Problem 7 How do you choose your career? (what factors, all career theories!!)
Arnold – understanding human behavior in the work place
Types of careers:
- bureaucratic career: increasing status within a single occupation or organization
- professional career: growth occurs through complex tasks rather than promotion to
another job
- entrepreneurial: build one’s own organization or operation
Boundaryless career
- a range of career forms that challenge traditional employment assumptions
- either by choice or necessity people move across boundaries
- movements across boundaries is necessary for employability and effectiveness
- boundary between work & non-work is broken: considering jobs’ impact on home
- successful boundaryless careering requires communion and agency (individual action
on the environment)
- very individualistic
- strong ones proper but a disadvantage for weak ones (liberating & threatening)
Career anchors
- area of the self-concept that’s so central that the person would not give it up even if
forced to make a difficult choice
- anchors develop and become clear early in careers
- mixture of abilities, motives, needs and values
- important to know your anchor to manage your own career
- examples: managerial competence, technical competence, security, autonomy &
independence, entrepreneurial creativity, pure challenge, service dedication, lifestyle
integration
Career success
- objective career success: earnings, promotions, status in hierarchy – more common
in traditional or bureaucratic concept of career
- subjective career success: attitudes and feelings, satisfaction
- criteria for career success from analysis: personal influence, being recognized for
achievements, sense of accomplishment, enjoyment, working with integrity and
achieving balance between work and non-work
- career satisfaction is correlated with salary showing that subjective and objective
careers are connected
- proactive personality: taking initiate in creating new circumstances predicts salary
progression, rate of promotion and career satisfaction
- (rest of this section is not important)
The Psychological contract
- explains people’s responses to changing context of careers
- represents informal, unwritten understandings between employers and employees
- relational contract: (the old contract which is now broken)
1
, o long-term relationship based on trust and mutual respect
o employees offer loyalty and conformity
o employer offers security, promotions, flexibility etc.
o global competition, technology, downsizing etc. ended this contract
- transactional contract:
o the new deal that more imposed rather than agreed
o short-term economic exchange
o employee offer longer hours, broader skills and tolerating ambiguity
o employer offer high pay, reward and simply a job
- mostly negative reactions to changing contracts
o e.g. for managers who identify with the organization rather than profession
- distinction between breach and violation:
o breach is the realization that what’s been promised had not materialized
o violation is thinking the breach was deliberate
o employees show decline in obligation and commitment if employers violate
their contract but contract breach does not necessarily lead to this
- limitations of the psychological construct:
o exists in mind, is it even a contract?
o an organization is not a person and cannot be party to a psy contract
o violation implies a broken promise and this is emotionally charged
o contract may be redundant and overcomplicated
- psy contract is still useful despite the limitations
Career development through lifespan
- Life-span approach by Donald Super 4 stages:
o 1. exploration: of self and world of work to clarify self-concept and identity
occupations fit, age: 15-24
o 2. establishment: after a few mistakes, person finds a career field and makes
effort to prove his worth, ages: 25-44
o 3. maintenance: hold on to what you achieved, challenging especially with
technology and competition with young people, ages: 45-64
o 4. disengagement: decreasing involvement in work and becoming an observer
rather than participant, ages: 65+
o stages are not clear cut so he identified more flexible 6 roles people typically
perform in Western societies:
homemaker, worker, citizen, leisurite, student and child
o importance of these roles and rise and fall, a person can be at different stages
in different roles
Transition between jobs
- Transition Cycle Model of Job Change by Nicholson: 4 stages:
o preparation, encounter, adjustment, stabilization
- disjunction between stages each stage has its own characteristics
- stages are interdependent what happens on one stage had implications for the
next
- successfully managing one stage makes it easy to manage the next
2
Arnold – understanding human behavior in the work place
Types of careers:
- bureaucratic career: increasing status within a single occupation or organization
- professional career: growth occurs through complex tasks rather than promotion to
another job
- entrepreneurial: build one’s own organization or operation
Boundaryless career
- a range of career forms that challenge traditional employment assumptions
- either by choice or necessity people move across boundaries
- movements across boundaries is necessary for employability and effectiveness
- boundary between work & non-work is broken: considering jobs’ impact on home
- successful boundaryless careering requires communion and agency (individual action
on the environment)
- very individualistic
- strong ones proper but a disadvantage for weak ones (liberating & threatening)
Career anchors
- area of the self-concept that’s so central that the person would not give it up even if
forced to make a difficult choice
- anchors develop and become clear early in careers
- mixture of abilities, motives, needs and values
- important to know your anchor to manage your own career
- examples: managerial competence, technical competence, security, autonomy &
independence, entrepreneurial creativity, pure challenge, service dedication, lifestyle
integration
Career success
- objective career success: earnings, promotions, status in hierarchy – more common
in traditional or bureaucratic concept of career
- subjective career success: attitudes and feelings, satisfaction
- criteria for career success from analysis: personal influence, being recognized for
achievements, sense of accomplishment, enjoyment, working with integrity and
achieving balance between work and non-work
- career satisfaction is correlated with salary showing that subjective and objective
careers are connected
- proactive personality: taking initiate in creating new circumstances predicts salary
progression, rate of promotion and career satisfaction
- (rest of this section is not important)
The Psychological contract
- explains people’s responses to changing context of careers
- represents informal, unwritten understandings between employers and employees
- relational contract: (the old contract which is now broken)
1
, o long-term relationship based on trust and mutual respect
o employees offer loyalty and conformity
o employer offers security, promotions, flexibility etc.
o global competition, technology, downsizing etc. ended this contract
- transactional contract:
o the new deal that more imposed rather than agreed
o short-term economic exchange
o employee offer longer hours, broader skills and tolerating ambiguity
o employer offer high pay, reward and simply a job
- mostly negative reactions to changing contracts
o e.g. for managers who identify with the organization rather than profession
- distinction between breach and violation:
o breach is the realization that what’s been promised had not materialized
o violation is thinking the breach was deliberate
o employees show decline in obligation and commitment if employers violate
their contract but contract breach does not necessarily lead to this
- limitations of the psychological construct:
o exists in mind, is it even a contract?
o an organization is not a person and cannot be party to a psy contract
o violation implies a broken promise and this is emotionally charged
o contract may be redundant and overcomplicated
- psy contract is still useful despite the limitations
Career development through lifespan
- Life-span approach by Donald Super 4 stages:
o 1. exploration: of self and world of work to clarify self-concept and identity
occupations fit, age: 15-24
o 2. establishment: after a few mistakes, person finds a career field and makes
effort to prove his worth, ages: 25-44
o 3. maintenance: hold on to what you achieved, challenging especially with
technology and competition with young people, ages: 45-64
o 4. disengagement: decreasing involvement in work and becoming an observer
rather than participant, ages: 65+
o stages are not clear cut so he identified more flexible 6 roles people typically
perform in Western societies:
homemaker, worker, citizen, leisurite, student and child
o importance of these roles and rise and fall, a person can be at different stages
in different roles
Transition between jobs
- Transition Cycle Model of Job Change by Nicholson: 4 stages:
o preparation, encounter, adjustment, stabilization
- disjunction between stages each stage has its own characteristics
- stages are interdependent what happens on one stage had implications for the
next
- successfully managing one stage makes it easy to manage the next
2
