The Impact of Business Partnerships on the HR practices : A Case Study of Software Firms in China

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine how firms deal with their partners from different countries by looking at their human resource practices. The research conducted a case study of three software firms in Dalian, China. Each of them is a typical firm in the Chinese software industry, and has business partners from various countries, such as Japan, Western countries and China. By describing differences of the partners' business practices, the study is able to clarify their impacts on the human resource practices of Chinese firms. The study indicates that the Chinese firms' human resource practices are affected by the differences of partner's business practices. In other words, the Chinese firms tend to adopt the similar human resource practice with their partners from different countries.