Understanding the achieving styles of Chinese millennials and implications on HRM policy: A life course perspective

Abstract

Purpose

Matching with the timeline of major events in China, as well as major shifts in China’s human research management, the purpose of this paper is to present the comparisons of achieving styles among Chinese millennial employees, millennial university students and Generation X employees.

Design/methodology/approach

Drawing from the achieving styles literature as well as the life course theory, this study first proposes hypotheses on specific differences in nine achieving styles. The authors tested by using data from 889 millennial employees and 364 millennial students from five cities in China.

Findings

The results showed that the power direct achieving style stood out for the Chinese millennials, and the competitive direct achieving style ranked higher for Generation X. Moreover, millennial employees had higher scores for all nine achieving styles than millennial students.

Practical implications

This study advises that when motivating Chinese millennial employees, human resource managers can create a competitive environment and provide career planning guidance, and that to better assist millennial university students to socialize, human resource managers can develop matched internship programs.

Originality/value

The paper contributes to the life course literature and the achieving styles literature by comparing the differences among Chinese millennial employees, university students and Generation X.

Citation

Zhao, Y. and Xu, Q. (2020), "Understanding the achieving styles of Chinese millennials and implications on HRM policy: A life course perspective", International Journal of Manpower, Vol. 41 No. 3, pp. 303-317. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJM-08-2018-0271