Bulletin Number Three 1985

industry, the garment and textile industry and the toy industry. From the data obtained so far, th e following observations could be made: 1. Factors which affect the industria l relations of Hong Kong industries include: monetary and financial factors, physical/environmental factors, socio-psychological factors, power- psychological factors, outside assistance factors. 2. Some factors are more or less common to all the industries, e.g. monetary and financial factors, such as wages, benefits and allowance, and socio-psychological factors, such as management's attitude towards the workers and fellowship among the workers themselves. These factors are considered essential for good industrial relations. 3. Some factors are more emphasized by th e majority of the workers in certain industries, e.g. power-psychological factors such as the right to participative management seem to be more emphasized by the workers in the electronics industry. Physical-environmental factors such as easier and more convenient work are more preferred by workers in the plastic industry. 4. The degree of emphasis on certain factors by the workers seems to be affected by their age, sex ， and education. One important general trend is that younger and more educated workers are more aggressive for participative management and for working rights. Male workers are more eager for power and rights than female workers. 5. Opinions of workers on certain outside assistance factors varied from industry to industry, and from one category of workers to another. Most workers generally though t that government legislation is useful in shaping better industrial relations. The Labour Department was thought to be somewhat helpful. Pressure groups were considered not effective in affecting the industrial relations. Opinions on the unions varied: some considered that unions have great potential, and some were not interested in union activities. Not many, however, thought that unions are weak. 6. A delicate 'pendulum' situation exists among the workers, the managers and the unions. The workers have no specific affinity or hatred towards the managers or th e unions. This seems to indicate that both the managers and the unions would have a chance to win the workers over to their side. This would depend on the attraction or repulsion forces exerted by the managers or the unions in satisfying the needs and desires of the worker s in terms of the critical factors mentioned above. 7. In the face o f the world economic changes, competition from neighbouring countries, and Hong Kong's own socio-economic changes , the four major industries have to introduce more modem technology in their production process. This would lead to a higher demand for younger and better educated workers, not only in the electronics industries, bu t also in other traditionally 'simple' industries like the plastic industry. Managers of these traditional industries, which have been enjoying relatively ‘peaceful' industrial relations by taking advantage of the older and less educated workers, will then have to seriously rethin k their strategies and policies for handling industrial relations matters. Part of the findings have been published in international and foreign journals, in English and Japanese. Chinese Enterprise Management in Transition —Nyaw Mee-kau China has undergone a very profound economic reform since 1978. A series of sweeping changes has been taking place i n the industrial enterprises which are located mainly in the cities. This project, supported by a research grant from the Centre for Contemporary Asian Studies, focuses on the managerial aspects of the state-owned enterprises. It was recognized tha t enterprise management is not off limit in China's drive to modernize her industry (one of the four modernizations). So far two papers have bee n completed, i.e. 'Industrial Reorganization and Integration of Enterprises in Post-Mao China', and 'Developments in Managerial Decision-Making in Chinese Industrial Enterprises', the latter of which was jointly written with Dr. John S. Henley o f the Department o f Business Studies, University of Edinburgh. These two papers were presented at the Third International Workshop on Capitalist-Socialist Organizations in Helsinki, Finland, August 1984 ， and the Conference on the Enterprise and Management in East Asia organized by the Asia-Pacific Region of Organization Studies (AFROS) in Hong Kong, January 1985, respectively. In both studies, a clear trend was detected that China has abandoned ideological extremism in favour of economic, managerial and technological rationality in the process of industrial readjustment and reform. In the first paper, 'Industrial Reorganization and Integration of Enterprises', the author (1) probes RECENT DEVELOPMENTS 21