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1 – 10 of over 36000Yonjoo Cho, Jieun You, Yuyeon Choi, Jiyoung Ha, Yoon Hee Kim, Jinsook Kim, Sang Hee Kang, Seunghee Lee, Romee Lee and Terri Kim
The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore how highly educated women respond to career chance events in a Korean context where traditional cultural values and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore how highly educated women respond to career chance events in a Korean context where traditional cultural values and male-dominated organizational culture coexist.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted 50 semi-structured interviews with highly educated women operationalized as women with doctoral degrees in and out of Korea. The authors used a collaborative research process with a team of ten Korean-born researchers who have built consensus on research themes through discussions on the collection and analysis of a large data set, thus reducing the researcher bias issue inherent in qualitative research.
Findings
In an analysis of the interview data collected, the authors report on three themes: before obtaining a doctoral degree, during and after their doctoral study and responses (coping strategies) to chance events in their careers. Highly educated women’s pursuing a doctoral degree was a way to maintain work–life balance in Korea where women are expected to take a primary caregiver role. After obtaining a doctoral degree, participants struggled with limited job opportunities in the male-dominated higher education. Women’s unplanned and unexpected chance events are intertwined with the male-dominated culture in Korea, and career interruptions as such a chance event, whether voluntary or involuntary, happened largely due to family reasons. In this context, highly educated women responded to chance events largely at individual and family levels and articulated the need for support at organizational and government levels.
Research limitations/implications
The study findings confirm the literature that women’s careers are limited by traditional family roles in non-Western countries where strong patriarchal culture is prevalent. Particularly, women’s career interruptions surfaced as a critical chance event that either disrupts or delays their careers largely because of family issues. Future research is called for to identify both individual and contextual factors that influence women’s decisions on voluntary and involuntary career interruptions as their responses to chance events.
Practical implications
Based on highly educated women’s coping strategies largely at individual and family levels, we suggest national human resource development policies put in place not to lose out on the opportunity to develop highly educated women with doctoral degrees as a quality workforce for a nation’s sustainable economic growth. Additionally, organizations need to be aligned with the government policies and programs for the provision of developmental programs for women in the workplace, beginning with highly educated women’s career planning, while creating organizational culture to promote gender equality as a long-term goal.
Originality/value
The participants’ voluntary career breaks helped them care for their children, be involved in their children’s education, reflect on work–life balance after having long hours of work for many years and move forward with personal satisfaction. Voluntary career breaks can be understood as highly educated women’s unique way of responding to chance events.
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Namhee Kim, Suh Young Jang and Pyounggu Baek
The purpose of this paper is to understand Korean women’s lived experience with career chance given the unique cultural traditions.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to understand Korean women’s lived experience with career chance given the unique cultural traditions.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopted a basic qualitative research design. The data from semi-structured person-to-person, in-depth interviews were analyzed using a constant comparative method.
Findings
The findings revealed that the participants dealt with their career chance events to maintain harmony. Their experienced chance events were scattered over a period of time, but as a whole, these events became meaningful for their career development. The lessons learned through their experiences transformed their priorities in career decisions and life values.
Research limitations/implications
This study yielded insightful theoretical and practical implications. From a theoretical perspective, this study identified the key elements of career chance events and interactions among these experiences, which can be further developed for future theory building.
Practical implications
From a practical perspective, this study sheds light on career education and counseling programs for adult women in an educational setting. In an organizational setting, this study recommends creating an employee career development culture where women employees are encouraged to take advantage of unpredicted career chance experiences.
Originality/value
This study provides culturally unique contributions to the body of literature on career chance events experienced by Korean women, which may not be adequately accounted for in most existing theories driven by western individualistic ideas of careers.
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Education for Sustainable Development and graduate employability are key agendas within Higher Education, and career-related events provide a context that caters to both…
Abstract
Education for Sustainable Development and graduate employability are key agendas within Higher Education, and career-related events provide a context that caters to both simultaneously. There is a need for greater integration of academic department and career service teams in developing event management that systematically considers the potential to raise awareness of sustainability-related careers. This can maximise student personal and professional growth through sustainability-related career events, which simultaneously benefit the student through shaping personal and professional ‘purpose’, society through impact on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and university impact-related measures. By approaching events as a source of empowering students to become aware of, and actively seek out careers in which they can have a positive impact on people and planet, universities can provide a pipeline of sustainability ‘actioners and transformers’. This chapter illuminates the potential actions between career service teams and academic departments in developing information-related events about sustainability-related careers. It extends a popular employability framework to sustainability, presented with an illustrative case in a UK study context aligned with the sustainability ‘Thinker, Actioner and Transformer’ typology. An analysis of career service information enables clear recommendations to be provided on how academic teams, career and other operational services might coordinate approaches. It is proposed that the ultimate commitment of growth in transformation might well be to nurture students as activists for change, presented through the topical analysis of ‘fossil-free’ career events. This is very much a starting point, and it is hoped that the chapter provides an opening for further discussion.
