Maintenance-oriented human resource system and performance-oriented human resource system, parents' expectation, career intention and career choice of college graduating students : an example from China

Abstract

Men are afraid in the wrong line of business, which is a widely known expression in China. Career can not only change people’s lifestyles, but also affect their mental health. Therefore, proper career choice will bring the sense of pleasure and satisfaction and stimulate better dedication to the job and more occupation achievement. For college graduating students, most of them are torn with the choice of working at state-owned (SOE) and private-owned enterprises (POE) at their senior year, as it is the very first time for most of them to transit from students to workers which is a significant turning point in their lives. At any given point, the career choice of graduating students will be affected by both interior and exterior factors. However, there is less empirical study in investigating the career intention and career choice of college graduating students working at state-owned (SOE) or private-owned enterprises (POE). Therefore, this study was designed to examine the relationships between perceived maintenance-oriented or performance-oriented human resource systems, parents’ expectation valuing maintenance-oriented or performance-oriented human resource systems, career decision-making self-efficacy and career locus of control and graduating students’ career intention and career choice of working at state-owned or private-owned enterprises with application of the theory of planned behavior. To better understand the relationship, impact, cause and effect between the constructs, the quantitative research methodology is adopted in this study to further illustrate the relationships between different constructs and factors. For the consideration of feasibility and cost, the college graduating students of Chongqing will be the respondents of this research. In addition, the senior students with management majors are narrowed down as respondents to fill in the questionnaire due to their better understanding of human resource management system. The snowball technique was adopted to collect data and 477 questionnaires were collected with response rate at 70.15%. Partial least squares regression and logit were used to analyze the data, which indicated the positive relationships between perceived maintenance-oriented human resource system and career intention of working at state-owned enterprises, subjective norm (parents’ expectation valuing maintenanceoriented or performance-oriented human resource system) and career intention of students working at SOE or POE, perceived behavioral control (career decision-making self-efficacy and career locus of control) and graduating students career intention of working at state-owned or private-owned enterprises, and the meditating effect of career intention on the relationship of perceived behavioral control and career choice of working at SOE. The study not only expand the dual concern model of human resource management system—maintenance-oriented and performance-oriented human resource systems into vocational field, but also contribute to the research on the relationship of career intention and career choice, which is seldom examined by the previous researcher. With senior students who actually signed contracts with enterprises and who clearly know their choices of SOE or POE. In addition, the measurement of construct perceived behavioral control is the combination of self-efficacy and controllability, following some prior studies and making the results of this study more reliable. This study sheds some light for enterprise managers, colleges, parents and students as well.