Based on case studies of 12 firms, this research documents how the hukou-based human resource management (HRM) system in contemporary China informs six human resource management functions. It is shown that the system has generated a division between urbanites as core employees and rural migrants...

One consequence of China's marketisation has been the emergence of a 'floating population'-rural Chinese who migrate to China's cities to work. Many urbanites have negative attitudes towards such migrants. To understand how these negative attitudes might be ameliorated, the paper employs...

This article examines why firms in Shanghai comply or over-comply with social insurance obligations in a regulatory environment where the expected punishment for non-compliance is low. Our first finding is that firms found to be in non-compliance in the first audit in 2001 were moved into a...

Across the developing world education is seen as a means of raising levels of everyday wellbeing and is being linked to improved measures of productivity and economic growth. This paper employs a household production function framework to examine the determinants of school attendance among...

This paper draws on a unique data set collected in audits in 2001 and 2002 by the Bureau of Labour and Social Security in Shanghai to examine why firms in Shanghai comply or over-comply with social insurance obligations in a regulatory environment where the expected punishment for non-compliance...

This conceptual article contributes to institutional analysis and the neo-institutional theory literature by identifying and analysing the linked rules, values, norms and patterned practices that surround and structure the way rural migrant workers are treated in urban areas of China in terms of...