Journal of Knowledge-based Innovation in China

Education and human resources management in high-tech organisations in China

Serena Rovai,
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JKIC
2,2 Education and human resources
management in high-tech
organisations in China
186
Serena Rovai
Uni-Italia Centre (Academic Innovation and Development in China),
Italian Embassy, Beijing, China and
Grenoble Ecole de Managament, Grenoble, France

Abstract
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Purpose – At present, in the increasingly global markets, one of the main challenges to international
business is how to effectively manage human resources across cultural boundaries. In particular,
high-tech MNCs demand a specific pool of talented individuals with specific technical expertise and
personal skills to be adapted to operate in an international arena. That is especially true in the case of
China, which has attracted a significant variety of foreign investments from diverse countries and
whose people management policies and managerial staff technical and personal skills are reported in
some cases to be at a primary stage. The purpose of this paper is to explore the educational context
development in China and its related influence on the recruitment and selection process in Western
high-tech MNCs in the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Design/methodology/approach – This is a research paper based on multiple case studies and
direct face-to-face interviews.
Findings – China needs highly trained and highly educated individuals who can work in a dynamic
domestic and global marketplace. Under the centrally planned system, the curricula in different
universities are not associated to diversification in response to China changing economic needs and
scenario. In most of the Chinese universities, many of the disciplines are very narrowly defined
because these institutions are responsible for the job assignment of graduates. Despite the
unprecedented growth of Chinese higher education thanks to the recent government reforms, the
educational system in China still needs to be further restructured in its curricula to provide a sufficient
number of qualified managers but however it will take time.
Originality/value – Nowadays, China needs highly trained and highly educated talents who can
work in a domestic highly globalised marketplace. The underlying study will provide insight into
those education related factors and their impact on the labour market in China with a specific focus on
the search for appropriate technomanagement talents. The paper also provides insights into those
educational factors, which produce satisfactory and less-satisfactory results in recruitment of local
talents in foreign technology companies. It also suggests the need for further research in the talent
management area and education in PRC in relation to the current lack of data. Recommendations for
the possible integration of appropriate educational projects aiming at developing highly talented
individuals into those foreign corporations are provided.
Keywords Selection, International business, Education, China, Human resource management
Paper type Research paper

Journal of Knowledge-based
Innovation in China
Vol. 2 No. 2, 2010
pp. 186-198
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1756-1418
DOI 10.1108/17561411011054814
Introduction
Foreign MNCs perceive China as one of the main opportunities to grow using existing
high-tech products, despite the fact that company profit and performance are often
questionable. In fact, after that China officially signed the WTO agreement in
November 2001, it has often been regarded as a golden opportunity for foreign firms to
invest in the future “factory of the world” (Yeung and Mok, 2003). However, there is
 a significant amount of data showing that companies operating in China may not live Education and
up to their performance aspirations at the start of their activities (Schlevogt, 2002). human resources
The imbalance between market potential and realised profits seem to be associated
with the fact that executives did not clearly perceive the success factors in China and management
the critical core competencies. This due to their lack of evaluation of the importance
associated with the local context-related factors affecting business and people
management. 187
Until recently, China has been relatively isolated from the influence of Western
management practices and there has not been in China a comparable parallel
development of people management policies as in the West (Warner, 1998). The current
situation in Mainland China requires that a specific attention should be paid to those
context-related factors and amongst those a more specific attention has to be paid to
the educational context and how it may affect effective recruitment and selection of
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“technomanagement” talents for foreign high-tech corporations.

The limited number of qualified educational institutions and the outdated
educational system providing an insufficient pool of suitable talents – trained to
Western management skills and possessing the specific technical and human skills –
have created serious concerns for foreign high-tech MNCs. The educational system is
reported to be incoherent and insufficient with the current growing needs of qualified
candidates and despite the current governmental aim to reform the system, a lot still
seem to be done (Whiteley et al., 2000; Bai and Enderwick, 2005).
Despite the improvements and on-going transformations, the role of personnel
management and related polices in China is still at an “administrative” stage – in some
regions recruitment and selection submitted to governmental regulations, keeping of
employees’ files, still present difficulties in transferring “hukou” residence permits
across different provinces except from coastal areas (Warner, 2004; Rovai, 2005).
As highlighted in Lau and Roffey (2002) research the past decades of foreign direct
investment in China have represented a key period to train a new generation of Chinese
managers in a western style and expose them to a multicultural experience. However,
they represent an insufficient percentage in relation to the growing need of
high-qualified employees, and they are not enough to meet the increasing demand from
western companies operating in PRC. Still, companies are often faced with the problem
of where and how to find the most appropriate candidates because of inadequate
educational background.
Grant and Devenaux (2005) highlighted that in the next decade China requires more
than 75,000 managers who can be suited to operate in China-based foreign companies
but however, today, it has been estimated that there are only approximately 5,000 of
such profiles available.

