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Careers

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Mar 10th, 2016
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  1. Introduction
  2.  
  3. The concept of career has traditionally been defined as a series of positions, an orderly and hierarchical progression up occupational status (or seniority) ladders, most commonly in professional occupations. However, it is increasingly used to refer to patterns of movement across jobs (or roles) throughout the life course. The career concept is both a metaphor and an organizing principle, providing conceptual and methodological guidance to the sociology of work and occupations; organizational sociology; the study of social stratification, inequality, roles, mobility, the economy, and the labor force; the study of families, the family economy, gender, and the life course; as well as the social psychology of work, motivation, and identity. A sociology of occupational careers is necessarily a sociology of time, referring to the processes of job development, mobility, plateauing, transitions, exits, and entrances. But the notion of “careers” is a function of historical time as well, a modern invention, emerging as a social fact only with the development of corporations, bureaucracies, and white-collar employment. As C. Wright Mills pointed out, prior to the Industrial Revolution, most people worked in either agriculture or a family business. Though individual farmers, craftspeople, and family entrepreneurs may have had “life plans,” they did not have “careers.” The whole idea of “career” is thus really a product of industrialization and the development and bureaucratization of occupational lines. As paid work (for others, particularly in corporations and government) became a central role in 20th-century society, the work career shaped life chances, life quality, and life choices in virtually every arena. The question is, with the uncertainty associated with a global information economy, how are 21st-century careers coming to be shaped?
  4.  
  5. Textbooks and Edited Collections
  6.  
  7. Most of the textbooks on careers have been written by organizational scholars (Arthur, et al. 1989; Hall 1976), but there are several important edited collections by the German sociologist Hans Peter Blossfeld and others (Blossfeld and Hofmeister 2006; Blossfeld 1986; Blossfeld, et al. 2008; Blossfeld, et al. 2006; Blossfeld and Drobnic 2001) that provide a contemporary and comparative cross-cultural focus on careers at different stages of the life course. Older textbooks often treated career development as an individual decision-making process, but more contemporary publications (Barley 1989, Gunz and Peiperl 2007) recognize its Janus-like nature—describing both individuals’ occupational paths and a series of positions within occupations or organizations.
  8.  
  9. Arthur, Michael Bernard, Douglas T. Hall, and Barbara S. Lawrence. 1989. Handbook of career theory. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  10. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511625459Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  11. This is an excellent overview of theories and empirical evidence from sociology, psychology, anthropology, organizational theory, and economics. This handbook was updated several times in the 1990s.
  12. Find this resource:
  13. Barley, Stephen R. 1989. Careers, identities, and institutions: The legacy of the Chicago School of Sociology. In Handbook of career theory. Edited by Michael B. Arthur, Douglas T. Hall, and Barbara S. Lawrence, 41–65. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  14. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511625459Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  15. This chapter in the Arthur, Hall, and Lawrence volume offers a key sociological perspective on careers. It is extremely insightful and well worth reading.
  16. Find this resource:
  17. Blossfeld, Hans-Peter. 1986. Career opportunities in the Federal Republic of Germany: A dynamic approach to the study of life-course, cohort, and period effects. European Sociological Review 2.3: 208–225.
  18. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  19. This article offers an insightful empirical study on how life course, cohort, and period effects (in terms of the duration of labor force engagement, timing of entry into the labor market, and labor market conditions) influence the career consequences of three birth cohorts in Germany.
  20. Find this resource:
  21. Blossfeld, Hans-Peter, Sandra Buchholz, Erzsebet Bukodi, and Karin Kurz, eds. 2008. Young workers, globalization and the labor market: Comparing early working life in eleven countries. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
  22. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  23. This book covers the dynamics of labor market entry and early careers of young workers across European countries and the United States. The changing nature of early careers as a result of growing instability and flexibility by employers in terms of being able to lay off works in the global current labor market is a key theme.
  24. Find this resource:
  25. Blossfeld, Hans-Peter, Sandra Buchholz, and Dirk Hofäcker. 2006. Globalization, uncertainty and late careers in society. London and New York: Taylor & Francis.
  26. DOI: 10.4337/9781781007495Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  27. This book presents a comparative analysis of late careers and career exits across different social contexts. It locates the career experiences of older workers in four institutional settings, including conservative welfare regimes, southern European welfare regimes, liberal welfare regimes, and social-democratic welfare regimes.
  28. Find this resource:
  29. Blossfeld, Hans-Peter, and Sonja Drobnic. 2001. Careers of couples in contemporary society: From male breadwinner to dual-earner families. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
  30. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  31. This book adopts a comparative framework to show how couples’ careers have developed and transformed both the labor market and family life. It expands understanding of gender inequalities vis-à-vis the intersection of paid employment and family processes from a longitudinal perspective, as well as documenting how career dynamics are influenced by gender in different institutional settings.
  32. Find this resource:
  33. Blossfeld, Hans-Peter, and Heather Anne Hofmeister. 2006. Globalization, uncertainty and women’s careers: An international comparison. Cheltenham, UK, and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.
  34. DOI: 10.4337/9781781007495Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  35. Blossfeld and Hofmeister provide an important comparative overview of women’s career paths and how gender inequality is reproduced.
