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Research on the Implementation Pathways for University Labor Unions to Empower the Growth and Success of Young Faculty from the Perspective of Collaborative Governance: a Case Study of Jiangsu University

Author(s)

Chunmei Tang

Affiliation(s)

Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China

Abstract

Young faculty members constitute the core human capital supporting disciplinary iteration, scientific and technological innovation, and talent cultivation in universities, and the quality of their growth directly determines the level of connotative development of higher education institutions. As an important mass organization within universities, the labor union undertakes multiple functions including development support, rights protection, and organizational care for young faculty. Taking collaborative governance theory as the analytical framework and adopting literature research, questionnaire survey, semi-structured interviews, and case analysis, this study conducts an empirical investigation of the young faculty group at Jiangsu University. The findings show that young faculty at the sampled university generally possess a high degree of professional identity; however, constrained by factors such as research assessment pressure and limited resource availability, the group displays discipline-heterogeneous development dilemmas, forming composite demands in the dimensions of career development, capability building, rights protection, and life support. At the present stage, the service model of university labor unions still faces practical constraints including cognitive deviation regarding collaborative governance, institutional obstacles to cross-departmental collaboration, fragmented resource integration, and insufficient supply of incentive and constraint systems. Benchmarking typical practices of university labor unions serving young talent at home and abroad, a multi-actor collaborative service system should be built along four dimensions-reconstruction of actor rights and responsibilities, iteration of service provision, reengineering of operating mechanisms, and optimization of support systems-so as to promote the transformation of university labor unions from transactional activity organizers into hub-type resource governance platforms, thereby providing theoretical reference and practical insight for peer universities seeking to improve their young faculty development support systems.

Keywords

University Labor Union; Young Faculty; Collaborative Governance; Talent Empowerment; Service Provision

References

[1] All-China Federation of Trade Unions. Opinions on Strengthening and Improving Trade Union Work in the New Era [Z]. 2021. [2] Ministry of Education. Opinions on Accelerating the Construction of High-Level Undergraduate Education and Comprehensively Improving Talent Cultivation Capacity [Z]. 2018. [3] J. Li, "Research on the pathways of university labor union services for young teachers from the perspective of collaborative governance," Journal of China Institute of Industrial Relations, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 89-96, 2023. [4] L. Zhang, Research on the Construction of a Growth Support System for Young University Teachers. Nanjing: Jiangsu People's Publishing House, 2022. [5] J. Wang, "Practical dilemmas and breakthrough pathways for university labor unions empowering the development of young teachers," Education Exploration, no. 1, pp. 78-82, 2024. [6] K. Yu, "Collaborative governance: An important approach to governance modernization," Theory Frontier, no. 1, pp. 5-13, 2014.