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Sample Personal Statement for 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.
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