Boundaryless career orientation and Internet professionals' grievance strategies: evidence from China
ISSN: 0142-5455
Article publication date: 31 October 2023
Issue publication date: 28 August 2024
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to examine the role of boundaryless career orientation in influencing Internet professionals' strategies toward workplace problems in China's Internet companies, which feature prominent problems including excessive overwork. It addresses one question: how do Chinese Internet professionals make grievance strategies?
Design/methodology/approach
This article draws on qualitative data based on semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 134 employees from 6 representative Chinese Internet companies. The data were collected during 2018-2021 and analyzed with a grounded theory approach.
Findings
This article highlights the role of boundaryless career orientation in explaining Chinese Internet professionals' strategies toward workplace grievances. The author develops a comprehensive model to illustrate how boundaryless career orientation influences four grievance strategies namely, strategic compliance, exit, dissent expression and resistance that correspond to four different motives to advance the professionals' boundaryless career: learning, transferring, relieving and resolving. Internet professionals choose different grievance strategies based on how each option can benefit their boundaryless career goals.
Originality/value
This article is one of the first to bring in boundaryless career orientation as a key factor in explaining Chinese Internet professionals' grievance strategies. It provides a fuller picture than previous studies by showing wide varieties of professionals' grievance behaviors. The finding of high-level boundaryless career orientation among Internet professionals offers insights on how companies can improve employment relations by improving career management practices.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This paper forms a part of the special section “China's Labour Relations in a New Era of 2020s and Beyond”, guest edited by Drs. Kan Wang and Dong Yan.
The author thanks Kai Chang for his constructive comments on multiple drafts of this article. This study is funded by the Social Science Foundation of Guangdong Province of China (No: GD21YSH01) and the 70th China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No: 2021M701252).
Citation
Zheng, X. (2024), "Boundaryless career orientation and Internet professionals' grievance strategies: evidence from China", Employee Relations, Vol. 46 No. 5, pp. 974-998. https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-12-2022-0551
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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