My sense of mission to contribute to the future of my motherland and the tremendous potential academic value of Organization Transformation Study in China make Organization Study the inevitable choice for my prospective research. To be finally engaged in the study of this subject, I have already undertaken some tentative investigations in this field. My first academic paper entitled Study of the Entrepreneurial Human Resource Capital in China's State-Owned Enterprises was published in Socialism Study, a very authoritative and avant-garde academic journal especially devoted to the crucial issues of China's reform. In this paper, I conducted an in-depth compassion regarding the enterprise's human resource capital between the past and the most recent macro economic context. I proposed my criticisms with respect to the government's prevailing policy of "distribution according to labor" and presented relevant models for implementation. The publication of this paper produced its important academic effect. It was reprinted and much quoted by many other academic journals and received a very important academic award of first-class prize as Outstanding Academic Paper at the Symposium on the Economic and Cultural Development Strategy in China's Western Region. More valuably, the models of implementation that I proposed became opportune frame of reference for many enterprises when they conducted their reform in the field. The success of this academic paper gave me substantial encouragement and reinforced my determination to pursue further in the study of Organization Transformation. In the wake of the first academic paper, I published another two research findings in Business Study. In one of those two academic papers, I probed into the determining factors affecting the success and failure of an enterprise's fundamental transformation. I embarked on a case study concerning the transformation of Xerox Hong Kong. In this study, I proposed that the transformation of the mentality and the knowledge structure of both the enterprise's management and the employees is the most powerful force facilitating the enterprise's transformation as well as the most important guarantee for the stable process of transformation. I further elaborated that an enterprise bent on constant and conscientious acquisition of new knowledge is the most flexible and cost-effective enterprise to face a rapidly-changing external environment and to launch transformation in order to answer its internal need for development. Those serial achievements on my part helped me secure high evaluations from my teachers and advisor and aroused the attention of the China Academy of Social Sciences. At its invitation, I attended an academic conference in Hanoi, the capital of Viet Nam. As far as I am concerned, all those academic honors and awards are only of secondary importance. Some of my research findings might be proved by future researches to be flawed or even incorrect due to the insufficiency of currently available information and the limitations of research methodologies. For me, the most valuable thing is that those research activities have provided me with precious opportunities to come into contact with and develop an increasingly profound understanding of the discipline that has so deeply fascinated me. I feel as excited as Alibaba who has just finished speaking the magic words to the door of the treasure cave.
Finally, I would like to say that my four-year college study and practice have molded a strongly ambitious young man. Looking back on these hard-working days, I am so confident of myself. With anticipation and excitement, I am now applying for admission into your Ph.D. program in Organization Studies. I firmly believe that this specially designed program in your strict and inspirational graduate school will fulfill my academic ambitions. As Galileo once said " Give me a pivot, then I will pry up the Earth," I sincerely request you to endow me with that "pivot".
Essay 1
Describe your two most valued accomplishments and the process by which you achieved them. What challenges or obstacles did you encounter along the way? How did you overcome them?