The chapter provides an overview that describes the background of the study, problem statement, purpose of study, research questions and definition of key terms.
Background of the Study
As the world is becoming increasingly globalized and competitive, talent mobility and global talent management has become a significant issue. The demand for highly educated and experienced talent has far surpassed the supply since the 1990's. Therefore, it creates a global talent shortage (Chambers, Foulon, Handfield-Jones, Hankin & Michaels, 1998). It arouses companies' awareness of talent acquisition.
In the late 20th century, the Taiwanese economy started to grow and expand at a tremendous rate. The population gained an increase in income, social status and standard of living (Lau, 2012). Due to this rapid growth, people started to move to other countries, mainly for higher education. Many people moved to the United States for higher education as it consisted of some of the top education institutions in the world (Chang, 1992). At the beginning of the early 21st century, economies around the world began to slow down and then came the financial crisis in 2008 which saw a loss in jobs and rise in unemployment around the world, Taiwan and its population were also affected (CNN, 2009). However, there was one country which against all odds was still growing and growing at a rapid rate, this was Mainland China. It became an opportunity for people of Taiwan. Moreover, Taiwan has a lot of skilled and talented workers available, both countries also share a common language, so this was a great opportunity for these talented workers. In 2010, it is estimated that about
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three percent of the Taiwan's entire population is working in China (Tsai & Chang, 2010).
China's economy grew at a rapid pace, it became the country with the second highest gross domestic product (GDP). China engages many Taiwanese companies to develop their businesses there. The working opportunities in China have intrigued many Taiwanese employees because of the increase in salary and better career opportunities compared to that of Taiwan. Taiwanese workers who are identified as Self-initiated expatriates (SIE) would have no trouble finding a job in Taiwan but they choose to work in China. A growing number of SIEs are moving to China to work for multinational companies, hotels, restaurants or factories (Sui, 2014).
Although the number of SIEs continued to grow, a relatively small amount of researches focused on Taiwanese SIEs in China, and most of them applied the "push and pull" view. The push and pull theory simply implies that self-initiated expatriates experience a pull factor or reason to migrate to another country because of the host country's living conditions or financial incentives and a push factor or reason to leave the host country and return home because of family obligations (Mostert, 2013). This shows that not all self-initiated expatriates fully integrate to the host country or have other factors which prevent them from integrating.
There have been many studies done on SIEs' motivation and integration of SIEs separately, however, few studies have been done on both motivation and integration of SIEs simultaneously. By examining SIEs' motivation and integration together, we can know how does motivation of migrate in terms of perceived gains and losses influenced their integration, how do those expatriate experiences influence their way of seeing the host country, and even affect their motivation to integrate into the society. Moreover, since few studies have examined the motivation and integration of
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SIEs, this study focused on the motivation for SIEs who decided to go to China, and the influence between their motivation and integration.
Problem Statement
With the world becoming globalized, countries opening their borders, and economies around the world still unstable, the demand for talented employees and flexibility in the workplace is growing (OECD, 2008). There are many skilled individuals seeking international career opportunities and expatriating themselves or moving themselves from their home country to another country to find work (Carr, Inkson, & Thorn, 2005). Black and Gregersen (1991) stated that approximately eighty percent of medium to large corporations among multinational enterprises have assigned professional expatriates to overseas subsidiary companies. Thus, globalization is one of the main reasons for individuals having to move cross borders to find work. Furthermore, SIEs who decide to move to other countries do so because of shortage of skilled workers in different countries (OECD, 2012; The Economist, 2011).
In the past, Taiwan attracted a lot of foreign labour, with the total number of unskilled labours arriving from South-east Asia estimated at approximately 365,000 in 2008 (Tsai & Chang, 2010). Recently, due to the rise of China, more and more of the population have been migrating to China. There has been a major influx of workers to mainland China, from the US, Europe and all parts of Asia. This presents a problem for Taiwan, as it needs to figure out the reason why Taiwanese expatriates are moving to China for work.