  36. Find this resource:
  37. Gunz, Hugh P., and Maury Peiperl. 2007. Handbook of career studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
  38. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  39. This handbook offers a comprehensive picture of the history and development of the field of careers as a subject of inquiry.
  40. Find this resource:
  41. Hall, Douglas T. 1976. Careers in organizations. Pacific Palisades, CA: Goodyear.
  42. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  43. Douglas locates career trajectories within organizations, noting that organizations serve as the systems and settings in which most careers develop.
  44. Find this resource:
  45. Classic Works
  46.  
  47. When Mills wrote White Collar (Mills 1951), Whyte wrote The Organization Man (Whyte 1956), and Walker and Guest wrote The Man on the Assembly Line (Walker and Guest 1952) in the middle of the last century, they were describing bureaucratic managerial practices that produced the career mystique (defining long-hour continuous commitment to one’s job throughout adulthood as the [only] path to success—see Moen and Roehling 2005, cited under Life Course Approach to Careers). But these and other classic publications (Becker and Strauss 1956, Granovetter 1995, Hughes 1937, Wilensky 1960, Wilensky 1961) on careers were based on the assumption that men in white-collar or unionized blue-collar occupations could focus completely on their jobs because someone else—a wife—was available to take care of their families, their households, and the men themselves. Careers of upward mobility were what everyone aspired to, even though many minorities, women, and poorly educated found no rungs to climb. By equating “career” with paid work and occupational paths, a vast amount of social activity coming under the rubric of unpaid work—whether as a participant in a family business, the performance of informal household labor and family carework, or (formal or informal) community volunteer participation—was rendered marginal to the “business” of society, and, consequently, the business of mainstream social science research.
  48.  
  49. Becker, Howard S., and Anselm L. Strauss. 1956. Careers, personality, and adult socialization. American Journal of Sociology 62.3: 253–263.
  50. DOI: 10.1086/222002Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  51. This classic article offers an insightful sociological discussion on how careers in work organizations and occupations were influenced by institutions and individual characteristics.
  52. Find this resource:
  53. Granovetter, Mark. 1995. Getting a job: A study of contacts and careers. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
  54. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  55. Gronovetter investigated a sample of men’s career paths, pointing to the importance of social networks as well as social structure.
  56. Find this resource:
  57. Hughes, Everett C. 1937. Institutional office and the person. American Journal of Sociology 43.3: 404–413.
  58. DOI: 10.1086/217711Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  59. This pioneering classic illustrates how sociologists unpack individual personality from social roles and how individual careers are shaped by organizational and institutional structure.
  60. Find this resource:
  61. Mills, C. Wright. 1951. White collar: The American middle classes. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
  62. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  63. This book argues that prior to the Industrial Revolution the middle class worked in agriculture or family businesses. But the post–World War II development of corporations and bureaucracies paved the way for identifiable career pathways and a new white-collar middle class.
  64. Find this resource:
  65. Super, Donald Edwin. 1957. The psychology of careers: An introduction to vocational development. New York: Harper.
  66. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  67. Donald Super describes vocational guidance and career development from the perspective of individual decision-making.
  68. Find this resource:
  69. Tausky, Curt, and Robert Dubin. 1965. Career anchorage: Managerial mobility motivations. American Sociological Review 30.5: 725–735.
  70. DOI: 10.2307/2091140Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  71. Tausky and Dubin examined the relative proportions of managers with upward and downward career orientations using the Career Orientations Anchorage Scale (COAS).
  72. Find this resource:
  73. Walker, Charles Rumford, and Robert H. Guest. 1952. The man on the assembly line. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
  74. DOI: 10.4159/harvard.9780674599949Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  75. This book succinctly demonstrates job satisfaction and the process of adjustment among workers on an automobile assembly line. The authors emphasize the importance of the technology in determining the nature of social relationships.
  76. Find this resource:
  77. Whyte, William H. 1956. The organization man. New York: Simon and Schuster.
  78. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  79. Whyte argues that the Protestant ethic was replaced by the social ethic of bureaucratic expectations and constraints, resulting in organizational career paths.
  80. Find this resource:
  81. Wilensky, Harold L. 1960. Work, careers and social integration. International Social Science Journal 12.4: 543–560.
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  83. Wilensky points out how career pathways shape involvement in other activities. Involvement in career motivates other forms of engagement.
  84. Find this resource:
  85. Wilensky, Harold L. 1961. Orderly careers and social participation: The impact of work history on social integration in the middle mass. American Sociological Review 26.4: 521–539.
  86. DOI: 10.2307/2090251Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  87. Wilensky describes “orderly careers” as laying the groundwork for civic engagement. This is an early example of the positive effects of following lockstep career paths, and the negative effects of not doing so.
  88. Find this resource:
  89. Career Development Theories
  90.  
