other countries were excluded. We call for future reviews to make a comparative study to explore the extent to which, and how, Lepak’s works influence HRM research in different countries.

Conclusions

Developments in global politics, national policy, creative applications of digital technology and changing customer demands and social behaviour, have brought about many changes in the way businesses in China (re)configure their business models and modus operandi. These include, for example, delayering of organizational structure, de-intermediation in value/supply chains and disaggregating large business segments into small modules in order to respond to the market more swiftly. All these developments have implications for strategic HRM, including human capital development and deployment. They call for more research to understand these new contexts, practices and implications for strategic HRM.

We acknowledge that our review may not be as comprehensive and insightful as it could be in assessing Lepak and colleagues’ contributions to developing research capacity of strategic HRM in China. We also wish to reiterate that the motivation of our review here is not to underplay the significant contributions of the extant body of studies, a large proportion of which were conducted using a quantitative approach. Nor is our intention driven by sentiments of indigeneity. Rather, our intention is to take stock of the current status quo and point out new avenues that deserve more research attention. In doing so, we accentuate the value of in-depth qualitative research in illuminating contexts and phenomena relevant to strategic HRM.

In closing, strategic HRM, and HRM more broadly, in China is a phenomenon, a totality, and a research field in its own right; it needs to be examined as the main subject, and not used as a laboratory for experimentation. We use strategic HRM in China as an example, but our argument has relevance for other societal contexts. HRM in China, or any specific countries, is an integral part of HRM in the world. It requires scholars from other societal backgrounds to be more open-minded and receptive in reading and understanding these phenomena and participating in the co-production of this body of knowledge from different lenses for intellectual and practical purposes. It also requires direct communications and dialogues between HRM researchers and practitioners.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article (see Tables and Reference list).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number NSFC 71832003).