The educational context and local technomanagement profiles

Due to the significant role of higher education in current societies, higher education came to
serve the administrative and economic interests of the governments and became a necessary
dimension of the development (Zolfaghari et al., 2009).
In relation to the tendency to internationalisation presented by the higher education
systems globally, higher education is becoming more subject to national culture and
government regulations (Hyslop-Margison and Sears, 2006).
 JKIC Improving the quality of the human resources in China is still a government priority
2,2 to attracting foreign investment to China. In the same way, organisations are
increasingly focusing on how to attract qualified individuals and China’s talent
shortage is extensively documented (Whiteley et al., 2000; Plompen, 2006; Wu and
Zheng, 2008).
In 1950s, the Communist Government began an educational campaign with the
188 objectives of increasing the nation’s literacy rate and providing educational
development. As the quality of education improved, increasing numbers of students
were better able to pass the notoriously difficult university admission tests. Since 1980,
the numbers enrolled on masters programmes rose to 7,000 and, in 1992, at least
78 Chinese graduates had a master’s qualification (Chan, 1996). In relation to
government main reforms and changes in the education system the number of gross
enrollment in Chinese universities is expected to reach 30 millions of students by the
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end of 2010 however, with a direct total government expenditure on education limited
only to 3 per cent of national GDP and consequently with education funding based on a
new commercialisation strategy of the higher education system (MOE, 2007).
In the old China of 45 years ago, the great majority of people were denied the right to
education. Recently, an estimated 15 per cent of the population is illiterate, compared
with 80 per cent in the past. While the recent advances in education may be
exaggerated, the claim that illiteracy has been virtually wiped out in the major cities
may well be true. China now has more than 1,000 colleges and universities and is
adding more at a rapid rate. Despite statistics showing Chinese adults’ literacy rate at
82.9 per cent and secondary education enrolment ratio as high as 70 per cent,
university enrolment ratio is reported to be at 5.7 per cent. Furthermore, according to
China-related statistics, only 3.5 per cent of the population have a college degree and
only less than 2 per cent of the entire population has completed post-secondary or
higher education (EIU, 1999).
China needs highly trained and highly educated individuals who can work in a
dynamic domestic and global marketplace. Under the centrally planned system, the
curricula in different universities were not associated to diversification in response to
China changing economic needs and scenario. In most of the Chinese universities,
many of the disciplines were very narrowly defined because these institutions were
responsible for the job-assignment of graduates. At present, the situation is changing
and a broadening of the curricula and phase out of the job assignment system has
taken place (Surowski, 2001). However, this old approach has left too specifics subject
matter minutia negatively affecting originality and diversity of those subjects
(Hin, 1998). In particular, as China started its transformation to a market economy only
in the 1990s, modern-conceived education – specifically in the business sector – it is
very much in its infancy state (Kleinmann and Lu, 2005).
The increasingly fast development of the higher education system has totally
changed the national higher education system from an elitist to a mass one.
The remarkable growth of enrolment rate would not occur if higher education reforms
had not been introduced by the government. Those reforms have integrated
commercialisation, decentralisation of higher education control and expansion of
enrolment. In the perspective of attempting to achieve a certain calibre of preparation
in the local workforce, the Chinese Government has planned to attract input and
resources from top-level foreign educational institutions to overcome the problem.
 However, different sorts of challenges have taken place due to the reluctance of foreign Education and
institutions to participate without the ability to ensure the integrity of their programs, human resources
to protect their copyrighted materials, and to make a profit (Cremer, 2006; Wu and
Zheng, 2008). management
Despite the issues arising from the educational problem, it should be noticed that
the government attitude demonstrates awareness and at least represents a positive
step forward compared with the recent past. In fact, despite clear signs of the low 189
quality of labour during the last few years, the government believed that the bottleneck
in raising the quality of its people lay in funding. Although this increase in funding
failed to produce a fast short-term improvement, it nonetheless confirmed that it is
better to promote quality improvement initiatives through human resource systems
and practices. As a result, the government promulgated a certain number of laws in
order to liberalise the market and this change allowed foreign invested enterprises
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(FIEs) to have a certain amount of freedom in the matter of training or educational

