Research On Career Insecurity Of Chinese Expatriates:Content,Measurement And Influence

With the continuous advancement of the going-global strategy and the Belt and Road initiative,the internationalization process of Chinese enterprises continues to accelerate.The expatriates are the guarantee for enterprises to carry out business smoothly in overseas markets and achieve the goal of international development.In terms of career development,an important reason or motivation for expatriates to work abroad is to gain experience and promotion opportunities.However,studies have found that expatriates often face career development dilemmas and challenges such as man-post mismatch,lack of career promotion space and forced change of career path after repatriation.As they need to undergo many changes of work factors in the process of assignment,expatriates are faced with many uncertain factors of career development,which easily leads to the sense of insecurity in career development.Career insecurity,as a common phenomenon,is bound to have a significant impact on individuals and organizations under the background of boundary-free career and changeable career with fierce competition and increasing instability.Career insecurity is a key factor affecting the level and quality of employees’ career development.It can cause stress and emotional exhaustion,increase turnover intention and career switching behavior,reduce career satisfaction and commitment,and have a negative effect on the effective allocation of human resources and the career growth of young talents.Although career insecurity is considered as an important research object in the field of career life,it is still relatively poorly studied.Especially the lack of understanding and research on the uncertainty and insecurity that employees will face in the career development process under the situation of expatriation.One of the important reasons is the lack of in-depth research results on the structural dimensions and measurement tools of expatriate career insecurity.This makes it impossible for scholars to fully understand the impact and internal mechanism of career insecurity on expatriate employees and multinational enterprises.In addition,the current academic research on career management of expatriates is mainly based on western samples,and the research on career management of expatriates in Chinese enterprises is still in the exploratory stage.In view of the complexity and risk of international human resource management,it is very important to explore international human resource management methods with Chinese characteristics for the survival and success of Chinese multinational enterprises in overseas markets.Therefore,it is necessary to conduct an in-depth study on the career management of Chinese expatriates in the context of Chinese expatriate enterprises.This paper explores the career of our country enterprise international expatriates insecurity content structure and its external effect and mechanism of sending personnel and assigning tasks,the staff career development of Chinese situation of insecurity scale,in order to enrich our country abroad in the field of management and career management theory research and provide reference for our country enterprise internationalized talent management.Firstly,this paper conducts exploratory research on the content and impact of career insecurity of Chinese employees in the context of international assignment.On the basis of literature research,and through the 36 Chinese enterprise international expatriates semi-structured interviews and open questionnaire to collect qualitative data,follow the basic paradigm of grounded theory qualitative data coding,in-depth analysis of the expatriates career development characteristic,to build the concept model of expatriates career insecurity,Moreover,the article elaborates on the unique interpretation of the content structure of career insecurity of employees in the context of Chinese enterprises’ expatriation.This paper preliminarily identifies and clarifies the influence path and function relationship of expatriates’ job withdrawal,and constructs the influence theoretical model of expatriates’ career insecurity as the core.The exploratory research results are the cornerstone of the follow-up research of this paper and provide theoretical basis and direction guidance for the follow-up theoretical and empirical research.Secondly,based on the results of exploratory research,this paper further confirms the content structure of career insecurity of expatriates through semi-structured interviews,and clarifies the three-dimensional structure of career insecurity of in Chinese expatriates.At the same time,the initial scale of career insecurity of Chinese expatriates was formed by integrating primary qualitative research materials and literature.Subsequently,according to the psychological measurement questionnaire development and testing procedures,and through the receipt sample data of questionnaire survey method,a 15-item career insecurity measurement scale of expatriates was developed to provide theoretical basis and measurement tools for subsequent research.Then,on the basis of exploratory research on above conclusion,this paper combined with the resources conservation theory and the viewpoint of social cognitive theory and content,construct Chinese expatriates career effect of insecurity and potential impact mechanism model,and delves into the expatriates career insecurity rather than the intrinsic relations between work behavior,This paper proposes and verifies the chain double mediating mechanism between career self-efficacy and job burnout.Due to work requirements,international expatriates have to undergo many changes in key elements of career development,such as job role and working environment,during their career development,which leads to high uncertainty in career development and career insecurity.According to resource conservation theory and social cognition theory,individuals continuously change their own cognition and behavior in order to manage and balance internal and external resources and pressures in response to situational pressures.Focusing on expatriates career development,this paper studies found that expatriates career insecurity can lead to reduce individual career self-efficacy and lead to job burnout,forming"career self-efficacy decline-burnout increases" the chain reaction,causing the individual work behavior.The research results effectively reveal the influence mechanism of career insecurity on job withdrawal behavior of expatriates in the context of Chinese enterprises.In addition,the moderating effects of organizational career management perception and individual career locus of control on the relationship between career insecurity and job withdrawal behavior of expatriates were also investigated.From the organizational level,in the complex situation of international assignment,supportive measures provided by the organization are helpful for expatriates to adapt to the expatriation and repatriation,and successfully achieve the phased goals of career development.Therefore,when the organization’s career management perception is high,it is more conducive for expatriates to deal with the risks and threats in the career development process,and weaken the negative impact of career insecurity.However,when the organizational career management perception is low,the expatriates will feel more isolated and helpless,which makes the negative impact of career insecurity more significant.The empirical results of this study show that the organizational career management perception has a moderating effect on the direct effect of career insecurity on job withdrawal behavior of expatriates and the mediating effect of career self-efficacy and burnout.From the individual level,the individual career locus of control is an important factor in the career development process of expatriates.Employees with internal-controlling career development personality tend to rely on their own knowledge and ability to deal with career issues,while employees with external-controlling career development personality tend to rely on external forces and relationship resources to achieve career development goals.In the expatriate career situation with high uncertainty,expatriates with internal-control career development personality tend to rely on their own ability and have stronger control over their career development process,so they are less affected by the negative impact of expatriate career insecurity.On the other hand,expatriates with external-control career development personality are accustomed to external resources and forces,so they are strongly affected by uncertainties and unstable factors in the career development process of expatriates.The empirical results of this study show that individual career sources of control have a moderating effect on both the direct impact of career insecurity on job withdrawal behavior of expatriate employees and the mediating effect of career self-efficacy.Finally,based on the theoretical and empirical research results of this thesis,the researcher put forward countermeasures and suggestions to effectively deal with the problems and challenges of career development in the context of international assignment from the enterprise level and the individual level respectively.In addition,the limitations and deficiencies of this thesis are summarized and analyzed,and the future research direction is prospected.