  91. In 1930, Mannheim described career as a series of steps: “at each step in it one receives a neat package of prestige and power whose size is known in advance. Its keynote is security; the unforeseen is reduced to the vanishing point” (Mannheim 1930, p. 458, as paraphrased and translated by Hughes 1937, cited under Classic Works, p. 413). This framing can be seen in the early career literature focusing on vocational choices by Super, Holland, and others (Super 1957, also cited under Classic Works; Holland 1973; Brown, et al. 1984). The notion of such an orderly career is also closely associated with the work of Harold Wilensky in the 1960s (Wilensky 1960 and Wilensky 1961, cited under Classic Works). He emphasized the dimensions of an “orderly” career path—continuity in terms of stability of labor force participation; mobility that could be upward, flat, or even downward; and coherence in that there were no unrelated job shifts. What is clear is that throughout the 20th century, institutionalized occupational career paths (as opposed to inheritance, for example, or an agrarian economy) became an indispensable means for individuals and families to achieve life quality and for businesses to create an effective, productive workforce. But globalization, new technologies, and the individualization of risk is resulting in less orderly and more contingent career paths, calling for new theoretical frames.
  92.  
  93. Brown, Duane, Linda Brooks, and Associates. 1984. Career choice and development. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
  94. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  95. Brown, Brooks, and their colleagues reviewed theories and analyzed the process of career development and its applications.
  96. Find this resource:
  97. Granovetter, Mark. 1995. Getting a job: A study of contacts and careers. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
  98. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  99. Gronovetter investigated a sample of men’s career paths, pointing to the importance of social networks as well as social structures shaping opportunities, especially around job entry.
  100. Find this resource:
  101. Holland, John L. 1973. Making vocational choices: A theory of careers. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
  102. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  103. This is a nice example of a “choice” theoretical framing, focusing on individual decision-making regarding occupations.
  104. Find this resource:
  105. Mannheim, Karl. 1930. Über das Wesen und die Bedeutung des wirtschaft-lichen Erfolgsstrebens: Ein Beitrag zur Wirtschaftssoziologie. Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 63:449–512.
  106. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  107. Mannheim was a leading German sociologist who is best known for his scholarship on the sociology of knowledge. While he did not work on the careers topic, his observations reflect the consensus view of career as a series of hierarchical steps.
  108. Find this resource:
  109. Super, Donald Edwin. 1957. The psychology of careers: An introduction to vocational development. New York: Harper.
  110. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  111. Donald Super was a pioneer in theorizing and providing practical advice regarding vocational guidance and career development. He drew on an individualist perspective, emphasizing young peoples’ interests and abilities leading them to make certain occupational choices.
  112. Find this resource:
  113. Wilensky, Harold L. 1960. Work, careers and social integration. International Social Science Journal 12.4: 543–560.
  114. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  115. Wilensky points out how career pathways shape involvement in other activities. Involvement in a career motivates other forms of engagement.
  116. Find this resource:
  117. Organizational and Structural Theoretical Approaches
  118.  
  119. Recognition that occupational careers are embedded in organizations underscores the dual nature of the concept—reflecting choices by individuals as constrained or facilitated by organizational and structural arrangements. This is exemplified in the work by Douglas Hall (Hall 1986) highlighting the importance of organizational structures shaping career development. This is aligned with literature on status attainment (Van Leeuwen and Maas 2010) and Richard Scholl on identifiable career lines (Scholl 1983).
  120.  
  121. Hall, Douglas T. 1986. Career development in organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
  122. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  123. This is a pioneering book theorizing organizational career development.
  124. Find this resource:
  125. London, Manuel. 1983. Toward a theory of career motivation. Academy of Management Review 8.4: 620–630.
  126. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  127. This article proposed a theoretical framework of career motivations. The model suggests that career motivation is determined by the interaction of individual characteristics, situational variables, and career decisions and behaviors based on prospective and retrospective rationality.
  128. Find this resource:
  129. Noe, Raymond A. 1996. Is career management related to employee development and performance? Journal of Organizational Behavior 17.2: 119–133.
  130. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  131. This empirical study investigates the relationship between career management, employee development, and performance.
  132. Find this resource:
  133. Rhodes, Susan R., and Mildred Doering. 1983. An integrated model of career change. Academy of Management Review 8.4: 631–639.
  134. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  135. This paper introduces an integrated model of career change, suggesting a theoretical approach combining both career change research and turnover theory.
  136. Find this resource:
  137. Schein, Edgar H. 1996. Career anchors revisited: Implications for career development in the 21st century. Academy of Management Executive 10.4: 80–88.
  138. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  139. Schein revisits the development of theories and applications using “career anchors” from the mid-1970s and proposes that this concept is particularly useful regarding the turbulent labor market and organizational restructuring.
  140. Find this resource:
  141. Scholl, Richard W. 1983. Career lines and employment stability. Academy of Management Journal 26.1: 86–103.
  142. DOI: 10.2307/256136Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  143. This research explores the association between career line, including career line length, career line ceiling, position ratio, position mobility opportunity, and turnover intentions.
  144. Find this resource:
  145. Seibert, Scott E., Maria L. Kraimer, and Robert C. Liden. 2001. A social capital theory of career success. Academy of Management Journal 44.2: 219–237.
  146. DOI: 10.2307/3069452Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  147. This study employs social capital theory to explain career success. It suggests that network structures are associated with social resources. The resources embedded in the network shape career success.
  148. Find this resource:
  149. Van Leeuwen, Marco H. D., and Ineke Maas. 2010. Historical studies of social mobility and stratification. Annual Review of Sociology 36.1: 429–451.