programmes. FIEs had the possibility to create their own training institutions or
assessment centres and the government was supporting external initiatives from other
countries to create vocational training to meet market needs (EIU, 1999).
One of the solutions to face the problem is to have more MBAs that can fulfil MCNs’
demand for high-talented candidates. In 1991, seven MBA programmes were reported to
exist in China. In 2000, 57 MBAs had been created with about 9,000 graduates enrolled.
However, MBAs’ quality is often a main concern for recruiters. For this reason, some of the
programmes have been created in partnership with foreign universities to assure an
international qualitative standard such as those joint MBAs between Fudan University as
well as Tsinghua University with MIT (Pacific Bridge, 2000). Those programmes also use
China-tailored teaching material which is often rare in other MBAs.
Despite the increasing presence of foreign programs and the growing importance of
foreign MBA programs led by foreign universities in PRC (Bu and Mitchell, 1992;
Warner, 1993; Whitley et al., 2000), difficulties are still present because of the problems
associated with cultural discrepancies. Literature has reported a significant
discrepancy between foreign education and Chinese one as well as with respect to
programs imported from abroad (Bu and Mitchell, 1992; Joynt and Warner, 1996; Lau
et al., 2000). The difference is mainly related to program contents as well as to the
learning and didactic process, which is often associated with Chinese national
characteristics. As a result of the cultural discrepancy between foreign and Chinese
education system and the heavy impact of Chinese cultural values and behaviours on
current pedagogy, students develop interpersonal and management skills related to
Confucian values often colliding with western ones (Lau and Roffey, 2002). In fact,
since the early entry into primary education up to the academic one, Chinese pedagogy
bases its learning process through indoctrination and a mnemonic approach (Child,
1994; Tung, 1996). Students are not motivated to express their opinions, to raise
questions, to develop a critical and creative thinking. Assertiveness and initiative is not
promoted at all. However, the learning process is dominated by lectures and principles
and concepts indoctrination with a little or no space for students’ interaction as it was
in the past (Bu and Mitchell, 1992; Warner, 1993; Aragone, 1996).
The impact of Confucian philosophy is still strictly associated with education and
the related traditional educational methods (such as rote learning and the application of
examples) have remained largely unchanged still focusing on the acquisition
 JKIC of knowledge through rote memorisation, at the expense of creativity. This has had the
2,2 effect of limiting the nation’s development of theoretical and logical reasoning
(Yee, 1989; Littrell, 2005). Typically, Chinese classroom activities are dominated by
lectures with limited questioning or discussions since students prefer not to express
their opinions in public. The problems are more pronounced when Chinese graduates
are integrated in foreign company environments where they are faced with working
190 behaviors that are alien to them.
Realising that their rote-learning traditional educational systems are unlikely to
produce a generation of independent thinkers and doers, the Chinese have approached
educational experts from abroad to overhaul inflexible and narrowly focused programs
at academic and technical institutions. Foreign academic organisations and individuals
now participate in running such institutions. Previous China leader Jiang Zemin who
called for improved international efforts to promote human resources development had
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showed government concern for educational development. During a recent APEC

