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Navigating the Global–Local Nexus: Professional Identity and Organizational Socialization of Overseas-Returned PhDs in Chinese Higher Vocational Colleges

Author(s)

Ruoqian Yang*

Affiliation(s)

School of Economics and Management, Zhongshan Polytechnic, Zhongshan, Guangdong, China *Corresponding Author

Abstract

China's higher vocational education sector has undergone rapid internationalization over the past four decades, progressively recruiting overseas-returned PhD graduates to strengthen faculty quality and institutional competitiveness. However, the professional integration of these returnee academics into vocational colleges—institutions that historically prioritize applied skill training over research production—remains a significantly under-researched phenomenon. This study investigates how overseas-returned PhDs construct, negotiate, and reconstruct their professional identities within Chinese higher vocational colleges (HVCs), and examines the organizational socialization mechanisms that facilitate or hinder this process. Drawing upon Social Identity Theory, Organizational Socialization Theory, and Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital, this article proposes an integrative conceptual framework—the Global–Local Identity Negotiation Model—that captures the multi-layered tensions returnee scholars navigate between their internationally acquired academic dispositions and the locally embedded expectations of vocational education institutions. By synthesizing existing empirical findings on returnee academics in broader Chinese higher education contexts and contextualizing them within the specific institutional ecology of HVCs, this study identifies three identity trajectories—adaptive assimilation, strategic hybridization, and marginal alienation—and analyzes how institutional structures, collegial interactions, and individual agency shape divergent professional outcomes. The article concludes with theoretically grounded and practically actionable recommendations for designing culturally responsive organizational socialization programs that facilitate productive identity integration, thereby advancing both scholarly understanding of academic mobility in vocational education contexts and institutional policy for talent management in an era of intensified global competition for academic labor.

Keywords

Professional Identity; Organizational Socialization; Overseas-Returnee PhDs; Higher Vocational Colleges; Academic Mobility

References

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