  150. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102635Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  151. This article reviews research on social mobility and stratification. Career mobility is considered as an essential conduit of social mobility.
  152. Find this resource:
  153. Veiga, John F. 1983. Mobility influences during managerial career stages. Academy of Management Journal 26.1: 64–85.
  154. DOI: 10.2307/256135Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  155. This article charts the career progression of managers, analyzing the factors that define managerial career stages.
  156. Find this resource:
  157. Wolff, Hans-Georg, and Klaus Moser. 2009. Effects of networking on career success: A longitudinal study. Journal of Applied Psychology 94.1: 196–206.
  158. DOI: 10.1037/a0013350Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  159. This study using longitudinal data to investigate the effects of networking on career success.
  160. Find this resource:
  161. New Institutional and Organizational Theoretical Approaches
  162.  
  163. Mayer and Mueller 1986 (p. 167) describes institutional careers as the orderly flow of persons through segmented institutions. Such a framework, based on the notion of an (occupational) status sequence, is how sociologists and economists have usually characterized the typical (male) biography. Vocational psychologists have also viewed careers as orderly once people are past the matching process between persons and jobs as they first move into employment. But career paths in the early 21st century, men’s and women’s, are more contingent than orderly, regardless of one’s location in the social structure. This means that conventional conceptualization and theoretical development of careers may be outmoded, with diminishing numbers of workers fitting the traditional career pattern described in earlier studies. This means that the power and fruitfulness of the career concept is lost when it is only narrowly applied. Theoretical and empirical use of the concept of “career” has thus far been rather constricted, although scholars have acknowledged implicitly, if not explicitly, its role as a bridge between organizations and individual levels of analysis, and as a mechanism for viewing the life course (Barley 1989, cited under Sociological Approaches).
  164.  
  165. Dokko, Gina, Steffanie L. Wilk, and Nancy P. Rothbard. 2008. Unpacking prior experience: How career history affects job performance. Organization Science 20.1: 51–68.
  166. DOI: 10.1287/orsc.1080.0357Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  167. This research draws on psychological theory to show how task-relevant knowledge and skill mediate the relationship between prior related experience and current performance.
  168. Find this resource:
  169. Mayer, Karl U., and Walter Mueller. 1986. The state and the structure of the life course. In Human development and the life course: Multidisciplinary perspectives. Edited by Aage B. Sorensen, Franz E. Weinert, and Lonnie R. Sherrod, 217–245. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
  170. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  171. This article presents a traditional framework for understanding institutional careers as the orderly flow of persons through segmented institutions.
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  173. Boundaryless Careers
  174.  
  175. An important career concept is that of “boundaryless,” recognizing the permeability and shifting nature of contemporary occupational paths (Arthur and Rousseau 1996; Arthur, et al. 1999, cited under Theorizing Career Processes; Arthur, et al. 2005). This is further specified by Yehuda Baruch (Baruch 2006).
  176.  
  177. Arthur, Michael B., Svetlana N. Khapova, and Celeste P. M. Wilderom. 2005. Career success in a boundaryless career world. Journal of Organizational Behavior 26.2: 177–202.
  178. DOI: 10.1002/job.290Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  179. This article argues that research on career success has misused contemporary career theory, neglecting the interdependence between objective and subjective careers, as well as today’s boundaryless career paths involving both inter-organizational mobility and extra-organizational support.
  180. Find this resource:
  181. Arthur, Michael B., and D. M. Rousseau, eds. 1996. The boundaryless career: A new employment principle for a new organizational era. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
  182. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  183. This is a key book theorizing the development of boundaryless careers in response to the increasing porousness and differentiation in career paths as a result of globalization, new technologies, shifting organizational arrangements, and uncertainties associated with the absence of social protections such as seniority.
  184. Find this resource:
  185. Baruch, Yehuda. 2006. Career development in organizations and beyond: Balancing traditional and contemporary viewpoints. Human Resource Management Review 16.2: 125–138.
  186. DOI: 10.1016/j.hrmr.2006.03.002Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  187. Baruch distinguishes two broad streams of career theory: 1) careers are structured and organizationally focused (e.g., Super 1957 and Wilensky 1961, both cited under Classic Works), and 2) careers are continuous, boundaryless or protean, and individually focused. The author further offers a “balanced” view of the management of careers in organizations and beyond.
  188. Find this resource:
  189. Sullivan, Sherry E., and Michael B. Arthur. 2006. The evolution of the boundaryless career concept: Examining physical and psychological mobility. Journal of Vocational Behavior 69.1: 19–29.
  190. DOI: 10.1016/j.jvb.2005.09.001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  191. This article examines the boundaryless career and presents a model that attempts to visually capture Arthur and Rousseau’s suggestion that the concept involves six underlying meanings (Arthur and Rousseau 1996).
  192. Find this resource:
  193. Theorizing Career Processes
  194.  
  195. Interesting work has been accomplished around various career processes, such as job rotation (Campion, et al. 1994), planning (Gould 1979), and career change (Rhodes and Doering 1983). There is also scholarship on contemporary and future careers (Arthur, et al. 1999; Lips-Wiersma and Hall 2007; Peiperl, et al. 2000).
  196.  