High-Level Meeting on Human Capacity Building – considering human resources as a
strategic factor for APEC exchanges and co-operation and a measure to narrow the gap
between developed and developing countries – in emphasising education, Jiang
suggested that a “learning society” should be created together with a lifelong education
system. Human resource development has attracted increasing attention from APEC
members lately as the world’s most dynamic region embraces the new economy,
featuring rapid development in the high-tech sector, particularly the internet. Official
statistics indicate that 42 per cent of APEC projects between 1993 and 2000 were aimed
at building up human resources. Chinese officials working in human resources
development hope that the meeting will inject new momentum into the world’s most
populous nation as it braces itself for international competition. “During the
modernization process, it is crucial to turn the heavy population burden into an
advantage in human resources,” said Zhang Xuezhong, China’s Minister of Personnel.
This issue is particularly significant in the lack of the high-level management talent
and the availability of people who are highly flexible and possess general personal
skills. This discrepancy brings out a big contradiction between the quality level of
human resources available at the moment in China’s economic development and the
demand and real need for highly skilled people from multinational companies willing
to extend their operations directly in China. The lack of high-performing individuals at
work resulting in poor job performance and products not meeting international-level
quality standards, are the clear sign of the seriousness of the situation.
Evidence from research has shown that the shortage of local management talent
limits the speed with which high-tech MNCs are able to localise management personnel
for their China operations (Li and Tsui, 2000). Research data have shown how in China
the labour supply for Western companies can be divided into two distinct markets.
Those two distinct markets are responsible for a main unbalance and difficulties in
recruitment and retention in the Chinese labour context. In fact, a significant pool of
unqualified labour force generated from SOEs dismissal is creating serious
unemployment concern. At the same time, those unskilled managers taken over from
local joint-venture partners may create serious staff performance concerns to foreign
joint-venture partners. Furthermore, the availability of only a restricted selection of
highly qualified technomanagement professionals may cause a high competition in the
labour market and consequent severe recruitment and retention problems.
 However, despite the fact, some scholars have evidenced how that amongst many Education and
Chinese professionals who have received remarkable technical education, only a few of human resources
them have had sufficiently good managerial training (Lau and Roffey, 2002), other ones
have highlighted China’s fast-changing business context and the new internationally management
educated generation of Chinese managers who are more open to and better acquainted
with Western management policies and practices (Warner et al., 1999).
According to local practices, in the past, managers were promoted because of their 191
loyalty to the party, without following any HR-specific policy and without selecting
them in any other way; in other words, their selection was independent from their skills
(Child, 2000; Warner, 2004). In fact, until a few years ago, the government assigned all
graduates to a pre-determined job when they left school. Young people were typically
directed towards certain professions based on early test scores and other university
exams. As a result, a proper organisational selection process was almost non-existent
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in the pre-reform era, except in government ministries and in the military.

Methodology
The methodology used was multiple case studies – three case studies for comparative
purposes – from multinational corporations from three different technology sectors.
The first company chosen was a French multinational specialised in the manufacturing
of high-tech fibres and in particular focusing on their R&D laboratories recruitment of
local talents. The second company involved was one of the main corporations in
aeronautic industry and the last one considered as a source for our empirical data was
a main player from the pharmaceutical sector. All of them are based in Beijing where
their corporate headquarters are and some of them have also branch offices or R&D
centres in coastal and western provinces of China.
Data collection was mainly based on interviews with top management and human
resource management (HRM) staff and direct observation of the selection process as
well as HRM written documents consultation. Those documents were both supplied by
the company and collected from public sources. The data-collection process included
multiple interviews as well as spontaneous conversations with company current
employees and those were conducted from November 2005 to January 2006. Interviews
with representatives from Chinese academic institutions and from the Ministry of
Education provided relevant informants to have specific empirical data about the
education development in China. The open-ended nature of interviews allowed
integrating into our expected findings further data from local informants according to
the explorative approach. The interviews were being face-to-face and conducted in
English. The interviews covered their talent pool situation and their recruitment
context in China.

