Subjective Social Upgrading and Downgrading of Technical Workers in China’s High-Tech Economy: A Company Case Study

Xia Yan ()
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Xia Yan: Sun Yat-Sen University

A chapter in China’s New Development Strategies, 2022, pp 85-109 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Based on a case study of a Chinese ICT company’s firm upgrading and its impact on technical engineers, I find that social upgrading could coexist with social downgrading for the same group of workers. There are also disparities between workers’ self-evaluation and measures based on objective indicators. The concepts of “subjective social upgrading” and “objective social upgrading” are thus proposed to address these disparities. Subjective social upgrading, defined as workers’ subjective judgment of the changes in their situation, is closely related to the local social institutions in which workers’ references for the assessment are formed. I argue this could be a mediating variable that re-embeds workers into the local context and enables integrating the global dimension with the local in analyzing social upgrading. Subjective social upgrading is also an indicator of workers’ resistance, which implies the upgrading strategy’s sustainability.

Keywords: Firm upgrading; Social upgrading; Subjective social upgrading; Technical workers; China’s high-tech industry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-981-19-3008-9_4

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DOI: 10.1007/978-981-19-3008-9_4

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