Originality: challenges in Chinese HRM research

Purpose – This essay aims to present three critical challenges in the Chinese human resource management (HRM) research related to research originality. Design/methodology/approach – The author takes an observational and experiential approach to developing his argument. Findings – Existing research on Chinese HRM research lacks of originality in three critical aspects: the topics selected, the methodologies employed and the interpretations carried out. Researchers need to consider more relevant and emerging topics adopting more qualitative and comparative methodologies by focusing on today and tomorrow's problems. Originality/value – The Chinese HRM research community is to overcome the three challenges in order to develop indigenous Chinese HRM theory.