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Research Purpose and Questions
This study focused on Taiwanese SIEs and explored their reasons for moving to mainland China. In addition, the researcher examined how the participants integrated to the society and what support or assistance the companies provided for them. By knowing how the organizational integration policies work for the participants, it will benefit other multinational companies set up better orientation, integration policies or working environment for global talents. The study aimed to answer the following questions:
1. What is SIEs' motivation to migrate to China for a job?
2. What are SIEs' experiences in their integration process?
3. What is SIEs' current integration status?
4. How do SIEs' expectation and motivation to migrate influence their motivation to integrate and current integration status?
Significance of the Study
Motivation of self-initiated expatriates (SIE) is a significant issue, the world is becoming more globalized and people are moving cross-boarders, as a result, it is beneficial to know the reasons for this phenomenon (Froese & Goeritz, 2007). There are different reasons for workers to find job in other countries, as stated previously in other researches. For instance, family and financial incentives are very important factors that contribute to their expatriation as shown in British expatriate academics (Richardson, 2005). Therefore, there may be different reasons for why people choose to migrate to other countries, this can help shed some light on why Taiwan workers expatriate.
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Definition of Terms Motivation to Migrate
Motivation to Migrate refers to an individuals' desire to explore, such as personal fulfillment and development are key factors which contribute to a person's decision of expatriation rather than career development (Froese, 2012). In this study, motivation to migrate is defined as an individual's desire to explore, have a better job or other different factors which contribute to their decision of expatriation.
Motivation to Integrate
Motivation to integrate refers to the degree to which qualified immigrants are willing to make efforts to engage and become functionally fit in the host country's environment, it means how far are they willing to fully become a part of the society and assimilate to the culture (Kim, 2001). Qualified immigrants are identified as individuals who have the necessary skills or abilities to work as immigrants in other countries. In this study, motivation to integrate is defined as how much effort are SIEs willing to adapt or integrate into the work or life environment.
Met Expectations
Met expectation is the distinction between the pre-conceived expectation an individual has about the host country and actual expectations (Cerdin, Dine, &
Brewster, 2014). This means one already has their own expectations about a particular place and what they actually experience is different (e.g. felictious QIs are those who reflect on their migration in terms of strong loss and gain framing, they expect a lot from their host country, even while they may have lost a lot in their home country).
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Integration
Integration is defined as life satisfaction, job satisfaction and career success for qualified immigrants in the study of Cerdin et al. (2014). While adaptation seems to possess similar meaning of exploring the process of adjusting to a different culture, it actually differs from the word integration. Adaptation refers to the processes which involves in acquiring certain important skills to fit in or achieve effective interactions in the new environment (Yijälä, Jasinskaja-Lahti, Likki, & Stein, 2012). Based on the meanings of integration and adaptation, it can be concluded that adaptation does not need to necessarily accept the new culture and blend into the new culture while integration needs the acceptance of the new culture which contributes to the satisfaction of life, job and career. In this study, integration is defined as life satisfaction and job satisfaction of self-initiated expatriates.
Self-initiated Expatriate
“Self-initiated expatriates” are professionals who choose to expatriate, they are individuals who are not assigned by their companies (Harrison, Shaffer, &
Bhaskar-Shrinivas, 2004). Self-initiated expatriates is defined as expatriates who find a job in the host country by themselves, and migrate for career advancement or other reasons.
Research Scope and Limitations
Due to the budget and time constraints of the research design, the research scope is explained as follows. First, the participants consisted of Taiwanese SIEs who have worked for at least two years in multinational companies in economically- powerful cities (mainly located in the Eastern part of China) in China. Second, due to the geographical and budget constraints, all the interviews were conducted online. Third,
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the researcher adopted purposive sampling. Sampling critera was used to select qualified and appropriate participants for this study. One of the participants was the key informant who introduced his colleagues or friends as potential participants for this research, which means the researcher relied on one informant and his connections.
There may be a bias in the research because all the participants are acquaintances with the informant. It is possible that the participants may share similar points of views, opinions and way of thinking with the others. In addition, purposive sampling was adopted because it was difficult for the researcher to acquire the list of all the SIEs working in China. Therefore, the findings of this study can be context specific and may not be applicable to represent the entire population.
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