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The purpose of this paper is to introduce the papers in this special issue and some issues surrounding choosing management as a career. A jointly developed questionnaire is also presented.

The paper is descriptive in nature.

It is crucial for researchers and practitioners to expand their perspectives to include other cultures and other theoretical perspectives beyond those offered by traditional vocational choice theories.

Understanding the antecedents, correlates and consequences of people's vocational choice to become managers will not only help researchers and practitioners and benefit managers, but will improve the understanding of career choice in general.

Owing to its colonial past, Britain has a long history of regulating race relations at international and national levels. In this chapter, we focus on race discrimination in the United Kingdom, exploring its historical roots, the politics of discrimination as reflected in public debates on ethnic diversity in the United Kingdom and regulatory frameworks that operate in the country. First, we explicate the historical context of immigration which shapes the meaning and practices of race discrimination at work and in life in the United Kingdom. We then describe the contemporary debates and the key actors in the field of race discrimination at work. The legal context is presented with key turning points which have led to the enactment of laws and the emergence of the particular way race equality and ethnic diversity are managed in the United Kingdom. We also demonstrate the intricate contradictions with regard to legal progress and setbacks with introduction of countervailing measures that undermine equality laws. We present a country case study which illustrates the complexities of race discrimination in a specific sector of work, that is, the technology-enabled private hire car services and change of ethnic composition in the hire care services in the United Kingdom. The chapter summary is presented at the end and it provides also a discussion of possible ways to combat race discrimination at work in the United Kingdom.

In the UK and other western countries the financial services sector is seen as offering women better career prospects than most other sectors. Unprecedented numbers of well‐qualified young women are now achieving promotion to first‐line and middle management positions. Companies are represented as progressive employers, committed to promoting equal opportunities. However, a cross‐cultural study of three Turkish and six UK banks and high street financial organisations explores how organisational ideologies and cultures operate to perpetuate inequality, based on managers’ gendered conceptions of “the ideal worker”. Favoured staff were identified, sponsored, promoted and rewarded, often based on their personal affinity with senior managers rather than objective criteria. This distinction between favour and exclusion operates not only along the traditional lines of gender, class, age, sexual orientation, religion and physical ability, but also along the new dimensions of marriage, networking, safety, mobility and space. Despite local and cross‐cultural differences in the significance of these factors, the cumulative disadvantage suffered by women managers and supervisors in both countries was remarkably similar.

In this chapter, we examine the notion of ethnic diversity with a view to explore Europe-wide differences in defining and managing ethnic diversity and equality. When compared to gender diversity, ethnic diversity does not enjoy similar level of success in Europe. Our analyses show that this is due to the fact that ethnicity and ethnic categories are national. In fact, there are different levels of discussion on ethnicity, where the debate is limited due to historical, cultural and legal differences.

Earlier work on career choice has identified that career choice involves gendered processes which lead to differentiated career outcomes for women and men. However, this literature remained anaemic in offering career counselling strategies for addressing the negative impacts of these processes. The paper aims to explore the creativity cycle and other tools derived from personal construct psychology (PCP) and other feminist literature as potential means for dissolving gendered perceptions of various professions and organisational practices.

This is a conceptual paper.

The paper argues that PCP can provide a theoretical and methodological framework for discussing how dichotomous and gender identified the perceptions of professions can be and how such perceptions might be challenged.

This theory and its techniques allow us an exploration of the flexibility of one's constructions system, which determines a person's ability to construe alternative views and to develop new ways of understanding oneself and others.

The PCP's potential as a technique to combat gendered perceptions of a career is examined.

The aim of this article is to identify the reasons MBA students have for their career choices, and to explore the contextual and gender‐related aspects of career choice and development, based on a comparative study carried out with participants in six countries, i.e. Hungary, Israel, North Cyprus, Turkey, the UK and the USA. The paper seeks to investigate how cultural values and beliefs and gender differentially influence the career choices of MBA students towards managerial or entrepreneurial careers.

A quantitative research design was applied by using a survey instrument that draws on a cross‐national study.

Differences exist in influences on career choice and development between women and men in one of the research settings (Turkey). In all six countries, women have a more societal value orientation and tend to undertake more charity work. Men are more likely to believe that “competition is the law of nature” and men appear to opt more for an entrepreneurial career route in all six countries.

The study provides an understanding of the major gender‐related similarities and differences in the career development of MBA students in six countries, and paves the way for further research in the field.