  197. Arthur, Michael B., Kerr Inkson, and Judith K. Pringle. 1999. The new careers: Individual action and economic change. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
  198. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  199. The authors provide a nuanced example by showing career studies as an evolution of cumulative work experience over time. Careers interact with contexts and historical time effects.
  200. Find this resource:
  201. Campion, Michael A., Lisa Cheraskin, and Michael J. Stevens. 1994. Career-related antecedents and outcomes of job rotation. Academy of Management Journal 37.6: 1518–1542.
  202. DOI: 10.2307/256797Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  203. This paper proposes a conceptual framework for the relationship between job rotation and selected career-related variables and provides an empirical case.
  204. Find this resource:
  205. Gould, Sam. 1979. Characteristics of career planners in upwardly mobile occupations. Academy of Management Journal 22.3: 539–550.
  206. DOI: 10.2307/255743Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  207. This study shows the relationship between career planning and career performance.
  208. Find this resource:
  209. Lips-Wiersma, Marjolein, and Douglas T. Hall. 2007. Organizational career development is not dead: A case study on managing the new career during organizational change. Journal of Organizational Behavior 28.6: 771–792.
  210. DOI: 10.1002/job.446Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  211. While career development is becoming less central to organizational management practices, this study investigates whether and how, in an increasingly unpredictable career environment, individuals are taking responsibility for their own career development.
  212. Find this resource:
  213. Patton, Wendy, and Mary McMahon. 1999. Career development and systems theory: A new relationship. Pacific Grove, CA: Thomson Brooks/Cole.
  214. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  215. The Systems Theory Framework introduces a metatheoretical framework, which emphasizes the individual as the site for the integration of theory and practice.
  216. Find this resource:
  217. Peiperl, Maury A., Michael B. Arthur, Rob Goffee, and Timothy Morris, eds. 2000. Career frontiers: New conceptions of working lives. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
  218. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  219. This edited volume offers insights into new career theories and concepts, as well as evidence on the experiences of knowledge workers, work and non-work, boundaries and cultures.
  220. Find this resource:
  221. Rhodes, Susan R., and Mildred Doering. 1983. An integrated model of career change. Academy of Management Review 8.4: 631–639.
  222. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  223. This paper introduces an integrated model of career change, suggesting a theoretical approach that combines both career change research and turnover theory.
  224. Find this resource:
  225. Career Risks and Dynamics
  226.  
  227. Contemporary careers are based on the career mystique of continuous hard work and commitment as the path to both security and success, but that is an out-of-date model given the uncertainties and risks associated with the dislocations associated with a global economy and corollary outsourcing, off-shoring, and restructuring. The challenge is to investigate, understand, and manage both continuity and change in contemporary career progression (Lips-Wiersma and Hall 2007, cited under Theorizing Career Processes; Nauta, et al. 2009).
  228.  
  229. Khapova, Svetlana N., and Michael B. Arthur. 2011. Interdisciplinary approaches to contemporary career studies. In Special issue: Interdisciplinary approaches to contemporary career studies. Edited by Svetlana N. Khapova and Michael B. Arthur. Human Relations 64.1: 3–17.
  230. DOI: 10.1177/0018726710384294Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  231. This is the opening article in a Human Relations special issue on “Interdisciplinary approaches to contemporary career studies.”
  232. Find this resource:
  233. London, Manuel. 1983. Toward a theory of career motivation. Academy of Management Review 8.4: 620–630.
  234. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  235. This article proposed a theatrical framework on career motivations. The model suggests career motivation is determined by the interaction of individual characteristics, situational variables, and career decisions and behaviors based on prospective and retrospective rationality.
  236. Find this resource:
  237. Nauta, Aukje, Annelies van Vianen, Beatrice van der Heijden, Karen van Dam, and Marja Willemsen. 2009. Understanding the factors that promote employability orientation: The impact of employability culture, career satisfaction, and role breadth self-efficacy. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 82.2: 233–251.
  238. DOI: 10.1348/096317908X320147Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  239. This study draws on data from Dutch employees working in the health care and welfare sector to examine individual and organizational factors related to workers’ employability orientation and turnover intentions.
  240. Find this resource:
  241. Sociological Approaches
  242.  
  243. In contrast to the more psychological theories of vocational choice (described under the Career Development Theories), sociologists tend to theorize institutional arrangements and cultures as constraining career options. This is perhaps best defined and summarized in the piece by Stephen Barley (Barley 1989). But Sweet and Meiksins also point to the uncertainties and risks of contemporary careers (Sweet and Meiksins 2012). Others provide empirical evidence of how career progression and attainment reflect structural and cultural opportunities and constraints (Barnett, et al. 2000; Blossfeld 1986; O’Neil, et al. 2008; Rosenfeld 1992).
  244.  
  245. Barley, Stephen R. 1989. Careers, identities, and institutions: The legacy of the Chicago School of Sociology. In Handbook of career theory. Edited by Michael B. Arthur, Douglas T. Hall, and Barbara S. Lawrence, 41–65. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  246. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511625459Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  247. Stephen Barley may not call himself a sociologist, but this is an excellent sociological treatise on careers. It is extremely insightful and well worth reading.