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Daniel Spurk, Annabelle Hofer, Anne Burmeister, Julia Muehlhausen and Judith Volmer
The purpose of this review is to integrate and organize past research findings on affective, normative and continuance occupational commitment (OC) within an integrative framework…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this review is to integrate and organize past research findings on affective, normative and continuance occupational commitment (OC) within an integrative framework based on central life span concepts.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors identified and systematically analyzed 125 empirical articles (including 138 cases) that examined OC with a content valid measure to the here applied definition of OC. These articles provided information on the relationship between OC and four distinct life span concepts: chronological age, career stages, occupational and other life events, and occupational and other life roles. Furthermore, developmental characteristics of OC in terms of construct stability and malleability were reviewed.
Findings
The reviewed literature allowed to draw conclusions about the mentioned life span concepts as antecedents and outcomes of OC. For example, age and tenure is more strongly positively related to continuance OC than to affective and normative OC, nonlinear and moderating influences seem to be relevant in the case of the latter OC types. The authors describe several other findings within the results sections.
Originality/value
OC represents a developmental construct that is influenced by employees’ work- and life-related progress, associated roles, as well as opportunities and demands over their career. Analyzing OC from such a life span perspective provides a new angle on the research topic, explaining inconsistencies in past research and giving recommendation for future studies in terms of dynamic career developmental thinking.
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Hannah Vivian Osei, Evaristus Tepprey and Philip Opoku Mensah
This study aims to investigate the effects of several individual elements vis-a-vis the environment that affects students’ choice of a career. The study assesses the effects of…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the effects of several individual elements vis-a-vis the environment that affects students’ choice of a career. The study assesses the effects of cognitive-person factors on the career decision-making of tertiary students and analyses how chance events moderate these relationships.
Design/methodology/approach
The study used the survey research design to gather data from 302 final-year tertiary students from four (4) Faculties and sixteen (16) academic departments of a Technical University in Ghana. Data were collected through self-administered questionnaires and analysed using the partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).
Findings
The study reveals that students’ self-efficacy and outcome expectations are two cognitive-person factors that positively and significantly influence students’ career choices. However, chance events of tertiary students were found not to moderate the relationship between cognitive-person factors and students’ career choices.
Practical implications
Understanding how several cognitive-person factors influence the career choice of students through the lens of social career-cognitive theory could enable researchers to advance knowledge in the career choice process. Counselors and guidance coordinators need to motivate and encourage career/job exploration and development by identifying sources of psychosocial support available to students.
Originality/value
This study identifies the cognitive person factors that drive career decisions and provides one of the initial attempts to investigate how chance events moderate students’ cognitive-person career choice relationship.
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Juliana Mansur and Bruno Felix
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how positive affectivity (PA) moderates the indirect effects of positive and negative career shocks – unplanned and often unexpected…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how positive affectivity (PA) moderates the indirect effects of positive and negative career shocks – unplanned and often unexpected external events whose effects cannot be anticipated or countered – on thriving via career adaptability.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors empirically tested the moderated mediation model with a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach. The study was performed with a valid sample of professionals who had experienced work-related career shocks.
Findings
The results indicated that career adaptability mediated the effects of positive and negative career shocks on thriving. In addition, the slope of the relationship between negative shocks and adaptability became positive for high levels of PA. The authors also found an indirect effect of negative career shocks on thriving at all levels of PA and importantly, when PA was high, the effects of negative shocks on thriving became positive.
Practical implications
Individuals may use emotional reappraisal strategies to counter negative feelings that accompany negative events to mitigate the negative effects of such events. By strengthening their positivity, individuals facilitate their own perception of shocks, thereby minimizing the possibility of a decrease in adaptability resources.
Originality/value
This paper advances understanding of those mechanisms through which negative shocks lead to positive effects that can help individuals improve their career adaptability and thrive.
