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The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong

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The impact of globalization on career development in China


Author : Lau, V. P.; Wong, Y. Y.; Hsu, Y. S.; Shaffer, M. A.
Category : Conference Paper
Department :
Year / Month : 2011
Source : China Global Talent Conference, Guangzhou, China.

Abstract

    Globalization has often been described as a double-edged sword because it has given rise to both opportunities and challenges, which has also been the situation of global careers in contemporary China. After Deng Xiaoping's open-door policy to the West in the 1980s, the environmental changes in China have been tremendous, including those from political, economic, technological, socio-cultural, and legal/labor aspects. Under such circumstances, the emergence of private firms with foreign investment has also resulted in the penetration of contemporary career concepts, such as boundaryless and protean careers, to China. These career concepts are essentially clashed against traditional Chinese culture. However, as the socio-cultural environment has become more dynamic, the relevance of contemporary career concepts to the local career system has become versatile as well. To analyze these phenomena of global careers from a critical perspective, we draw on anxiety and uncertainty management (AUM) theory and develop two new concepts, globalization shock and globalization adjustment, to characterize the challenges of global careers in China. We also provide two contrasting cases that recently occurred in China, namely the NBA superstar Yao Ming and Foxconn's local workers, to demonstrate the double-edged sword nature of globalization and its impact on global careers in China. We believe that this study provides practical and theoretical contributions to both the international business and the career literature, and lays groundwork for these areas of research in future.