Abstract
Raymond Miles introduced the term ‘human resources' in 1965 after the evidence that human beings and human relations were changing in the company's environment. Human resources is considered as an ‘umbrella' gathering several different approaches rather than a single theory. All these approaches have in common the idea that human resources management ‘recognizes the vital role that human resources play in organization' (Schuler, 1987). In deed, ‘human resources management is a modern term for what has traditionally been referred o as personnel administration or personnel management' (Byars and Rue, 1987). In order to understand the importance of human resources management and to see how it is influenced by cultures and nations, we are going to compare two situations in two really different countries such as France and China. The cultural gap between those two countries is wide, and the way how people are managed as a factor of production differs depending on the social culture of each of these countries.
