Culture and Ethics in Global HRD: The Case of China and Taiwan

Recent theorizing research revealed the causality of HRD through a typology of HRD host systems on a continuum from open to closed governance (Wang and Doty, Human Resource Development Review, 2022). It is the governance structure of the host institutional systems (HIS) that determines HRD functionality and objectives. HRD causality entails several critical research questions on the topics of (national) culture, ethics, and their relationship with the HIS and functional roles of HRD. First, what is culture’s role in the HRD causality, and in Global HRD’s functionality? Second, what is the role of ethics in the HRD causality? Given the HIS predefined values and belief, is there a set of ethical standards to gauge all HRD professional's ethical conduct as suggested by the mainstream HRD literature? If not, how can HRD professionals deal with the different ethical standards under different HISs in a global setting? This chapter takes a historical case-based approach to exploring China and Taiwan’s contrasting host institutional systems (HIS). Because both societies are rooted in the seemingly identical Confucian culture, but operating in the opposite HIS systems for HRD, respectively, such an approach may derive findings generalizable to describe and explain global HRD practices in a broader landscape, such as North and South Korea, and historically East and West Germanys with identical cultural roots. As a result, this chapter derives five sets of research propositions to inform and guide future research and theorizing efforts in HRD culture and ethics-related inquiries. While our propositions may be counter-intuitive to the mainstream HRD, they offer salient implications for HRD theory, research, and practice in globalization vs. decoupling.