WHERE INDIVIDUALISM GROWS AND HIERARCHIES CRUMBLE - A case study on the One-Child Policy's influence on the workplace

Sammanfattning: In contemporary urban China the younger generations in the white-collar sector are constantly striving to obtain a better employment in order to attain animproved career. The purpose of this case study was to show how the One-Child Policy has influenced the Chinese society, by indicating that there is an undergoing change within the workplace, as the Chinese singletons are starting to enter the labour market. By using information gathered from interviews, presented in a narrative, with urban, white-collar managers and employees born in the 1980s, two theories from the 1980s, Hofstede's Culture's Consequences and Bond and Hwang's harmony-within-hierarchy, were used to show that the former perceptions of the Chinese mindset are in need of revision, since the singletons in China are making the workplace more individualistic with hierarchies becoming more flat, due to the unique traits of the single child. In contemporary China the singletons are obtaining a lot of pressure to get well educated in order to secure a good career, with the aim of being able to provide for their parents when they retire as well as for their own family. This pressure is creating an even more individualistic and less hierarchical setting, as the singletons are changing jobs in order to reach the top of the workplace to guarantee a good future for themselves, as well as for their parents.