Innovation and Change in a socialist-market organizational context, the case of pharmaceutical R&D in China

When?

Wednesday 16 May 2012, 14:30 to 16:00

Where?

75MS02

Open to:

Public, Staff, Students

Biography

Dr Graham Hollinshead is Reader in International and Comparative Human Resource Management at the University of Hertfordshire Business School, UK. He holds a D.Phil (Organisational Transition in Central and Eastern Europe) from the University of the West of England (2007) an M.Sc  in Industrial Relations and Personnel Management from the London School of Economics and Political Science (1978) and is a Fellow of the Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) (2006). His current research interests relate to the international sourcing of business services and innovation, politics and power in multinational corporations and international and comparative human resource management.

Abstract

Through a case study based investigation of a recently established R&D (research and development) facility of a western owned pharmaceutical corporation based in Shanghai, China, we peer into the ‘black box’ of organizational determinants of high performance and innovatory behaviour in a hybridized East/West venture. Much has been written about the ‘resource based view’ of the firm and ‘dynamic capabilities’, and we expose unique capability combinations in a fledgling enterprise whose continued existence depends upon the need to innovate, and whose staff resource relies upon an optimal combination of ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ scientific and managerial reservoirs of skill. As ‘fast cycle’ development is at a premium in the sector, the corporation has engaged in international relocation of its R&D function in order to draw upon an extraordinary work ethic and desire to ‘win’ exhibited by Chinese organizational actors. Through interviews with senior and middle managers and scientists, our study casts light upon the embedded and path dependent nature of capabilities in international ventures, as well as unearthing organizational complexities and tensions associated with the ‘socialist-market’ model in practice at the level of the workplace.