From “Passive Adaptation” to “Proactive Reshaping”: A Qualitative Exploration of the Work Values and Career Expectations of Post-00s Interns

Abstract

Against the backdrop of higher education massification, structural economic transformation, and intensifying credential inflation in China, the transitional landscape for the youth demographic entering the labor market is undergoing a systematic reconstruction. As the vanguard of the contemporary workforce, the Post-00s (Generation Z) introduces distinct work values and career expectations that challenge traditional, top-down bureaucratic employment relationships. This study utilizes a qualitative research design to explore the psychological contracts, work values, and career navigation strategies of Post-00s interns, illuminating their agency-driven adaptation mechanisms when confronting credential devaluation and workplace uncertainty. Through semi-structured interviews conducted via purposive and snowball sampling within business hubs of Shenzhen city, the narrative data were systematically analyzed using grounded theory coding procedures. The empirical findings reveal three primary themes. First, Post-00s interns reject traditional relational loyalty, reconfiguring the psychological contract around developmental symbiosis, immediate mutual value, and psychological well-being; when expectations are breached, they actively renegotiate boundaries or alter workflows instead of executing passive withdrawal. Second, they naturally conceptualize organizations as Complex Adaptive Systems rather than rigid hierarchies, utilizing informal networks and digital collaboration tools to bypass bureaucratic bottlenecks and optimize workflows. Third, driven by macro-level hyper-competition, these individuals strategically use proactivity as a calculated mechanism for positional capital accumulation and career navigation to maximize returns on their investments. Consequently, this study concludes that contemporary human resource management frameworks must undergo a structural upgrade from top-down compliance into agile enablement systems, leveraging the proactive tendencies of the younger workforce as strategic assets for organizational innovation and long-term resilience.