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Lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) employees constitute one of the largest, but least studied, minority groups in the workforce. This article examines what we know, and what we need to know, about the career and workplace experiences of this understudied population. The construct of sexual identity is defined, followed by a review of the research on sexual orientation in the workplace. Then an analysis of the differences between LGB employees and other stigmatized groups is presented. Three unique challenges facing LGB employees are identified, and conceptual models are developed that explain underlying processes. Finally, career theories are critically analyzed, and an identity-based longitudinal theory of LGB careers is presented.

Intercollegiate athletics are a major investment of time for student-athletes who must balance their academic and athletic commitments. For African American males, sports participation may have adverse effects on both their educational outcomes and career development. According to the extant research base, the low academic achievement and high aspirations toward professional athletic careers for many African American males are due to a variety of factors including socialization toward athletics by family, community members, and the media. We posit that African American male student-athletes may prematurely settle on an athletic identity with limited or no exploration to other possible identities, namely career identities. Using an adaptation of Dawkins, Braddock II, and Celaya’s (2009) model of academic engagement, we categorize African American male student-athletes into three persona types; maintenance, incentive, and integrative. Maintenance and incentive persona types value academics as a necessary step toward an athletic career, whereas integrative persona type understands that academics and athletics can benefit a comprehensive career development.

The purpose of this paper is to review identified key features of teacher support and its influence on students’ career decision making and development. It also examines the types of research approaches to data collection and analysis in order to provide a more in-depth evaluation of this field of study.

The review examined 18 studies, the majority being quantitative in design. Cross-sectional and longitudinal effects of teacher support were investigated, and differences in teacher support relative to grade level and gender were considered.

Results indicated that since 2000, there has been an increase in the number of empirical studies of teacher support in the career development field, the majority involving middle and high school students. The most commonly cited frameworks that underpin the studies are the social cognitive career theory, the career construction theory and Super’s career development theory. The most frequently used instrument for data collection was the teacher support scale (Metheny et al., 2008).

The review will be beneficial to researchers, teachers and policy makers seeking to optimize support systems for students’ career development. The findings contribute to further theory development and have practical implications for the career guidance field. Recommendations for future research and practice are suggested.

Many psychological, cultural, and social barriers exist that impact Black male participation in the workforce. In this chapter, authors discuss the impact that mentorship, racism, society, culture, economics, and other pertinent factors have on the career development of Black men. This chapter examines programs and strategies that effectively address the career development needs of Black men. A review of counseling interventions and their applicability to career counseling with Black men are presented. Emerging trends in career development for Black men are also discussed. In addition, provided in this chapter are personal narratives given by the authors who contextualize their career development experiences through culturally-specific career development theoretical frameworks. Lastly, implications for research, counseling, counselor education, and policy, as well as recommendations for professional development are offered.

This chapter applies three of the most prominent theories in vocational and career psychology to further illuminate the turnover process. Prevailing theories about attrition have rarely integrated explanatory constructs from vocational research, though career (and job) choices clearly have implications for employee affect and loyalty to a chosen job in a career field. Despite remarkable inroads by new perspectives for explaining turnover, career, and vocational formulations can nonetheless enrich these – and conventional – formulations about why incumbents stay or leave their jobs. To illustrate, vocational theories can help clarify why certain shocks (critical events precipitating thoughts of leaving) drive attrition and what embeds incumbents. In particular, this chapter reviews Super's life-span career theory, Holland's career model, and social cognitive career theory and describes how they can fill in theoretical gaps in the understanding of organizational withdrawal.

This study aims to examine the relationship between knowledge management and career development in an era characterized by high levels of youth unemployment and a demand for specialized skills. Despite the increasing transition to a knowledge-based economy, there is a significant gap between young people’s skills and career readiness, necessitating an in-depth analysis of the role of knowledge management at the individual, organizational and national levels.

The authors conducted a qualitative study using the theory-context-characteristics-methodology approach based on a systematic literature review. The authors created an ecological framework for reflecting on knowledge management and career development, arguing for a multidisciplinary approach that invites collaboration across sectors to generate innovative and reliable solutions.

This study presents a comprehensive review of the existing literature and trends, noting the need for more focus on the interplay between knowledge management and career development. It emphasizes the need for businesses to promote the acquisition, storage, diffusion and application of knowledge and its circulation and exchange to create international business human capital.

The findings may help multinational corporations develop managerial training programs and recruitment strategies, given the demand for advanced knowledge-based skills in the modern workspace. The study also discusses the influences of education, experience and job skills on business managers’ performance, guiding the future recruitment of talents.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this review is among the first to assess the triadic relationship between knowledge management, career development and the global unemployment crisis. The proposed multidisciplinary approach seeks to break down existing silos, thus fostering a more comprehensive understanding of how to address these ongoing global concerns.

To date, research on women’s entrepreneurship has largely been focused on how gender roles may constrain the venture process, or cause role conflicts for women pursuing an entrepreneurial career. While acknowledging the validity of such perspectives, the purpose of this paper is to apply a broader perspective of career-life development, answering the call for a more nuanced and embedded understanding of an entrepreneurial career.

This paper presents a constructionist, relational analysis of the experiences of 13 Canadian women who started their business following the life transition to motherhood. Interview data were coded using grounded theory methods.