Recruitment approach for local technomanagement talents

Recruiting the appropriate management workforce appears to be a key issue for
technology MNCs in a market as the Chinese one that is in dearth of top talents
possessing specific technical expertise in some technological sector as well as
international management skills and exposure. Mr Brooks HRD and Head of China
Sino-Euro Airplanes recruitment evidenced that:
The hiring process is particularly critical in China. For instance, hiring a head of Corporate
Marketing is still a challenging task for China and for this reason the function has not been
 JKIC totally localized in our company, yet. Some management functions are new in China; hence
not easy to find adequate candidates. Furthermore, you have to be sure that person you hire
2,2 knows company culture, has technical expertise in the sector and local market knowledge.
The HRD of Sino-Euro Pharma in charge of China-wide recruitment and retention
policies and practices and argued that first priority for a firm is to build a solid
foundation in finding the right people. The first priority is thus to recruit the right
192 person for the right job:
We are looking for top talents with an international mindset possessing the ability to grow
with our business.
All interviews highlighted that it is necessary for Western companies to focus on
recruitment since they need to have a pool of talented local personnel. In order to
recruit the right person, it was confirmed that a clear understanding of the market,
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technical expertise in the specific industry and international mindset were considered
to be critical as evidenced by Sino-Euro Airplanes Head of Corporate Business Unit:
Hiring the best talents “with high technical intellectual capabilities and strong leadership
skills and highly promoting a career-development oriented approach” in order to maximise
employee capability and growth as well as to align them to the company culture and business
goals.
As Ms Yang HR Manager from Sino-French Techno-systems Laboratories confirmed
that:
It is central to recruit local staff [. . .] localisation was argued to be the latest buzzword in
China. Until a few years ago, the local talent pool was not sufficiently good in China, and
hence expatriates were in great demand [. . .] Despite the local talent has grown quickly and
on certain positions today companies are capable of replacing expatriates in some technical
positions, there are still issues of concern in identifying local talents possessing both technical
k knowledge and management skills due to not adequate preparation from education.
Ms Yang evidenced that today, there are local candidates with ten years work
experience of Western companies and there is a higher level of language knowledge
and initiative taking. Recent graduates are also more open than ten years ago, and have
a better understanding of the international environment. However, coaching and
mentoring seems to be still greatly needed since the education system does not
emphasise teamwork or initiative taking and newcomers often need training to be
aligned with company cultural values – divergent from national once – and effectively
contribute to team work especially in research laboratories. Consequently, only using
local staff could be risky. In fact, some of our respondents evidenced the negative result
achieved by those foreign MNCs, which have chosen to replace all their expatriates
with local managers for cost issues. Sino-Airplanes HRD evidenced that:
Expatriates are still needed as a “trait d’union” between headquaters and the branch office in
China. Expatriates have the specific task to coach and mentor as well as to “infuse” company
corporate values and organisational practice to those local Chinese managers with excellent
market knowledge in the field and technical competencies [. . .]
Sino-Euro Airplanes HR Manager and Sino-French Techno-Systems Laboratories HRD
evidenced that only a few universities with excellence in the company-specific technical
sector might provide potentially suitable candidates and most of them from coastal area.
 As a result, recruitment of young talents does not cover the whole territory but Education and
strategically focus on a maximum of five or six universities from the most developed human resources
coastal areas, causing specific concern for their branch offices in Western provinces.
Consequently, representatives from all of our three companies evidenced their management
company’s decision to be involved in the development of academic programmes as
Ms Yang reported:
Campus networking activities and partnerships with academic institutions are very useful, 193
also in relation to the company involvement in designing and updating specific educational
programmes for company and labour market needs.
Confirming this trend, at the moment Sino-Euro Airplane is developing close tights
with top Beijing universities specialised in business and economics or in the fields of
engineering and airplane technology in order to have access to the candidates with the
potentials most suited for their industrial sector.
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However, some difficulties were also mentioned when referring to the involvement
of education institutions and organisations in recruitment policies and practices. In fact,
Sino-Euro Pharma HR Country Manager stressed the fact that:
The educational system in China needs to be reformed to provide a sufficient number of
qualified managers, but that this is likely to take time.
Currently, the educational system is reputed to not provide an effective business and
management preparation with an international orientation and structured to “develop”
individuals with the skills required to operate in a global environment – as evidenced
by the HR Manager from Sino-Euro Airplanes.
In fact, our key informants from all of our case companies evidenced that they still
rely on foreign universities with joint-programmes in China or definitely for their
programmes abroad targeting returnees and overseas Chinese despite the fact that
\some of them may no longer have appropriate knowledge of the business market
because of the fast changing Chinese market.
In relation to this scenario and related concerns and challenges for graduate
recruitment, Sino-French Techno System Laboratories Recruitment Advisor confirmed
that they have implemented a training system specifically devoted to develop recent
graduates’ management skills such as team working and corporate company culture.
As evidenced by Ms Lv, Recruitment Manager from Sino-Euro Pharma, graduates who
have joined the company after receiving “induction training” – aimed at getting them
inside company values and working environment – have the opportunity to join a
certain number of “training days” in some specific technical or managerial areas where
they have been assessed to be more in need.

Education system and recruitment in technology companies

Interviews confirmed that foreign multinationals are heavily focusing on the recruitment
process as qualified human resources are seen a crucial factor for implementing effective
competitive advantage in a fast-growing scenario as China (Plompen, 2006). Wu and
Zheng (2008) and Whiteley et al. (2000) remarked that the improvement of the quality for
the labour force is fundamental to attracting foreign investment to China in this context.
Empirical investigation in those companies evidenced that the most pressing problem in
HRM is the recruitment of the appropriate management workforce with an international
mindset confirming Grant and Devenaux (2005) empirical results showing a clear dearth
 JKIC of talented managerial workforce. In this scenario, main informants involved in our
2,2 investigation have evidenced that the current educational system is still not adequate to
international standards in capacity building of talented individuals and consequently
MNCs currently operating in China have decided to follow other options for their
recruitment of their technomanagement candidates and not always rely on local education
institutions.
194 Despite the unprecedented growth of Chinese higher education thanks to the recent
government reforms (MOE, 2007); Sino-Euro Pharma HR Country Manager stressed
the fact that the educational system in China needs to be further restructured in its
curricula to provide a sufficient number of qualified managers but however it will take
time. Undergraduate students have been selecting their area of studies according to the
demands to the labour market but also to areas traditionally popular in the China –
such as literature, engineering and traditional Chinese medicine (MOE, 2007)
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Consequently, education can be considered not to totally provide an effective