  248. Find this resource:
  249. Barnett, William P., James N. Baron, and Toby E. Stuart. 2000. Avenues of attainment: Occupational demography and organizational careers in the California Civil Service. American Journal of Sociology 106.1: 88–144.
  250. DOI: 10.1086/303107Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  251. This study explores how race and gender compositions of organizations influence career outcomes among workers.
  252. Find this resource:
  253. Blossfeld, Hans-Peter. 1986. Career opportunities in the Federal Republic of Germany: A dynamic approach to the study of life-course, cohort, and period effects. European Sociological Review 2.3: 208–225.
  254. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  255. This article presents an insightful empirical study on how life course, cohort, and period effects (i.e., duration of labor force engagement, timing of entry into the labor market, and labor market conditions) influence career consequences for three birth cohorts in Germany.
  256. Find this resource:
  257. O’Neil, Deborah A., Margaret M. Hopkins, and Diana Bilimoria. 2008. Women’s careers at the start of the 21st century: Patterns and paradoxes. Journal of Business Ethics 80.4: 727–743.
  258. DOI: 10.1007/s10551-007-9465-6Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  259. This article analyzes the literature on women’s careers, identifying four patterns that cumulatively contribute to the current state of women’s career development. The authors emphasize that women’s careers are embedded in their larger life contexts/families and that careers are central to women’s lives. Women’s career paths reflect a wide range and variety of patterns; human and social capital are critical factors shaping women’s careers.
  260. Find this resource:
  261. Pitt-Catsouphes, Marcie, and Christina Matz-Costa. 2008. The multi-generational workforce: Workplace flexibility and engagement. Community, Work & Family 11.2: 215–229.
  262. DOI: 10.1080/13668800802021906Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  263. This article examines the perceptions of employees of different ages regarding the flexibility they need at work (flexibility fit) and their engagement with work.
  264. Find this resource:
  265. Rosenfeld, Rachel A. 1992. Job mobility and career processes. Annual Review of Sociology 18.1: 39–61.
  266. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.so.18.080192.000351Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  267. This review article describes the role of time and opportunity structures in career development. Vacancy-driven models provide the background for many conceptions of the opportunity structure, even as labor markets and economic segmentation coming to characterize particular structures.
  268. Find this resource:
  269. Sweet, Stephen, and Peter Meiksins. 2012. Changing contours of work: Jobs and opportunities in the new economy. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
  270. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  271. Sweet and Meiksins revisit the issue of job opportunities in the “new (or global) economy,” suggesting that workers suffer more from the new economy, instead of sharing the claimed benefits.
  272. Find this resource:
  273. A Life Course Approach to Careers
  274.  
  275. Life course scholars moved beyond the theoretical focus by psychologists and vocational scholars on the matching process between individuals and jobs resulting in individuals’ vocational “choices,” to theorize careers as a mechanism linking individuals (and families) with institutions. We describe “career” as a historical invention, an institutionalized life path, and a cultural mystique (Moen and Roehling 2005, Mayer 2009). Indeed, most existing social, economic, and corporate policies are grounded upon the lockstep (male) career regime of first preparation for (education), then enactment of full-time, continuous labor force participation (occupational career), ending with a one-way, one-time, irreversible exit (retirement) (Brückner and Mayer 2005). Note that this lockstep occupational and organizational career template is a gendered one: its very premise is that workers have someone else (typically wives) to take care of the non-paid work aspects of their lives. By the end of the 20th century, the United States, like other advanced nations, had institutionalized this lockstep pattern from education, through employment in the prime adult years, to the leisure of retirement in late midlife as a confluence of rules, roles, and routines. Scholars see both gender differences (Moen and Sweet 2004, Pixley 2008) and a new contingency to career development (Heinz 2003, Heinz and Marshall 2003). Changing rules, roles, and routines affect men’s and women’s dispositions, taken-for-granted expectations and beliefs, and choices as they confront the reality of the ways paid work and career paths are socially structured.
  276.  
  277. Arthur, Michael B., Kerr Inkson, and Judith K. Pringle. 1999. The new careers: Individual action and economic change. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
  278. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  279. The authors provide a nuanced example by showing careers evolving through cumulative work experiences over time. They demonstrate the key point that careers don’t occur in a set way, but, rather, interact with contexts and historical time.
  280. Find this resource:
  281. Brückner, Hannah, and Karl Ulrich Mayer. 2005. De-standardization of the life course: What it might mean? And if it means anything, whether it actually took place? Advances in Life Course Research 9:27–53.
  282. DOI: 10.1016/S1040-2608(04)09002-1Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  283. The de-standardization of the life course has taken distinct shapes and has followed distinct paces in various countries and social groups. This article investigates how gender plays a key role in de-standardization processes.
  284. Find this resource:
  285. Heinz, W. R. 2003. From work trajectories to negotiated careers: The contingent work life course. In Handbook of the life course. Edited by Jeylan T. Mortimer and Michael J. Shanahan, 185–204. New York: Springer.
  286. DOI: 10.1007/b100507Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  287. This overview captures changes in early career development, with previously taken-for-granted pathways increasingly a thing of the past. Today young adults are confronting contingent rather than orderly careers, having to “negotiate” their own paths.
