State and Knowledge Production: Industrial Relations Scholarship under Chinese Capitalism

Enying Zheng and Simon Deakin

Working Papers from Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge

Abstract: We use the evolution of industrial relations scholarship in China to study the role of the state in the process of knowledge production. In the course of the last decade the policy of the Chinese state has shifted from promoting a flexible labour market as part of an export-led growth strategy, to addressing problems of growing labour unrest. This shift has, however, yet to be reflected in research and teaching of industrial relations. Drawing on an archive of over 7,000 articles published in Chinese-language journals, we show that the industrial relations field has failed to cohere in China as it did in North America and Western Europe in response to similar pressures in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Chinese research on labour issues is divided between a practice-orientated human resource management literature and a sociological approach which is isolated from practice and policy. We explain this pattern in terms of the distinctive nature of Chinese capitalism, which manages to be simultaneously state-encompassed yet individualistic, leaving little space for the collective institutions of civil society which have been the focus of industrial relations research in the West.

Keywords: Encompassing state; knowledge production; industrial relations; management education; civil society (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J41 J83 K31 O43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna and nep-knm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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