From October 2002 until July 2004 I was employed on this EPSRC-funded research project, working with the principle investigators Andrew Millington and Barry Wilkinson at the School of Management, University of Bath. We carried out exploratory research concerning foreign manufacturing MNC subsidiaries in China, focusing on these firms' experiences with the localisation of component and/or raw material sourcing, human resource management and with formal versus informal channels of information dissemination among other issues. During 2003 I was based in Shanghai, interviewing over 80 US and UK-invested manufacturing MNEs, primarily in the greater Yangtse River Delta area (Shanghai, Wuxi, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing), but also in Beijing, Tianjin and the Pearl River Delta (Guangzhou, Shenzhen).
In April 2004 I returned to Shanghai to organise a feedback conference for the firms which participated in the survey, more than 40 of which sent representatives. Keynote speakers included the General Manager of Supply China from Cadbury Schweppes (China) and the Director for Manufacturing Supply from GlaxoSmithKline (China). A feedback report disseminated to participating firms can be found here.
The following papers from this project are published in academic journals:
(1) 'On the Performance of Chinese State-Owned and Private Enterprises: the View from Foreign-Invested Enterprises', with A. Millington and B. Wilkinson, Journal of General Management 32(1), pp.65-80, Autumn 2006.
(2) 'Guanxi and supplier search mechanisms in China’, with B. Wilkinson and A. Millington, Human Relations 59(4), pp.505-531, April 2006.
(3) 'Supplier Performance and Sourcing Channel Selection in China', with A. Millington and B. Wilkinson, International Journal of Operations and Production Management 26(2), pp.185-201, March 2006.
(4) 'Human Resource Barriers to Partnership Sourcing in China', with J. McLaren, A. Millington and B. Wilkinson, International Journal of Human Resource Management 16(10), pp.105-119, October 2005.
(5) 'Gift Giving, Guanxi and Illicit Payments in Buyer-Supplier Relations in China: Analysing the Experience of UK Companies', with J. McLaren, A. Millington, and B. Wilkinson, Journal of Business Ethics 57(3), pp.255-268, March 2005.
(6) 'Multiple Forces in Component Localisation in China', with J. McLaren, A. Millington, and B. Wilkinson, European Management Journal 22(3), pp.290-303, June 2004.