Professor Comment: for students majoring in Business Administration, I strongly suggest you do

your research projects on Chinese in high-tech industries, focusing on employment and

promotional opportunities or entrepreneurship.
Topic Statement:
Our research paper aims to explore and explain the relationship between promotional
opportunities and Chinese in high-technology industries in California Silicon Valley. First, we
would like to begin by understanding the unique contribution to the high technology sector by
Chinese Americans. With this understanding, we wanted to further investigate how promotional
opportunities have changed as Chinese set foot in the Silicon Valley.
Potential Research Outline:
I. Introduction:
A. History of high technology industry in California Silicon Valley
1. Chinese American immigration pattern in the Silicon Valley
2. Chinese American education and contribution to high technology
i. Specific engineers and scientists who contributed to product
innovation or the field of high technology itself
ii. Jerry Yang (Yahoo), Rich Wong (Accel Partners, VC), Jen Hsun Huang
(NVIDIA), Steve Chen (co-founder of Youtube)
B. Employment Opportunities within high technology/ Silicon Valley
II. Employment/Promotional Opportunities for Chinese Americans in high technology industry
A. History Statistics of employment and promotion
1. Survey of Chinese within the industry:
i. CAs Silicon Valley: 53% of respondents from the corporate sector said
promotional opportunities for Asian Americans were inadequate, as
compared with 44% of respondents who worked in government. (pg.
60)
ii. Electronics industry evoked the most dissatisfaction: 44% said
promotional opportunities were inadequate, compared with 39% in all
other industries.
B. Promotional Opportunities within high technology / Silicon Valley
1. Concept of glass ceiling - what it is, origin
2. The connection between glass ceiling and the high technology industry
C. Chinese Experiences on Glass Ceiling within the Industry
1. Interviewees responses and personal stories
D. Reasons for limited promotion:
1. Structural: industrial/organizational structure and how it affects promotion
decisions for Chinese
2. Skills: types of technical and soft skills required for upward mobility
3. Cultural: language/cultural barriers
III. Chinese American Response to Glass Ceiling:
A. Do Nothing
B. Entrepreneurship

1. Chinese Americans will leave the organization and find their own start up in
Silicon Valley
C. Joint Venture
D. Move out of the Country
IV. Conclusion
Resources:
Woo, Deborah. Glass Ceilings and Asian Americans: The New Face of Workplace
Barriers. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamire Press, 2000.
Woo, Deborah, "The Glass Ceiling and Asian Americans" (1994). Federal Publications.
Paper 129. http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/key_workplace/129
Silber, Judy. Asian-Americans Address Confrontations with Glass Ceiling(2001).
Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, CA). http://encore.berkeley-public.org:50080/galego/ps/i.do?action=interpret&id=GALE
%7CA121179443&v=2.1&u=berkeley_main&it=r&p=ITOF&sw=w&authCount=1
Shih, Johanna Circumventing Discrimination: Gender and Ethnic Strategies in Silicon
Valley. (2006) http://www.jstor.org/stable/27640880
Bellinger, Robert. Asian Engineers Hitting Glass Ceiling; Chinese, Indians Channeled
into R&D(1994). Electronic Engineering Times. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
&id=GALE%7CA16219468&v=2.1&u=berkeley_main&it=r&p=ITOF&sw=w