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For a number of years, the American School Counselor Association has been working to identify and clarify the role and function of school counselors within Developmental and Comprehensive School Counseling programs. The terms “Developmental” and “Comprehensive” mean that school counseling programs establish goals for their programs that are developmentally appropriate to the age and needs of students and that current and future goals build upon previous goal achievement. Thus, school counseling programs should be in place throughout students’ entire K-12 academic experience.

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.

Drawing on the social influence literature and proposing parental intervention as a social influence process, this study seeks to theorize why parental intervention occurs and how it affects young adults' career development.

This paper adopts a conceptual design, offering a conceptual model based on social influence research and career development research.

It is proposed that parental intervention is a result of incongruence between parental expectations and young adults' interested occupations and between parents' assessments of young adults' qualities and job demands. Parents' traditionality moderates these relationships, while the success of parental intervention depends on young adults' traditionality and career maturity. Parents' position, referent and expert powers affect young adults' compliance, identification and internalization, respectively, which impact their occupational commitment and career satisfaction.

Looking at parental intervention over time would help researchers understand this phenomenon more comprehensively than focusing only on its short-term effects as identified in the literature. The motivational processes of parental intervention triggered by power bases play a key role in determining young adults' long-term career consequences.

Career advisors should consider parents as a source of potential intervention in young adults' career choice. They may also provide parent-oriented services in addition to young adult-oriented services.

This framework contributes to the career development literature by adopting social influence approach to explain parental intervention in young adults' career choice and also providing implications for career counselors.

Economic stressors such as job insecurity, job loss, unemployment, and underemployment cause severe difficulties for the workers affected, their families, organizations, and societies overall. Consequently, most past research has taken a thoroughly negative perspective on economic stress, addressing its diverse negative consequences and the ways that people try to cope with them. And even when following the advice provided by the scientific literature, people affected by economic stress will usually end up being off worse than they were before the onset of the stressor.

The current chapter pays credit to this perspective yet also tries to counterbalance it with an alternative one. While acknowledging the vast amount of literature outlining the negative consequences of economic stress on peoples’ well-being and careers, some literature also points at opportunities for a more positive perspective. More specifically, we argue that affected people can use a wide repertoire of behaviors for handling their current situation. Of particular promise in this regard is the concept of career adaptability, generally defined as the ability to change to fit into new career-related circumstances. Indeed, studies show that under certain conditions, career adaptability can facilitate people's search for not just any job but for a qualitatively better job, thus breaking through the spiral of losses usually associated with economic stress.

For the purpose of this argument, we link career adaptability to the concept of proactive coping, analyzing how and under which conditions career adaptability may present a contextualized form of proactive coping. We then address known personal and situational antecedents of career adaptability and show how career adaptability may be fostered and trained among different types of job seekers. We end this chapter with a discussion of open questions as well as directions for future research.

Research has been conducted to investigate the factors that influence career indecision. This study attempted to synthesize empirical research on career indecision to (1) find the common determinants over the last two decades and (2) find the factors/areas that need to be addressed for future research on career indecision.

This study used the systematic literature review (SLR) methodology and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. Following the predetermined inclusion criteria, 118 articles from the Scopus database were included for review.

From this research, the authors found four main determinants for career indecision, namely (1) career-related decision-making difficulties, (2) adolescent differences, (3) individual and situational career decision-making profiles (CDMPs) and (4) level of individual readiness for career choice, which have been researched in the last two decades. Additionally, eight factors/areas were found to be addressed in future research on career indecision which include those four common determinants, the other three determinants, namely (1) individual differences, (2) contextual/environmental factors, (3) social factors, and one outcome, subjective well-being.

The study had limitations in conducting this research, and the findings of the study provide some theoretical and future research implications.

The seven determinants and the only outcome provide some implications for practitioners and policymakers.

The study found seven determinants and one outcome of career indecision derived from empirical studies conducted during 2000–2021.

A boundaryless career perspective suggests that career competencies are essential for employees who wish to advance their careers in high uncertainty. This study aims to propose an integrated conceptual model for career competencies to provide insights for employees and organizations by identifying what and how one can prepare and provide support for career development in an uncertain and complex work environment.

The integrated literature reviewed was adapted to provide a conceptual model for career competencies. All 77 studies were reviewed, guided by the intelligent career theory (ICT) and social cognitive career theory (SCCT).

The mechanisms of career competency development were examined through the interrelationship between three types of knowing; knowing-why, knowing-whom and knowing-how. Career competencies can be considered a developmental process, therefore, they could develop through various interventions and accumulate over time. Especially the results indicate that learning is an essential component of career competencies, as it increases self-efficacy and promotes a desire to achieve positive career outcomes.

This study provided a conceptual model, explored the mechanisms of career competency development and considered how career competencies influence career outcomes. Furthermore, it identified the context of the construct of career competencies by integrating the SCCT and ICT. Finally, it showed the inadequacy of existing research on negative factors of career competency outcomes and recommended further research to broaden the general context of career competency studies.