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Ivana B. Petrović, Milica Vukelić and Stefan T. Mol
The purpose of this paper is to examine the career shocks of Red Cross (RC) of Serbia staff and volunteers providing aid during the 2016 migrants’ influx. Specifically, the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the career shocks of Red Cross (RC) of Serbia staff and volunteers providing aid during the 2016 migrants’ influx. Specifically, the authors explore what the volatile environment in which RC staff and volunteers work can teach us about career shocks, and what makes a career shock for people whose everyday work entails stressful events.
Design/methodology/approach
This study examined a number of anecdotes that reflect the career shock construct to a greater or lesser extent. These anecdotes were developed by RC staff and volunteers as part of a communications training storytelling exercise.
Findings
The authors analyzed these events from the perspective of recent developments in career shocks research and examined whether the anecdotes contained elements that would enable us to differentiate between career shocks and stressors. Those anecdotes found to be the most prototypical of career shocks, as opposed to stressors, were found to instigate in-depth reflection about the career, were identity related, and had a tangible career impact. Shocking events in the eyes of RC people entailed work demands that go beyond expectations, excessive media scrutiny, and conflicting values. The authors discuss how organizational values, fostering person–organization fit, providing organizational and collegial support, and deploying “weathered” staff, could comprise the “vaccine” that makes the organization immune to career shocks.
Originality/value
By taking a data before theory approach to the study of career shocks, this paper provides a novel perspective on the lived experiences of RC people, and how such experiences may be classified into career shocks or stressors.
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Claire M. Mason, Shanae M. Burns and Elinor A. Bester
The authors proposed that participation in large-scale, structured events designed to match students to employers' internship opportunities could support students' employability…
Abstract
Purpose
The authors proposed that participation in large-scale, structured events designed to match students to employers' internship opportunities could support students' employability by focussing students' career goals, strengthening students' career self-efficacy and growing students' social capital.
Design/methodology/approach
Interviews were carried out with 49 students both before and after the students took part in the event to assess whether students career goals, self-efficacy or social capital changed after taking part in the events. In the second interview, the authors also asked students what outcomes students gained from the event and how the event process had contributed to these outcomes.
Findings
Students' descriptions of their outcomes from the event aligned with social capital theory and self-efficacy theory. The students valued the information, connections, skills and experience they developed through taking part in the interviews and connecting with employers and students. The longitudinal analyses revealed that most students career goals did not change, but students' career self-efficacy improved and students could identify more actions for achieving their career goals after taking part in the event. Importantly, these actions were often explicitly connected with information or connections that students gained from the event.
Originality/value
The interviews illustrate that students can build social capital from short, one-on-one engagement with employers that then enable them to identify ways of furthering students' career goals. The authors' findings suggest that structured, event-based engagement with employers can provide an efficient and equitable means of enhancing students' social capital and career self-efficacy.
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Jos Akkermans, Ricardo Rodrigues, Stefan T. Mol, Scott E. Seibert and Svetlana N. Khapova
This article aims to introduce the special issue entitled “the role of career shocks in contemporary career development,” synthesize key contributions and formulate a future…
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to introduce the special issue entitled “the role of career shocks in contemporary career development,” synthesize key contributions and formulate a future research agenda.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors provide an introduction of the current state-of-the-art in career shocks research, offer an overview of the key lessons learned from the special issue and present several important avenues for future research.
Findings
The authors discuss how the special issue articles contribute to a better understanding of career shocks' role in contemporary career development, focusing on (1) conceptual clarity of the notion of career shocks, (2) career outcomes of career shocks, (3) mechanisms that can explain the impact of career shocks and (4) interdisciplinary connectivity.
Originality/value
This article offers a synthesis of the critical contributions made within this special issue, thereby formulating key ways to bring the field of career shocks research forward. It also provides new avenues for research.
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Yehuda Baruch and Orna Lavi-Steiner
The purpose of this paper is to extend the understanding of the added value of management studies, as the current state of research in the field has focused principally on studies…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to extend the understanding of the added value of management studies, as the current state of research in the field has focused principally on studies undertaken at prestigious institutions. In addition, this study tests the extent to which career-related attitudes and chance events have influenced career success.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors used data provided by 1,228 graduates from an average-ranked academic institution.
Findings
The findings suggest that such management education can result in significant tangible and intangible outcomes for graduates’ careers and their employing organizations. Both intellectual ability and career attitudes influenced the career success outcomes to differing levels. The contribution to the literature is both to theory and to managerial practice, in response to the recent critique of management education as well as the growing need for new cadres of managers, which cannot be supplied by high-prestige, leading business schools alone.
Originality/value
Testing career impact of MBA from an average-ranked university, and the impact of chance event – both understudied.
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