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Employee Involvement in the Age of Marketization

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Industrial Democracy in the Chinese Aerospace Industry

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Abstract

Involving employees at work is the best practice within technology sectors and provides aerospace professionals opportunities to exhibit voice behaviour concerning any work issues. Though there is no legal framework in China regarding employee involvement as in the European Union, aerospace conglomerates AVIC, CASC, CASIC and COMAC have utilized since the 1980s various managerial techniques to involve employees; these techniques include suggestions and ideas from employee surveys as well as PDCA and six sigma, employee evaluation of top management and share ownership schemes that involve core employees financially. They yield moral involvement within a Confucian society as employees are obliged to reciprocate gesture of benevolence.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    He wrote that (1970: 30) “Voice is here defined as any attempt at all to change, rather than to escape from, an objectionable state of affairs…”.

  2. 2.

    The Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) was first used in the USA during the 1950s; it was a dynamic scheduling approach to incorporate work items into a flow chart. The Chinese aerospace industry adopted the approach in the early 1960s.

  3. 3.

    Chinese scientists at the time were devastated since China was economically at the brink of bankruptcy and encountered severe food shortage; there was a sense that the team did not live up to the expectation of the country. Nevertheless, they established the failure was linked to general design flaws that compromised the engine structure (Shi et al. 2012: 278).

  4. 4.

    Some researchers and engineers were purged during the Cultural Revolution, and their work had been affected by the historical event. Hence, the testing summed up their achievement out of the chaotic period.

  5. 5.

    Quality circles were introduced to US aerospace firms Lockheed and Honeywell in 1974, and were introduced to China in 1987.

  6. 6.

    The satellite was to be sent into space by the Changzheng 3B carrier rocket.

  7. 7.

    The corporate mission echoed the mission of economic reformers during the late 19th century, including the Self-Strengthening Movement. The concept of Rich Country and Strong Army is not an outwardly aggressive vision; it could be considered as legitimate goals for a historic nation that has perceived itself as the Middle Kingdom.

  8. 8.

    See http://www.avic.com/big5/cxyfz/shzl/zlgl/index.shtml, accessed on 25 July 2016.

  9. 9.

    CALT is a R&D and production complex within CASC.

  10. 10.

    See ‘Honeywell eyes boost from jet project’, Shanghai Daily, 18 November 2009.

  11. 11.

    The reform standardized the wide range of salaries among leadership group in SOEs.

  12. 12.

    Worker cooperative refers to a group of individuals working in a firm who own and manage operate it.

  13. 13.

    Local legislations included Temporary Stipulations on Internal Employees Stock Ownership in SOEs in Shenzhen City (1997).

  14. 14.

    Some argued that as firms purchased the shares from the stock exchange, employee share ownership could stabilize share price at a time of falling share prices.

  15. 15.

    Rén relates to benevolence, Yì relates to righteousness or doing things right while Lĭ means proper rite or reasonableness.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Henley Business School, University of Reading, Henley-on-Thames, United Kingdom

    Denise Tsang

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Tsang, D. (2017). Employee Involvement in the Age of Marketization. In: Industrial Democracy in the Chinese Aerospace Industry. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58023-8_4

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