The multidisciplinary research on the phenomena of voluntary career transition (VCT) and voluntary turnover (VTO) remains disparate. This integrative review examines literatures in these two areas in relation to research in the Chinese context. The purpose of this paper is to identify future research directions for Chinese indigenous research in this area.

This review adopted an integrative literature review approach.

The authors found that research on VCT and VTO in different disciplines has shared identical or similar constructs and produced complementary empirical findings. This suggests that combining the disparate research in VCT and VTO in the Western literature to address the large‐scale career phenomenon in China may produce unexpected research outcomes, particularly when integrating the research with Chinese‐specific contexts in socioeconomic, cultural, and organization dynamics.

Taking advantage of, and linking existing literature in, VCT and VTO while considering the Chinese context may generate new knowledge to understand the massive career phenomenon in China. The authors offer a number of specific research questions based on the review and analysis of the literatures.

This paper offers insights for organizations to develop strategies and policies in balancing talent management and employees career concerns.

The paper is the first in the literature proposing an integrated research strategy on VCT and VTO to study the same phenomenon in organizations, particularly in the Chinese context.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether work values vary across different life and career stages in a sample of Millennials.

The sample for this study was comprised of 906 Canadian Millennials (born between 1980 and 1994).

Pre-career and working Millennials varied in terms of the importance they placed on five work values – interesting work, achievement, good co-workers, doing work that helped people and salary – although these differences were small in magnitude. This suggests that Millennials’ work values are relatively stable as they grow older and gain work experience.

A large body of research citing generational differences relies upon cross-sectional studies which compares different generations of individuals at different life stages, thus making it impossible to disentangle whether the differences are a result of generational or life-cycle effects. The findings that the importance of work values shift over the life course suggest that maturation effects may explain only a small portion of these differences in the emerging adulthood phase. This finding is particularly important for researchers who rely on samples of post-secondary students as this is a period of change from both an individual and career developmental perspective.

This research suggests that pre-career Millennials may be attracted to organizations which emphasize a collegial work environment and socially responsible culture. Once they are in the workforce, Millennials can be attracted and retained through attractive working conditions and remuneration. All Millennials are most likely to be attracted to workplaces that provide interesting work, work-life balance, job security and the information workers need to do their jobs effectively.

Developmental psychology and career development literature suggest that transitioning from school-to-work is a major life event. Past research has shown that the importance of work values change across this transition and that this change differs among social generations (i.e. Baby Boomers and Generation Xers), but research to date has not examined this transition in the current, millennial generation (born after 1980). We answer the call for researchers to understand Millennials as they progress in their careers, demonstrate that the shift in work values is different for Millennials, and provide actionable recommendations for managers.

Encouraging college students to volunteer is a supposed but uncharted way to contribute to their career commitment. Clarifying the ways of the contribution is therefore necessary. From the social capital perspective, volunteering and network density among friends represent social capital to reinforce each other. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to study the enhancement of the contribution by the density.

The examination employs a two-wave panel survey of 410 university students to estimate the effects of volunteering and friend network density at Wave 1 on career commitment at Wave 2. Essentially, the examination adjusted for biases due to sample attrition and self-selection into volunteering.

Volunteering at Wave 1 showed a significant contribution to career commitment at Wave 2. Moreover, the contribution significantly increased with friend network density at Wave 1.

Findings from this panel survey of university students in Hong Kong require future research for substantiation. For instance, such research can apply an experimental design to volunteering to guarantee the internal validity of the contribution of volunteering.

Social capital theory is applicable to the promotion of career commitment. Specifically, optimizing the strength of social capital through the combination of volunteering and friendship is promising.

Empirical support for the application of social capital theory to career development is evident. Particularly, the joint contribution of volunteering and friendship is demonstrable.

The purpose of this study is to examine how student agency influences career decision-making for doctoral students in biological sciences. The authors address the following questions: How do biological science graduate students navigate career indecision? And how does agency relate to their experiences with career indecision?

The authors analyzed interview data collected from 84 PhD biology graduate students. Researchers used a grounded theory approach. After open codes were developed and data were coded, code reports were generated, which were used to determine themes.

More than half of the sample had not committed to a career path, and undecided students were bifurcated into two categories: Uncommitted and Uncertain. Uncommitted graduate students demonstrated agency in their approach and were focused on exploration and development. Uncertain students demonstrated less agency, were more fearful and perceived less control and clarity about their options and strategies to pursue career goals.

Findings suggest some forms of indecision can be productive and offer institutional leaders guidance for increasing the efficacy of career development and exploration programming.

Research on doctoral student career decision-making is often quantitative and rarely explores the role of agency. This qualitative study focuses on the relationship between student agency and career indecision, which is an understudied aspect of career development.