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The dynamics of professional women's mid‐career satisfaction are important to understand, given the vast knowledge, experience and skills typically accrued by mid‐career that are often difficult to replace.

This study empirically examines Auster's multilevel framework of factors affecting the mid‐career satisfaction of professional women using a sample of 125 professional women engineers.

Results of logistic regressions reveal that individual, career, job, stress and organizational factors all impact the mid‐career satisfaction of professional women, but that stress and job factors are the most powerful determinants for this sample of women.

While this study offers many insights and possible directions for future research on women at mid‐career, there are a number of limitations. Future research could broaden the macro and micro factors explored, as well as compare these results with those of women in other fields and industries, women at other career stages, and women across other geographic regions.

Organizations should strive to be more transparent about advancement options and opportunities, provide interesting and challenging work and more flexibility in work schedules (emphasize output, not face time), and offer support for key drivers of stress.

This is the first fairly large‐scale empirical study of macro and micro factors affecting women's mid‐career satisfaction. This article should be of interest to managers concerned with retention of high‐performing employees, HR practitioners, and academics specializing in careers, women's issues, and human resource management.

Recent research on entrepreneurship education has emphasised school, college and university students, with less attention being paid to entrepreneurial learning among people in older age groups. However the ageing population of the UK and other developed countries means that there is a need for an increasing proportion of the existing working population, from a broad social and demographic background, to develop entrepreneurial skills in mid‐career in order to find new opportunities for economic activity and to extend their working lives. This goal requires better understanding of the learning needs and processes of mid‐career entrepreneurs (MCEs) between the ages of 35 and 55. This article aims to enhance the understanding of mid‐career entrepreneurial learning by exploring how and why people develop entrepreneurial skills in mid‐career, how these skills are deployed in working on opportunities, what types of learning are most effective, and conclusions for the design of MCE learning experiences.

A research method was used with emergent MCEs participating in a postgraduate entrepreneurship module. This evaluated learning, skill acquisition and practice to inform both learner and educator.

This paper explores the types of opportunities identified and the learning methods used. It proposes implications for mid‐career learners based on a framework for entrepreneurial learning, in the context of the broader perspectives of mid‐career and mid‐life change and development. It develops a career stage model for entrepreneurship, and discusses the implications for the design of learning programmes for MCEs.

MCEs have enhanced lifelong and work‐based learning and experience compared with younger people, but display great variety in their aspirations, work and career experience, educational attainment, ethnic and national diversity, and participation in social networks. The article proposes ways of enhancing mid‐career entrepreneurial learning.

This paper makes a distinctive contribution to the understanding of entrepreneurial learning in a significant age group.

Despite the sporadic evolution of artificial intelligence, the most valuable asset of any organization in the modern world is human resources. This study aims to reveal that partnerships between higher education institutions (HEIs) and employers will ease the process of employee mid-career development in Uganda's corporate employment sector by promoting work-based postgraduate training, and this additionally promotes human resources (HR) capacity-building for organizations.

The hypothesis is that contemporary employees seek out an academic mid-career development postgraduate programme that is blended to fit into the employees' work schedule. The study was a descriptive quantitative study, and a closed-ended questionnaire was sent out to groups of corporate employees online (N = 70) and 41 responded, giving a response rate of 58.5%.

Findings indicate a need for a flexible program for mid-career development and transition, the low standard deviation of (Neutral = 0.95, Disagreed = 2.64 and Agreed = 3.3) implies an insignificant deviation from the mean of responses. Indeed, over 95% agree that pursue further studies is needed but in a more flexible way.

The study design was limited by the sample selection process and study design. In the future, the authors recommend a mixed study for both quantitative and qualitative dimensions of such studies.

Irrespective of gender, hierarchy and experience, employees want flexible study modes for their postgraduate. This implies that institutions of higher learning should work with the labour industry and position themselves as work-based information and communication technology (ICT)-Integrated learning theatres.

The move towards a collaborative strategy between academia and the employment industry is very evident in this study.

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to explore why critical reflexivity should be promoted within mid‐career management education programmes and articulate the benefits of a deliberate research orientation for such programmes. Design/methodology/approach – Having considered meta‐issues concerning the content and context of management education and research, the article identifies the categorical, methodological and contextual challenges which confront manager‐researchers and those facilitating mid‐career programmes. It argues that managers need to develop awareness of the different epistemologies and an understanding of their personal ontological orientation and methodological preferences in order to maximise the pertinence and added value of their research. Findings – The paper delineates the curricular, pedagogical and organisational challenges inherent in the promotion of critical reflexivity and research within mid‐career programmes. Originality/value – The paper outlines how a deliberate linkage of research and teaching can be forged in order to help managers surface and interrogate the knowledge, norms and values which frame their beliefs and actions. Consequently, it is of practical help to both academics and manager‐researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the mid-career experience of female managers within a small higher education institution in the UK. It considers how managers manage “self” within this phase of career.

This study takes an ethnographic approach to the exploration of experiences in mid-career. Using a relational approach it was possible to draw together new insights deriving from the data. A narrative approach provided the framework from which deeper insights were captured through detailed participant stories told in situ.

This study offers a deep analysis of the constructs of management experience as these are negotiated within mid-career. The priority of female managers in this study is directed towards the balance of home and work. There is less evidence of a desire for upward progression, instead the focus now shifts to the achievement of authenticity and balance.

