Internships in China: exploring contextual perspectives

Globally internships have become an increasingly pervasive means by which to enhance university learning and graduate employability. Whilst this practice has crossed national borders, the transferability of internships across national contexts has been largely assumed rather than empirically substantiated. The purpose of this paper is to explore interns’ and the host organisations’ perspectives of internships within the Chinese context.

Qualitative data were gathered though a series of semi-structured interviews with interns and host organisations in China, results were interpreted via thematic analysis.

Overall the study revealed both the interns’ and host organisations’ perspectives were consistent with those within other national contexts. Particularly, the findings highlighted the key role of individual interns’ dispositions, and internship supervision, as well as the conceptualization of internships as a career entry point. The study also identified a contextually specific variable of guanxi, as playing an influential role within the Chinese context.

The study was exploratory in nature, thus further research is required, to further substantiate the variables and relationships detected.

The study establishes the transferability of a number of theoretical premises to the Chinese internship context. The transportable nature of the internship experience suggests the appropriateness of a degree of standardisation of internship design across national contexts. Whilst, also suggesting cultural phenomenon such as guanxi should be considered when designing internships to achieve desired outcomes within a Chinese context.