The conceptual model captures the influence of the mothering role in shaping the transition into entrepreneurship, illuminating the reciprocal relational processes of context, choice and outcomes in the career-life development of mother entrepreneurs.

While this is a small sample, and findings are not generalizable, application of relational theory of career-life offers implications for supporting women’s transition to, and continued success in, entrepreneurship.

Career theory offers practical application to the management of mother entrepreneurs’ career-life development.

To date, there has been limited application of career theory to entrepreneurship, particularly to understanding the gendered, relational career-life experiences of mother entrepreneurs.

Virtually all contemporary scientific papers studying careers emphasize its changing nature. Indeed, careers have been changing during recent decades, for example becoming more complex and unpredictable. Furthermore, hallmarks of the new career – such as individual agency – are clearly increasing in importance in today’s labor market. This led the authors to ask the question of whether these changes are actually visible in the topics that career scholars research. In other words, the purpose of this paper is to discover the trending topics in careers.

To achieve this goal, the authors analyzed all published papers from four core career journals (i.e. Career Development International, Career Development Quarterly, Journal of Career Assessment, and Journal of Career Development) between 2012 and 2016. Using a five-step procedure involving three researchers, the authors formulated the 16 most trending topics.

Some traditional career topics are still quite popular today (e.g. career success as the #1 trending topic), whereas other topics have emerged during recent years (e.g. employability as the #3 trending topic). In addition, some topics that are closely related to career research – such as unemployment and job search – surprisingly turned out not to be a trending topic.

In reviewing all published papers in CDI, CDQ, JCA, and JCD between 2012 and 2016, the authors provide a unique overview of currently trending topics, and the authors compare this to the overall discourse on careers. In addition, the authors formulate key questions for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between potentials of top management teams’ (TMT) career development and corporate social responsibility (CSR) by examining listed manufacturing companies in China. More importantly, it tried to contribute to the understanding of the senior executive’s career development in the trend of upgrading the manufacturing industry.

The sample firms in this paper were selected from the China A-listed companies in the manufacturing industry. It collected CSR and TMT data from the Rankins CSR Ratings (RKS) Database and CSMAR database and applied the multiple regression to test the hypotheses. Moreover, it implemented the robustness test by using the standard regression method and the structural equation model.

The findings indicate that a firm’s CSR performance is significantly associated with TMT’s educational level and overseas background. The government background, academic background and financial background of high-level managers, instead, have a negative relationship with CSR performance. In addition, firm’s ownership moderates the relationship between TMT and CSR initiatives – the career development potential of TMT has different effects on promoting CSR in the context of different ownership. These relationships remain significant when the managers’ tenure, gender, age, wage and firm size are controlled.

The empirical research on the potentials of executive career development and CSR is limited to linear assumptions. Since there are fewer overseas holding companies in Chinese state-owned and private enterprises, it failed to reflect international differences.

First, CSR is related to the potentials of TMT career development and also the potentials of TMT career development are associated with the structure of the TMT. Second, to improve CSR, it is necessary to distinguish the different ownership of companies and then adjust the TMT structure correspondingly. Last, senior executives should choose their career direction according to their own distinct and inherent career development potentials.

This study explores the relationship between potentials of TMT career development and CSR. It not only expands the research in the field of CSR but also enriches the research on the career development of top executives.

The concept of “career” has become the dominant mode of thinking about the “lifespan” of one's working life in contemporary late capitalist society. The research literature on the concept of “vocation” and/or “calling” has grown in recent years, but has not yet received extensive treatment in the area of management career development. The purpose of this paper is to address this lacuna by outlining and describing the practice of vocational ideation (or considering one's work as calling, as opposed to a career or a job) in relation to its potential utilization in contemporary management and career development.

The paper is essentially conceptual and is informed by an extensive review of research literature and theory which examines how the concept of the “calling” has been integrated with learning, educational and developmental activities.

The paper discusses the implications of the return to the concept of “vocation” in HR and Management Development theory and demonstrates why “calling” is a small but significant nuance which can change the way in which managers engage with career development practices. The literature on introducing the concept of vocational ideation to career development activities has grown in research years. However, the literature review found that this body of work tends to focus on pre-experience college students, which indicates that it has not often been considered as a viable avenue for management development practice or research.

As the paper is purely conceptual, and most of the literature in this field tends to focus on pre-experience students, potential implications for practice and avenues for future research are outlined. One of the two main categories of research need which emerged from the conceptual work described in this paper in relation to vocationally oriented career ideation was concerned with developing an understanding the dynamics of introducing the concept of vocational calling into management career development interventions.

A template for “doing” for vocational ideation in a management career development or management development context was offered. This outline may be altered to assist management development practitioners to develop and augment vocational ideation initiatives as part of their work and professional practice.

Another area of research need emerging from this work was concerned with understanding changing perspectives on non-economic aspects of work as a social practice, the impact of culture on how vocations are understood, and the relationship between spirituality and meaningfulness and career behavior. In summary there appears to be a need for more studies which demonstrate how changed understandings of the vocation is reflective of broader social change.

The concept of vocational ideation is original and does not exist as a concept or a practice in the professional or research literature. It is discussed here in the context of the growth of interest in spirituality and religion in workplaces. Specific attention is given to how it can be applied in contemporary workplaces and organizations as part of management development practices.