“It’s the context all the way down!”: An institutional theory perspective on Chinese HRM research

Purpose – This paper aims to emphasize the importance of Chinese institutional contexts beyond “culture” by analyzing a few non-cultural institution-dependent contexts in Chinese HRM research, using an institutional theory perspective. Design/methodology/approach – The authors review existing Chinese indigenous management research from an institutional theoretical perspective and provide a critique of the research from that perspective. Findings – Chinese contexts are more than Confucianism. Focusing on this aspect of culture without integrating other institutional contexts, while informative, is unlikely to identify and explain the uniqueness of Chinese individual and organizational behaviors. Informed by institutional theory, the authors examine how institutional language context influences Chinese institutional behavior. The authors also argue that the guanxi phenomenon is more strongly dependent on institutional forces than on culture in the recent Chinese history. Incorporating these “non-cultural” i...