candidates with the most suitable management preparation to be fully operational in a
globalising environment. As a result, our interviews evidenced that an increasing
number of joint ventures between universities and business have been created to
reduce the gap and to provide an opportunity to prepare Chinese talents for entry level
as well as senior-level management positions. In the same way, the creation of new
university campuses with the integration of foreign academic institution has started to
provide a new path and opportunities to the development of new curricula and capacity
building of the future Chinese talents (Cremer, 2006).
As a result, China can expect to see the development of further initiatives and
reforms in the higher education sector with the involvement of the foreign and
domestic partners. The need of Chinese potential talents will be an increasingly
relevant force on the higher education scenario for multinationals and foreign academic
institutions and the education context will have to keep on creating opportunities in
relation to the:
.
Increasing evolution of relationship with Chinese universities to achieve a high
degree of quality and academic integrity.
. Collaborations with Chinese universities for academic and management
programs.
.
Increasing sophistication derived from the growing demand for qualified
individuals.

Of course, challenges are still part of this context. While the fast development of China
higher education institutions have remarkably improved access to higher education,
however there are still challenging concerns facing the Chinese Government, foreign
Higher Education providers, foreign multinational, and the whole academic
community. Our informants have highlighted the increase of graduate
unemployment in internal regions, important differences in higher education quality
provided in the coastal areas and in the western ones and the difficulty in transferring
personnel amongst regions. Those challenges cause increasing concerns specifically
for foreign high-tech organisations looking for the most suitable and talented
candidates with a specific knowledge of the local market, an international mindset and
excellent technical skills in both coastal and non-coastal areas.
 This context has evidenced how Higher Education expansion can and will play a Education and
unique role in making China’s development sustainable and providing adequate human resources
human resources to the internationalising local market.
Chinese economic transformation, the growing presence of foreign technology management
companies, and the attraction of foreign investments had exotic appeal for practitioners
and academics alike. The time has come for more attention to transforming academic
institutions that can develop and sustain the movement of ideas into practice – one 195
being higher education.
This paper has merely reported cursory information and highlighted the
educational development in China vs technology foreign corporation’s recruitment
approach. More research and more collaboration are obviously needed. Hopefully,
the issues summarized above will raise both the awareness and the energy to accelerate
this evolution.
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About the author

Serena Rovai, is currently Director of the Uni-Italia Centre in Beijing – a joint
Academic Program by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Italian Ministry of
Education and University, Italy-China Foundation, Chinese Embassy – focusing
on innovation and internationalization of universities and academic institutions.
Professor Serena Rovai is also a Professor and Consultant in IHRM and
cross-cultural management. She holds a doctoral degree in Business
Administration. She is part of the Faculty at Grenoble Ecole de Management
in France, one of the top 20 business schools in Europe. She had also been teaching at the
University of International Business and Economics – UIBE – in Beijing cross-cultural
management. She has been designing and delivering executive training programs for Fortune
500’ clients and international institutions in China for the past seven years – Philip Morris,
Am-Cham, Nokia amongst the others – and abroad – ISPI Milan, University of Memphis,
University of Dallas, University of Indiana – in international HRM, cross-cultural management,
leadership and China business and management. She is also supporting foreign companies
development in China and Chinese executives in corporate image and presentation skills as well
as international management skills through her consulting company Anantara. She is regularly
conducting research on IHRM and cross-cultural issues in China associated to Peking University
Glorad Research Centre and chairing academic conferences and forums. Her papers have been
published in management journals such as The International Journal of Human Resources
Development, IO Management Magazine, Economia e Management (SDA Bocconi University)
and presented to international conferences such as the IAMOT, EIASM HR Workshop, IESE
Globalisation and MNCs Conference, EFMD, CAMOT. She had been living in different countries
in the Middle East before coming to China nine years ago. She speaks Mandarin fluently
amongst other languages. Serena Rovai can be contacted at: serenarovai@yahoo.com

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