A Dispute over a Pay Raise in Company F

Company F, founded in 2002, started off as a lift equipment trader and expanded to manufacturing in 2008. By 2010, it had become the third largest complete crane solutions provider in the Chinese market in terms of market share. The company’s staff also increased from 30 to over 150. In addition to its fast-growing crane business, Company F started project W01 in partnership with one of the world’s leading automobile manufacturers. Because the W01 project was of great strategic importance to Company F, Zhang Jianshe was brought in as F’s Assistant General Manager and placed in charge of the project. Zhang found out that Wang Xiaohu, a potential Quality Insurance Engineer critical for this project, might leave the company soon. In order to retain this person, Zhang requested that his boss, the General Manager of the company, offer Wang a big raise. The proposal unexpectedly resulted in a dispute among the senior managers, reflecting different perspectives on the following key issues: 1) the strategic alignment between business success and talent management; 2) coordination between business units and the HR department regarding how to prioritize personnel issues; and 3) how to improve individual managers’ management capability in a fast-developing company.