Personal Statement
Applied Program:Organizational Behavior

The purpose behind this personal statement is to not only gain admission to your well-established and highly respected Ph.D. program, but to impress upon you my passion for learning and my tremendous desire to succeed in both scholastic research and in teaching on the professional level. I have based my decision to pursue an academic career not on purely practical reasons, but rather on my own natural interests and aptitude. My personal philosophy is that money and social status should not be pursued as life-consuming objectives and that in actuality they are the by-products of goals originating from one's inner needs. I understand that my intellectual capacity is a gift, and I intend to use this gift to the very best of my substantial capabilities.

I am interested in the field of study of Organizational Behavior. In the past, I have had the experience of working in settings where the people and the corporate cultures of the companies were all different. I have found that there is a great difference in the both the behaviors of people and of their organizations, depending on whether they are state-owned enterprises (SOEs), large multinational firms, or small to medium sized foreign enterprises. One simple example is that of the ability of an employee to act independently without direct instructions from his or her boss. In many Chinese organizations, acting without direct instructions is considered a form of disrespect towards the supervisor, who is generally offended by such behavior. In my experience and research, such organizations tend to have low operating efficiency with the employees losing their innate ability to take the initiative.

In contrast, foreign enterprises tend to welcome employees who have the ability to make decisions on their own, though the extent to which this is true depends on whether the supervisor is a local Chinese or an expatriate. These organizations have comparatively higher operating efficiency and employees enjoy greater job satisfaction.

My research and observations have shown me that only a small fraction of Chinese employees are well adapted to the working methods of the foreign enterprises. Many are accustomed to merely having others make the decisions for them and are not experienced at taking on some reasonable responsibilities. What accounts for the different behaviors of these people and their organizations? My observations and personal experience have greatly aroused my interest in studying this subject. I am interested in determining the specific factors that determine the different behaviors of employees and how they work together to form the behavior of the organization, as well as finding ways to modify such behaviors to make for a more healthy and properly functioning organization.

In all of the various fields that I have w

orked in, such as international trade, marketing and office administration, I have found that the most important factor in successful businesses lies in how the business is able to exploit its resources to meet the needs of its target markets. Human resources ultimately make possible the full utilization of the other resources, even including that of the most advanced and powerful new technologies. The essence of success at leveraging resources is managing people and their behavior. With the introduction and development of the idea of employee empowerment, organizational behavior is now being determined by the participation of more people throughout the organization rather than just a few senior level managers. I would very much like to study these trends - what exactly are the roles that employees and employers play in modern organizations? What impact do these changes in organizational behaviors have on the social and economic development of countries?joozone.com