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In this study, the concept of career, which is one of the most significant functions of human resources, is examined. Toward the end of the twentieth century, restricted models, in which individuals work in a workplace in a classical manner, have been replaced by more flexible models. Due to certain reasons such as changing environmental conditions, increasing education levels, and the impact of employee’s values on his/her work life, individuals’ work life have been dramatically changed. Therefore, some career approaches oriented for these changing conditions and current requirements have been proposed by both academicians and professionals. These approaches mostly include removing workplace limits, offering the opportunity to work from anywhere, using various skills at different departments without any limitations. Basing on the aforementioned changes in theory and practice, this study investigates up-to-date career approaches in a holistic manner. In this context, the background and practicability of these theoretically framed approaches are also discussed in the present study

We are the midst of accelerated change in the academic workforce. Academic roles, being a resilient mixture of research and education, are differentiating. An education-focused academic role, rather than one solely focused on disciplinary research, is gaining credibility and value. With the rise of the education-focused academic roles, questions are being raised about whether this new form of education-focused academic will continue to be overly represented by women in a new form of “women's work.” In the next decade, as academic roles continue to differentiate, care needs to be taken not to repeat the practice of the last 100 years which has seen gender bias continue. We will present four profiles of education-focused women academics, the snakes and ladders in their careers, and the strategies needed to ensure that women progress with equal recognition in these complex but exciting times.

Latin America is a vast and diverse continent. Not only are there dozens of different nations, but each country is also marked by stark regional differences. Nevertheless, the academic profession in all countries shares some common features that are important for an emerging scholar to know. Here, maybe more than in other parts of the world, early career decisions have significant and long-lasting consequences. This chapter presents the Latin American academic context focusing on the academic career ladder, as it is organized both in the public and the private sectors, exploring the many sources of tension and challenges, as well as opportunities for early career scholars in the region.

As a site of contestation among job seekers, workers, and managers, the bureaucratic workplace both reproduces and erodes occupational race segregation and racial status hierarchies. Much sociological research has examined the reproduction of racial inequality at work; however, little research has examined how desegregationist forces, including civil rights movement values, enter and permeate bureaucratic workplaces into the broader polity. Our purpose in this chapter is to introduce and typologize what we refer to as “occupational activism,” defined as socially transformative individual and collective action that is conducted and realized through an occupational role or occupational community. We empirically induce and present a typology from our study of the half-century-long, post-mobilization occupational careers of over 60 veterans of the nonviolent Nashville civil rights movement of the early 1960s. The fourfold typology of occupational activism is framed in the “new” sociology of work, which emphasizes the role of worker agency and activism in determining worker life chances, and in the “varieties of activism” perspective, which treats the typology as a coherent regime of activist roles in the dialogical diffusion of civil rights movement values into, within, and out of workplaces. We conclude with a research agenda on how bureaucratic workplaces nurture and stymie occupational activism as a racially desegregationist force at work and in the broader polity.

This chapter recounts the story of the Regional Learning Collaborative (www.rlcollab.com) and its powerful positive impact, beginning in one urban region and expanding gradually. It first sets forth the challenges that gave birth to its vision. It introduces the intersegmental solutions and strategies innovated to address the challenges that thousands of students faced in advancing across the education transitions. The chapter next provides significant student achievement data in evidence of the Regional Learning Collaborative's proof of concept in supporting over one hundred thousand (113,000) primarily low-income and largely first-generation students to successfully transition across their academic and career pathways. Finally and importantly, the rigorous collaborative community approach and framework that continue to generate the Collaborative's equity outcomes are introduced and discussed.

Purpose – Using elective egg and sperm freezing as a case to compare representations of men and women as agents of biological reproduction, this chapter aims to understand how gender and risk are co-produced in the context of new reproductive technologies (NRTs).

Methodology – Through a content analysis of newspaper articles published between 1980 and 2016 about egg and sperm freezing, the author traces how fertility risks facing men and women are portrayed in the media.

Findings – Candidates for egg freezing were portrayed in one of the three ways: as cancer patients, career women, or single and waiting for a partner. The ideal users of sperm freezing are depicted in primarily two ways: as cancer patients and as employees in professions with hazardous working conditions. Threats to future fertility for women pursuing careers uninterrupted by pregnancy and child-rearing and women seeking romantic partners are largely portrayed as the result of internal risks. However, threats to future fertility for men working in dangerous professions are largely portrayed as external to them.

Research Limitations – Race and class did not emerge as dominant themes in these data; given the lack of accessibility to NRTs by class and race, this silence must be interrogated by further research.

Value – By comparing the constructions of at-risk groups, the author argues the medicalization of reproduction is gendered as fertility risks portrayed in the media take on a different character between men and women. This research shows how the gendered construction of infertility risk reinforces normative expectations around child-rearing and perpetuates gender inequity in parenting norms.

This chapter explores how different aspects of middle manager identity relate to knowledge, research and practice. It argues that effective leadership depends more upon the person than the role.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 middle managers at a single school of healthcare in a research-intensive, chartered UK university.

The middle managers revealed both core and situated identities. Their core selves included various personality traits such as curiosity, a competitive streak, optimism, sociability and a sense of humour. Their situated selves were shaped by socialization, life history, critical people, and incidents and chance. In a symbiotic relationship with these core and situated components was a complex, tri-partite professional identity, as a healthcare professional, a higher education (HE) academic, and an education manager. All the participants greatly valued professional development and ongoing academic study.

This chapter illustrates how the best postgraduate courses develop exemplary education managers/leaders. They do this not by giving students role-specific skills but by developing their analytical and critical thinking skills. Through a process of deep learning and experience, individuals undertaking a doctorate are able to develop into reflexive and reflective practitioners who can act with personal integrity.

Little has been published about the relationships between the career background, the identity and the role of a university middle manager, and virtually nothing from the field of healthcare. The figure presented in this chapter offers a new framework for understanding the relationship between self, professional identity and role.

This study investigates whether and when during the life cycle women fall behind in terms of career progression because of children. We use 1987–1997 Norwegian panel data that contain information on individuals’ position in their career hierarchy as well as a direct measure of their promotions. We measure overall promotions as increases in rank within the same establishment as well as in combination with an establishment change. Women with children are 1.6 percentage points less likely promoted than women without children; this is what we refer to as the family gap in climbing the career. We find that mothers tend to enter on lower ranks than non-mothers. Thirty-seven percent of the gap can be explained by rank fixed effects and human capital characteristics. A large part remains unexplained. Graphical analyses show that part of the difference already evolves during the early career. Part of this seems related to the relatively low starting ranks.