The three papers by Xin Liu, Hangling Liu, and Brenda Sun demonstrate the broad tent that LERA provides for those interested in understanding changing labor markets. The first paper can be classified as a personnel study and the other two as organizational behavior research. They provide the reader with a glimpse of internal labor markets in China. Let us review some of the characteristics of the Chinese labor market before my discussion of the three papers. Among its characteristics are the following First, there has been continuous change from the "iron rice bowl" provided by state owned enterprises (SOEs) with guaranteed employment, low productivity, wages based on personal connections and longevity, benefits from the firm or union in the form of housing, medical care, jobs for family members, and retirement benefits. The change is to privately owned enterprises (POEs) that emphasize accountability, efficiency, and productivity. Second, there is a very large redundant labor force in the SOEs, coupled with a continuation of the SOEs. Third, there is no national social security system with national oversight but rather a questionable system of a combination of retirement benefits from SOEs and other government agencies and retirement funds administered by local government agencies with contributions from employers and workers. Fourth, there has been transformation of the management function from little accountability in the SOEs to more managerial accountability in both the SOEs and POEs. Managing traditionally has been a top-down function with managers having no training in modern management techniques. Both managers and workers are owners in the Chinese socialist system, and individual workers' rights have been secondary to the needs of the state. Human resources management (HRM) meant the administration of government regulations with little use of Western HRM techniques. Fifth, the relationship between employer and employee has changed from lifetime employment to a contractual relationship. Sixth, there is an increasing use of "dispatched workers." "Dispatched workers" are not employees of the company nor employees of the dispatching agency, and they do not have benefits from either organization. Seventh, a trade union movement, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), which was a transmission belt for transmitting government objectives to the work force at the factory level, is slowly changing into an organization representing the workers.

     The objectives of the three papers by Xin Liu, Hanling Liu, and Brenda Sun all reflect the realities of the Chinese labor market, particularly the shift to efficiency, accountability, and the role of management. The paper by Xin Liu provides insight into the interesting implications of the end of the "iron rice bowl" for Chinese social service organizations (CSSOs) and the reform of their human resources systems. CSSOs are government organizations but they are neither state owned or private. CSSOs include universities, research institutes, health care, sports, publishing, agriculture and forestry agencies, utilities, transportation, weather forecasting, oceanography, radio and television, government organizations, and social welfare agencies. These institutions employ more than three million employees, half of whom are in education and have received very little attention from researchers. Management has not been equipped for managing under a new market-oriented system, and employees in the CSSOs have resisted reforms promulgated by the central government. The central government is wary of unemployment of the redundant labor force, and dismissals are not allowed in the CSSOs; rather, surplus workers have to be absorbed within the CSSO. This is an interesting case study in a labor market sector that has received very little notice in the English language publications. The author suggests using the private sector model for changing HRM systems in CSSOs. I am skeptical, however, about how useful this model would be in the public sector. Western countries have many differences in the legislation and HR practices of the public and private sectors. A more detailed definition of the difference between SOEs and CSSOs would help the reader, and case studies of specific agencies would give the reader more insight into this labor market. A number of case studies from different agencies could be compared and contrasted for the characteristics that lead to success or failure in bringing about reforms.

     Hangling Liu's paper (based on her master's thesis) provides insight into the importance of Chinese culture in internal labor markets through an examination of the threat of punishment as a form of motivation in two firms with highly skilled employees who have employment alternatives. She states that high-tech firms in China have received considerable attention from researchers since they have been the quickest to adopt Western management practices. The other two papers in the symposium also mention the threat of punishment as a method for dealing with a labor force that has not had to respond to market forces. To this reader the examination of punishment as a source of motivation is quite different from the Western human relations and organizational behavior literature, which has focused on rewards. Liu argues that punishment and reward are symmetrical parts of performance and have a long history in Chinese culture. She says that since decision-making customs in China are very sensitive to differences in status, Chinese workers, as a relatively less powerful group when contrasted with management, may be more likely to accept punishment and have a more positive attitude toward its use. The two companies she looks at are multinational firms (MNCs) with a total of 2,300 employees. Both firms have formal and very frequent performance appraisals. The use of monthly and bi-annual appraisals in these firms is quite different from the performance reviews discussed in the Western HR literature. Starting in the 1970s Western HR literature has emphasized the "Japanese model," which includes infrequent and long-term performance appraisals of firms, managers, and employees rather than the earlier Western model of short-term goal setting and frequent appraisals of both managers and employees. Liu surveyed 200 employees in both companies and received 104 useable surveys. The survey was not random but sent by friends who were working in the two companies since neither company would cooperate with the survey. The ten items used included four items based on the literature and six with no explanation of their origin. The author found that threat had a negative impact on motivation. This reader is skeptical of whether the results can be generalized based on how the sample was obtained and its small size—the total number of surveys represented less than ten percent of the population, with a smaller number returned. The respondents were also in different occupations such as sales, sales engineers, team leaders, and department managers. However, they were all treated as if they were in the same occupation. Liu does point out that there are differences in the companies concerning how different occupations are appraised. Managers are appraised and rewarded or punished based on the attainment of a team-based target, while nonmanagers had individual targets and individual rewards or punishment.

     The paper by Brenda Sun is taken from her dissertation and reports on her extensive experience observing a steel manufacturer with more than 20,000 employees that was transforming itself from an SOE into a modern, competitive firm. As in the previous paper by Hangling Liu, there was also a threat in this firm, not of individual punishment but of domestic and global competition that could lead to a decline and possible bankruptcy of the steel conglomerate. The largest part of her paper is devoted to a review of the literature on motivation and work behavior. One of Sun's contributions is that she has taken Western research and related it to Chinese culture. Management, for example, is reported as making a strong attempt to socialize its workforce into meeting the firm's goals by expressing them with the term yishi, meaning awareness, consciousness, and alertness. She also translates the firm's survival strategy into the Chinese classical literature. Her model and the results of the testing of her model of adaptive motivation are reported toward the end of the paper. Among her findings are that employees increased their motivation to adapt as a result of employment and wage reforms and organizational commitment is important in explaining adaptive motivation. The author proposes a new "theory" related to a world of uncertainty. I would have been less heroic and spoken about some hypotheses to be tested for consistency by additional studies and new data.

     I suggest that the three authors consider the LERA audience and scholars likely to be drawn to the LERA literature as they revise their papers. This could include a considerable reduction in their reviews of the organizational behavior literature and expansion of the labor market activities of the Chinese organizations they examined, particularly the uniqueness of these firms' HR activities as related to Chinese characteristics. The three authors are in the special position of being able to inform Western audiences of what is happening in the internal labor markets of Chinese firms. Sun, for example, presented a very interesting figure to the audience that attended the symposium that illustrated the internal labor market strategy of the steel company as it restructured while attempting to keep its work force. This is similar to the earlier Japanese experience and quite different from the British and U.S. experiences. There are case studies of how the steel firms in Germany, Great Britain, Japan, and the United States restructured in the 1970s and 1980s, and it would be interesting to compare the more recent Chinese experience with the strategies previously undertaken by steel companies in these other countries.