Line and HR executives' perceptions of HR effectiveness in firms in the People's Republic of China

This paper examines the differences in perceptions of the importance and ef fectiveness of human resources (HR) practices in firms operating in the Peo ple's Republic of China. The major finding is that while there are no signi ficant differences between HR and line executives' perceptions of the impor tance of each functional area in human resource management (HRM), there are significant differences between line and HR executives' perceptions of the effectiveness of these areas. Line and HR executives both view the issue of securing, developing and main taining human resources as a critical issue for the execution of daily oper ations and long-term strategic plans. However, line executives perceive HR performance effectiveness as significantly lower in these functional areas than HR executives do. Therefore, HR departments are not meeting the perfor mance expectations of line executives. There are three possible reasons for the poor performance of HR departments . First, government intervention may limit HR departments' ability to act s trategically. Second, HR departments may not have enough power to act strat egically. Third, HR departments may have few capabilities to respond to lin e executives' demands.