  288. Find this resource:
  289. Heinz, Walter R., and Victor W. Marshall. 2003. Social dynamics of the life course: Transitions, institutions, and interrelations. New York: Aldine De Gruyter.
  290. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  291. This edited volume provides a nice overview of the life course and how career-related policies and practices have helped shape the conventional life path. The chapters examine different life course themes and concepts from a cross-cultural perspective.
  292. Find this resource:
  293. Mayer, Karl Ulrich. 2009. New directions in life course research. Annual Review of Sociology 35.1: 413–433.
  294. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.soc.34.040507.134619Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  295. This review addresses two objectives: 1) to report on trends in life course research by focusing on empirical studies published since the year 2000 and 2) to assess the overall development of the field.
  296. Find this resource:
  297. Moen, Phyllis, and Patricia Roehling. 2005. The career mystique: Cracks in the American dream. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
  298. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  299. Moen and Roehling describe the outdated logic of the “lockstep life course,” suggesting that continuous, full-time dedication to one’s job is rooted in the structure of both a career mystique and the feminine mystique. The feminine mystique has disappeared but the career mystique—never a reality for the disadvantaged—remains an out-of-date template constraining options for integrating work careers with personal/family clocks and calendars.
  300. Find this resource:
  301. Moen, Phyllis, and Stephen Sweet. 2004. From “work–family” to “flexible careers.” Community, Work & Family 7.2: 209–226.
  302. DOI: 10.1080/1366880042000245489Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  303. This paper introduces key concepts that inform a life course perspective, including a focus on the temporal organization of career paths and life biographies. Snapshots of cross-sectional issues fail to capture the dynamics of careers and individual or family adaptations.
  304. Find this resource:
  305. Pixley, Joy E. 2008. Life course patterns of career-prioritizing decisions and occupational attainment in dual-earner couples. Work and Occupations 35.2: 127–163.
  306. DOI: 10.1177/0730888408315543Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  307. Pixley draws on in-depth data from fifty-one couples to capture and compare life course patterns of major career-prioritizing decisions and their consequences.
  308. Find this resource:
  309. Skocpol, Theda. 2000. The missing middle: Working families and the future of American social policy. New York: Norton.
  310. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  311. This book articulates contemporary policies with regard to low- and middle-income working parents and their children. Being middle class no longer provides immunity from contingent careers rife with insecurity.
  312. Find this resource:
  313. Van der Heijden, Beatrice I. J. M., Annet H. de Lange, Evangelia Demerouti, and Claudia M. Van der Heijde. 2009. Age effects on the employability–career success relationship. Journal of Vocational Behavior 74.2: 156–164.
  314. DOI: 10.1016/j.jvb.2008.12.009Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  315. An interesting empirical study of the factors structuring self-reported and supervisor-rated employability for two age cohorts. The authors propose a career success-enhancing model of employability.
  316. Find this resource:
  317. Careers over Time
  318.  
  319. Careers are by definition dynamic processes but often studied at one point in time. There is, however, a growing body of scholarship examining the dynamics of men’s and women’s career paths (Aisenbrey, et al. 2009; Blair-Loy 1999; Fuller 2008; Gangl and Ziefle 2009; Miller 2011). Women have always followed “disorderly” trajectories, but men’s career paths have also changed, given the risk and uncertainty of a global economy, declining enforcement of social protections, and the disappearance of the social contract linking job security with seniority (Staff and Mortimer 2012).
  320.  
  321. Aisenbrey, Silke, Marie Evertsson, and Daniela Grunow. 2009. Is there a career penalty for mothers’ time out? A comparison of Germany, Sweden and the United States. Social Forces 88.2: 573–605.
  322. DOI: 10.1353/sof.0.0252Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  323. This study compares how policies toward motherhood and work shaped the relationship between the length of mothers’ time out of paid work after childbirth and short-term career outcomes for mothers in Germany, Sweden, and the United States.
  324. Find this resource:
  325. Blair-Loy, Mary. 1999. Career patterns of executive women in finance: An optimal matching analysis. American Journal of Sociology 104.5: 1346–1397.
  326. DOI: 10.1086/210177Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  327. This article examines the objective and subjective facets of female finance-executive careers.
  328. Find this resource:
  329. Elder, Glen H., Jr., and Eliza K. Pavalko. 1993. Work careers in men’s later years: Transitions, trajectories, and historical change. Journal of Gerontology 48.4: S180–S191.
  330. DOI: 10.1093/geronj/48.4.S180Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  331. This paper engages in the discussion of changes in the retirement experience of US workers over time. The authors analyzed life history data on two birth cohorts of men in the Stanford-Terman study, a longitudinal project that dates back to 1922.
  332. Find this resource:
  333. Fuller, Sylvia. 2008. Job mobility and wage trajectories for men and women in the United States. American Sociological Review 73.1: 158–183.
  334. DOI: 10.1177/000312240807300108Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  335. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, this article investigates the consequences of career mobility for wage inequality between and among women and men.
  336. Find this resource:
  337. Gangl, Markus, and Andrea Ziefle. 2009. Motherhood, labor force behavior, and women’s careers: An empirical assessment of the wage penalty for motherhood in Britain, Germany, and the United States. Demography 46.2: 341–369.
