The Internship Experience Of Chinese College Students In International Organizations: The Reality And The Development Dilemma

With the further strengthening of economic globalization,international organizations have,in itself,increasingly become a gaming platform for countries to show their strength and compete for the right to speak.Although China has put a lot of human,material and financial resources in international affairs,it still faces the severe challenges in important international organizations such as its staff shortage,generally low rankings as well as weak discourse power.With the encouragement and support of relevant policies,the number of Chinese university students taking internships in international organizations continues to rise up.But the harsh reality is there is much fewer students who are willing,or even qualified to stay,for the long haul.Even though various researches,along with discussions,have been conducted with regard to the dilemma of the training and delivery of young talents in international organizations,few studies have focused on the stumbling blocks during the course of college students' internships in international organizations.This study has combed the development process of China's relations with international organizations and the policies of talent cultivation and transportation in international organizations.It conducted in-depth interviews with 23 university students who went to international organizations for internship,and conducted informal interviews with 2 university professors and 3 officials of international organizations.In addition,this study conducted case analysis on the talents project class of international organizations in college A to explore the effectiveness of the international organization talent training model.This study,from the micro,meso and macro perspectives,reveals the role dilemma,organizational integration dilemma and platform support dilemma faced by interns in the internship process of international organizations.The main conclusions are as follows:First,the role dilemma of interns is manifested in their cognition of their own roles,the contradiction between identity transformation and conflict,and the weak construction of individual role identity in the internship process.College students face the conflicts of multiple role plays such as the role of students,the role of international interns and the role of family children when they go to international organizations for internships.What's more,they need to deal with contradictions among internships,academics and job-hunting,as well as clashes of traditional cultural differences and difficulties in role-shifting in the workplace.Faced with conflicts in studies,internships and employment,colleges lack clear regulations and perfect measures in terms of academic credits,delayed graduation and employment arrangements.When it conflicts with traditional cultural concepts,the society as a whole is still conservative in its cognition of overseas internship and global employment,and there are still certain prejudices and misunderstandings.However,the lack of job competence in the internship process and the marginalized position in a team have led to the low selfidentity of the interns and the dilemma of their role formation as part of a team.Second,interns' delimma in organizational integration are manifested in their maladaptation to organizational cultural characteristics,poor prospects for organizational development,and weak organizational identity caused by differences in communication modes within the organization.From the perspective of the intern's evaluation towards the cultural characteristics,development prospects as well as individual behaviors in international organizations,it is difficult for the intern to adapt to the cultural atmosphere of bureaucracy,competition,and individualism in the international organization.They are accustomed to the low-context communication mode of euphemism and are not suitable for the high-context communication mode of direct communication within the organization.So there is a gap in communication.They hold a wait-and-see attitude towards the development prospect of the organization.And they think that the career development path is difficult and is not conducive to individual promotion and development.Third,the dilemma of interns platform support are manifested in the lack of internship channels,lack of integration of internship talents resources,loose organizational network,and deficiencies in training interns' job competencies in the university talent training mode.The government,as the main delivery management platform,usually offer internship programs of such kind in an inefficient and cumbersome flow.Worse yet,the training is often out of focus,and there is a lack of management feedback afterwards.As a training platform for young talent,universities curriculum settings are in many cases too broad for students to focus on.Adding to the embarrassing facts is that the professional practice experience of lecturers are lagging behind,and the related mechanisms for dealing with uncommon situations are immature as of yet.The aforementioned problems,as a whole,resulted in deep-seated dilemmas facing platform supports that specifically designated for interns.The deep factors forming interns' development dilemma are ability(competency of international organizations),culture(cultural concept)and platform support(training and transportation of government and universities).In order to promote the continuous development of international students' internships in colleges and universities,we must focus on improving the interaction between capabilities,platforms and culture.The improvement of job competence requires reform and innovation of talent training system.Should the supporting platform function,the external guarantee mechanisms need to be further improved and perfected.The support of social and cultural environment requires cultural tolerance and the shifting of mindsets.All this would surely be shedding some light for the current internship dilemma of international organizations.