Personal Statement
NO. XX   Past Education: Business Administration 
Applied Program: Human Resources Management（Labor Relationship and HR Management）

Sixteen years ago, a little girl had to seek her education by traveling to and fro between her home and school all on her independent efforts. Unskilled in cycling, she used to fall down from the bicycle, and as the family was relocating time and again, she had to attend many different school and in the process she had to adapt herself to different academic environments and expose to different teachers and classmates. But all those difficulties did not in the least hinder her academic development. She undertook her studies with consistent perseverance and accomplished them with very satisfactory results. She did so under the conviction that she could develop herself into an outstanding administrator like her mother. Toward this objective, she chose to concentrate on Human Resource Management during her undergraduate program specializing in Business Administration. At present, on the verge of completing her undergraduate program, she is determined to pursue a more advanced degree program in Human Resources Management (HRM), to learn its theories and methodologies, in a country outside China where HRM has long been a mature discipline. This girl is the present applicant—me.

My original interest in management was fostered by my parents, both of them are senior managers. Coming under their influence from my early childhood, I gained some rudimentary understanding of management. However, it has been my systematic education in business administration at the School of Management, XX University. During my studies, I was most intrigued by such core courses as Strategy Management, Probability and Statistics, Macro Economics, Human Resources Management, Business Statistics, Organization Behavior, and Seminars on Human Resources. In learning those essential courses, I have not only developed a comprehensive perception of the fundamental principles of management as an academic discipline but also, more importantly, have become exposed to a variety of important functions that effective HRM can play in enterprise management. In particular, with China’s institutional transition from centralized planned economy to market economy, I was lucky to become exposed to HRM, a quite novel concept in China and a relatively recent concept even in the world and it was all too natural for me to become fascinated by it. And as I delved deeper into its study, I found that my understanding of HRM was characterized by a marked shift, from a superficial and literal understanding to that of the specific research fields and methodologies.

Motivated by my strong interest in HRM, I chose my advisor, Prof. x x x , as early as when I was a sophomore in order to receive early guidance in my academic development. In China’s academic community, the theoretical research on HRM is very much of a virgin land and my advisor was one of a very limited number of pioneering HRM scholars in the country. One of my advisor’s most important research subjects is XX, which is a little studied field in China. I participated in my advisor’s research project, which was sponsored by XX. In the project, my responsibility was studying the evaluation of the top management team and its interactivity in Chinese enterprises. The reason for undertaking this research was based on the consideration that, in a management team, a great variety of factors determine the results and the effects of the decision-making of the top management team. Among those factors, the intra-evaluation among the members of the management team and their interactivity is undoubtedly the primary element affecting the collective decision-making capacity of the entire team. Under the traditional Chinese cultural background, interpersonal relationships exert a particularly important influence on the communication and interactivity within the team. Under such circumstances, the mutual evaluation, the interactivity or communication among the members of the top management team in Chinese enterprises becomes of special significance.

In my actual research, I conducted a questionnaire survey over the participants of a workshop of senior managers at XX University. By quantifying and analyzing relevant data, I came to some tentative conclusions. In terms of team evaluation, it consists of an assessment of the level of intelligence, personal character, role type, and professional skills of the members of the top management team. Regarding the overall interactivity of the team, it includes the level of difficulty inherent in the communication between the members of the top management team as well as the conditions of existence of various teams on the departmental level. So far, my research has made encouraging achievements and a draft treatise has been accomplished and won positive comments from my advisor, and will be used as my B.A. thesis.

What is worth mentioning is that, for an administrator, especially one engaged in HRM, it is vital to acquire the skills in interpersonal coordination and in teamwork. With this in mind, I have made conscious efforts to seek some fundamental trainings in those regards. Case analysis and team projects have informed my undergraduate studies in management science. Whether in the management course or marketing course or economics course, I have been trained to develop team spirits and the ability to solve practical problems. I have been required to analyze underlying causes in different cases, construct models and search for solutions. In management trainings, I have come to realize that individual efforts alone are insufficient to reach the prescribed goal and that management is essentially and ultimately a form of teamwork, or a process of making concerted efforts.

It is true that through the four-year specialized academic training, I have been taught much knowledge of management, especially the theories of HRM. However, such a knowledge is all but tentative, and in need of improvement both in breadth and width. Furthermore, through consulting relevant technical journals and literature, plus my experience of doing a summer internship at XX Ltd, I have gained an understanding of the existing conditions of HRM in my country. Presently, the conscious application of HRM theories has been rather limited. In most enterprises, the so-called HRM is object-oriented rather than human-oriented and this results primarily from a one-sided understanding of the concept of human resource. Such a situation requires us to learn advanced concepts of HRM.

Nevertheless, to promote the development of advanced HRM concepts in China should not be simply equated with transplanting them into Chinese context mechanically. It should be noticed that some specifically Chinese cultural factors, with their emphasis on connections, would render such a direct transplantation difficult. In such cases, many advanced western HRM concepts, though effective in the west, will have to be modified and adapted to Chinese circumstances before they can be effectively applied.

All those factors, combined with my long-time interest, have contributed to my present decision to seek a more advanced education in HRM and XX University—XX, I believe, is precisely the institution that can furnish me with such an education. Its School of Management of Labor Relations is reputed for its rich educational tradition, numerous academic elites in the field of management. I would like to concentrate on Human Resources Management, whose objective is to create and disseminate knowledge that fosters a better understanding of the nature of employment and works in modern society, promotes harmony and cooperation between management and labor, and helps to improve employment systems and relationships. The syllabus design attaches equal importance to theoretical instruction and to practical application, which encompasses HR Strategy I: Introduction; HR Strategy II: Business Functional Areas; Measurement Issues; HR Strategy IV: Designing and Implementing Human Capital Strategies in an Era of Change, etc. Just as I have made it clear in the above, I will not only seek systematic and in-depth study of HRM at your school but also ponder over how western HRM theories can best be made applicable to the special circumstances of the Chinese society.

I am convinced that in this era of rapid economic development in China, by the time I finish my graduate program at XX University and return to my country, I will be able to make my due contributions as a HRM specialist to the prosperity of Chinese enterprises and to their participation in the economic globalization.