  338. DOI: 10.1353/dem.0.0056Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  339. This article investigates the career prospects after motherhood for five cohorts of American, British, and West German women around the 1960s.
  340. Find this resource:
  341. Han, Shin-Kap, and Phyllis Moen. 1999. Clocking out: Temporal patterning of retirement. American Journal of Sociology 105.1: 191–236.
  342. DOI: 10.1086/210271Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  343. This study demonstrates how historical context, social heterogeneity, and biographical pacing (operationalized by cohort, gender, and career pathway) simultaneously affect retirement processes.
  344. Find this resource:
  345. Miller, Amalia R. 2011. The effects of motherhood timing on career paths. Journal of Population Economics 24.3: 1071–1100.
  346. DOI: 10.1007/s00148-009-0296-xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  347. This paper estimates the effects of motherhood timing on female career path, using national panel data from the NLSY79, and biological fertility shocks as instrumental variables for the age at which a woman bears her first child.
  348. Find this resource:
  349. O’Neil, Deborah A., Margaret M. Hopkins, and Diana Bilimoria. 2008. Women’s careers at the start of the 21st century: Patterns and paradoxes. Journal of Business Ethics 80.4: 727–743.
  350. DOI: 10.1007/s10551-007-9465-6Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  351. This article analyzes the literature on women’s careers, identifying four patterns that cumulatively contribute to the current state of women’s career development. The authors emphasize that women’s careers are embedded in their larger life contexts; families and careers are central to women’s lives; women’s career paths reflect a wide range and variety of patterns; and human and social capital are critical factors for women’s careers.
  352. Find this resource:
  353. Staff, Jeremy, and Jeylan T. Mortimer. 2012. Explaining the motherhood wage penalty during the early occupational career. Demography 49.1: 1–21.
  354. DOI: 10.1007/s13524-011-0068-6Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  355. This research examines whether the residual motherhood wage penalty results from differences between mothers and other women in the accumulation of work interruptions and breaks in schooling.
  356. Find this resource:
  357. Work, Family, and Gendered Careers
  358.  
  359. The movement of married middle-class women into the workforce in the 1970s and 1980s (in tandem with the women’s movement as well as the shift to a service economy) suggested possibilities for gender equality. But this has not been the case, and increasingly the women’s movement is described as an “unfinished” or “incomplete” revolution (Esping-Andersen 2009, Gerson 2011). Women’s labor force participation has generated a spate of work-family articles, including how organizations can promote a more sustainable work-family interface (Ferree 2010, Briscoe and Kellogg 2011, Damaske 2011).
  360.  
  361. Briscoe, Forrest, and Katherine C. Kellogg. 2011. The initial assignment effect: Local employer practices and positive career outcomes for work-family program users. American Sociological Review 76.2: 291–319.
  362. DOI: 10.1177/0003122411401250Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  363. This study helps to fill a significant gap in the literature by investigating how local employer practices can enable employees to successfully use the programs designed to benefit them.
  364. Find this resource:
  365. Damaske, Sarah. 2011. For the family? How class and gender shape women’s work. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
  366. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  367. Damaske draws on qualitative data to provide a picture of alternative pathways women pursue to manage their work careers and family careers.
  368. Find this resource:
  369. Esping-Andersen, Gøsta. 2009. The incomplete revolution: Adapting to women’s new roles. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
  370. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  371. Esping-Andersen points to the need for new models of work and career paths that can promote gender equality, provide care to children, and respond to demographic changes in the workforce.
  372. Find this resource:
  373. Ferree, Myra Marx. 2010. Filling the glass: Gender perspectives on families. Journal of Marriage and Family 72.3: 420–439.
  374. DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2010.00711.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  375. This article points to promising practices for both improving research on gender and families and contributing to the glacial pace of institutional change.
  376. Find this resource:
  377. Gerson, Kathleen. 2011. The unfinished revolution: Coming of age in a new era of gender, work, and family. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
  378. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  379. Gerson proposes a framework for understanding the structural and cultural conflicts playing out in the lives of young women and men.
  380. Find this resource:
  381. Moen, Phyllis, and Kelly Chermack. 2005. Gender disparities in health: Strategic selection, careers, and cycles of control. Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences 60 (Special Issue 2): S99–S108.
  382. DOI: 10.1093/geronb/60.Special_Issue_2.S99Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  383. This article proposes a dynamic model of the intersections between gender, health, and the life course, incorporating processes of strategic selection of roles, relationships, and behavior.
  384. Find this resource:
  385. Moen, Phyllis, and Shin Kap Han. 2001. Reframing careers: Work, family, and gender. In Restructuring work and the life course. Edited by Victor Marshall, W. Heinz, H. Krueger, and A. Verma, 424–445. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press.
  386. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  387. Moen and Han emphasize that the concept and structure of careers are based on middle-class and unionized working-class white male experiences and don’t fit with family care work, which is also based on a gendered division of labor.
  388. Find this resource:
  389. Orrange, Robert M. 2007. Work, family, and leisure: Uncertainty in a risk society. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
  390. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  391. Orrange draws on data from young adults to chart their support for gender equality but ambivalence about how it will play out in their own career and family biographies as they look to the future.
  392. Find this resource:
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