Susan E. Jackson

As China shifts its development model from focusing on economic growth at all costs to a model in which economic growth is balanced with solving pressing societal and environmental problems, there is an increasing need for management research on building sustainable organizations in China. This collection of papers focuses attention on the role of business in promoting sustainable economic development, highlighting a number of key processes including: the factors that foster transparency and CSR reporting, how stakeholders can influence corporations to abandon their CSR commitments, the benefits of environmental branding and labeling, and the antecedents and performance consequences of proactive environmental strategies. In this introductory essay we reflect on recent trends in sustainability research in China, and to encourage this important movement, provide recommendations for future research directions.

The field of strategic human resource management (HRM) has a long and rich tradition. As a prelude to our description of the field's history, we provide an expansive definition of strategic HRM scholarship and offer an aspirational framework for strategic HRM scholarship that captures the multidisciplinary nature of the field. We then systematically review and critique three decades of strategic HRM theory and research, paying particular attention to the value of HRM systems as management tools for influencing a wide variety of outcomes of concern to internal (employees and their managers) and external (owners, customers, society, other organizations) stakeholders. In support of continued advancement of the empirical knowledge base of strategic HRM, we encourage new research that embraces systems thinking, more fully addresses the concerns of multiple stakeholders, and strives for greater practical usefulness by addressing significant problems such as managing innovation and environmental sustainability.