This study was conducted in the higher education sector in the UK which is noted for its increasing commercialisation agenda and low staff turnover. Undertaking comparable research in other sectors will provide further insights into the generalisability of findings. Managers in this study were wholly white, middle class and most are still working in the region in which they were born. A more diverse cohort may be studied to ascertain the importance attributable to balance of work and life across different groups.

This study presents some important areas of consideration for those involved in the support and advancement of female managers. Indeed, for those engaged in cognitive and developmental work this study provides rich and in-depth qualitative data that may prove helpful when formulating policy. It is of significance to senior managers within organisations and encourages attention towards executive development and organisational culture, both of which support the retention of talent within the organisation.

This paper provides insights into middle and senior management practice that may be of use by policy makers in the wider higher education sector context, as well as in general management good practice discussions more widely. This study may also be of interest to aspiring female managers and those relatively new to their roles as they seek to position themselves to achieve a sense of authenticity within their organisations.

This study provides an empirical contribution to the study of female managers working within a small higher education institution in the UK. It provides deep insights into management practice at mid-career within the workplace and the way in which this is conceived in situ.

The purpose of this study was to expose the phenomenon of self‐renewal and its dynamic aspects among women headteachers in mid‐career. Based on findings from an exploratory study conducted among Israeli primary school women headteachers in their mid‐career period, the study presents the phenomenon of self‐renewal that was experienced by these headteachers. This phenomenon included elements such as coping with burnout crisis, critical inner reflection, reframing managerial perspectives, elation and energy replenishing and reinforcing innovative behaviors. A conceptual frame is presented in order to understand the process of self‐renewal and its contextual and biographic determinants which enable the existence of the phenomenon in mid‐career

This paper aims to explore how mid‐career professional mothers perceive themselves in relation to their work and family roles, how they experience these roles, how they merge their work, family and individual self, and what meaning they make of this integration.

The study used in‐depth qualitative interviews with 18 participants aged between 37 and 55 with at least one dependent child under the age of 18, in dual‐earning/career households.

The study reports that a complex relationship of work‐related dynamics and personal factors shaped the meaning for these women amid competing priorities of work, family and individual lives. Organisation and co‐ordination of multiple activities with support from various sources was fundamental to finding balance. A deep sense of motherhood was evident in that their children were their number one priority but career was of high importance as they sought stimulation, challenges, achievement and enrichment in their work. Now, in mid‐career transition, the respondents seek more self‐care time in an effort to find new meaning in the work, family and self equation.

The study raises important issues for the management of professional working mothers and the implications of the study for individuals and organisations are set out.

This paper makes contributions to work‐life integration and career theory. It provides one of the first empirical studies on work‐life integration in Ireland using the construct of meaningful work and secondly builds on the kaleidoscope career model theory.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the tactics that mid-career professional working mothers use to improve their work-home balance.

The qualitative study used in-depth interviews with 63 Brazilian professional working mothers aged between 37 and 55, having at least one child under the age of 18, and living in dual-career households. The interviews were content analyzed.

The study reported four dimensions of boundary work tactics (behavioral, temporal, physical, and communicative) that mid-career working mothers adopted to construct a satisfying level of segmentation or integration between work and home.

The study suggests individual tactics for actively constructing a generalized work-home state that can be adopted by working mothers. Additionally, the authors suggest that HR managers should develop work-home balance programs that provide policies that adjust to the work-home boundary preferences for those mothers who want to integrate and segment these domains.

The authors hope this study can help mid-career working mothers to understand how they can interact actively with others in such a way that they can better answer their work and home demands.

This study was the first to use boundary work tactics theory to explore how mid-career professional working mothers improve their work-home balance.

This paper investigates gender differences in reported job satisfaction and career choices revealed by a postal survey of accountants from the Queensland Division of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia. Of particular interest are levels of satisfaction with remuneration and promotion. Two moderating factors of career age and firm size are also considered. Consistent with prior research, female accountants reported dissatisfaction with their opportunities for promotion. However, unlike prior research there was no evidence of a gender effect in remuneration levels, and in reported satisfaction with remuneration. Nor were there differences in satisfaction across age bands, and public accounting firms of different size. The link between satisfaction levels of female accountants and their career choices of leaving their current employer, moving to parttime employment, or leaving the accounting profession was also investigated. Consistent with a large body of organisational and accounting research, low levels of job satisfaction were associated with higher turnover intentions for female accountants.

The purpose of this paper is to gather research-stories, that is, the stories of the researcher themselves. The authors gather stories that situate researchers in their social, political, personal and professional contexts to learn about being a researcher in a University at this particular historical moment.

The authors’ stories began with the naive question – “What is it like to be a researcher in a University right now?”. The authors asked this question of Julie White’s (2012) “disposable academics” (p. 50); short-term and casualised staff with insecure teaching or research contracts. They asked White’s (2012, p. 48) “academic infantry” the mid-career researchers who have felt the labour intensification of recent times. They also asked senior academics, established professors with established research histories and the security (they hope) of a steady track record and a list of external grants.

The answers were not simple. They were stories of the pragmatics of managing the new academic scene; maintaining a research passion despite the pressures of new managerialism’s focus on certain forms of efficiency, external accountability and monitoring; resolving the apparent losses of autonomy, academic freedom, support, security and academic dignity. The authors heard emotional and vulnerable stories, stories of personal investment and emotionally and physically risky and dangerous encounters. The authors learnt something of the complex business of negotiating personal and professional subjectivities.

The authors heard emotional and vulnerable stories, stories of personal investment and emotionally and physically risky and dangerous encounters. They learnt something of the complex business of negotiating personal and professional subjectivities.