Premium
Personnel Discipline and Industrial Relations on the Railways of Republican China
Author(s) -
Morgan Stephen L.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
australian journal of politics and history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.123
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1467-8497
pISSN - 0004-9522
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8497.00217
Subject(s) - china , bureaucracy , administration (probate law) , work (physics) , stock (firearms) , business , capital (architecture) , engineering , economy , public administration , transport engineering , management , political science , economics , law , geography , mechanical engineering , archaeology , politics
The Chinese National Railways of Republican China (1912‐37) had a personnel administration the equal of any of the major railway systems of the period. Railways require a sophisticated personnel bureaucracy to train, monitor and enforce codes of conduct which would ensure the safety of passengers, freight and the huge investment in rolling stock and fixed capital. Only the military had previously administrative structures approaching the modern railway companies, the first modern business to organise on such a scale large numbers of employees over vast geographic areas. In China the railway introduced not only a new transport technology but also played a major role in creating the new industrial working class through the regimes of work and discipline their administration created. Drawing on neglected railway personnel archives, this paper examines the work organisation and structures of discipline that governed the working day of Chinese railway employees.