Organizational Culture: Critical Questions for Researchers and Practitioners

Abstract

The idea of career self-management is part of the growing move to encourage individuals to take ownership of their own development. The article explores why this makes sense both for individuals and for organizations, and defines specific initiatives individuals and organizations should take to make the concept work successfully. It is argued that most people are unlikely to take responsibility for themselves unless there is sound organizational support, but that with the right practical initiatives they can become energized by the process. There is, however, a need for organizations to centre much more closely on understanding people as individuals if performance levels at work are to be raised from competence to excellence.     

The impact of career websites: what's the evidence?

ABSTRACT

Careers provision for young people in the UK is being re-formulated on the basis of a central role for career websites but this policy is based on unproven assumptions about their value. In this article we consider the use and impact of the two main career websites in Scotland on pupils' career management skills. We found that pupils at risk of not achieving positive post-school destinations were less likely to use the websites, as were minority ethnic pupils. Although similar in functions, the two websites differed in their effect: one had no impact while the other impacted on only one aspect of pupils' career management skills. Careers policy needs to be informed by more extensive research on career websites.     

How ‘boundaryless’ are the careers of high potentials,key experts and average performers?

The talent management literature declares talent management a prime concern for HRM professionals while the careers literature calls talent management archaic. Three sets of assumptions identified through comparative review of both streams of the literature were tested in a large-scale survey (n = 941). We found more support for the assumptions advocated in the talent management literature. Those who organizations consider their ‘best’ people are more often found in traditional-organizational careers – both in terms of employer inducements and employee attitudes. Traditional–organizational careers yield more career satisfaction than careers displaying more boundaryless features. Individuals' career types are mostly determined by supervisor-rated performance, much more so than by personal career orientation.     

Don't leave me this way! A qualitative study of influences on the organisational commitment and turnover intentions of graduates early in their career

While the demand for graduate recruits is growing, organisations still have little insight into how best to retain those graduates who join them. This paper reports the findings of a qualitative study which explored what factors were most likely to influence graduates' decisions to stay with or leave their first employer in the early years of their career. It does so within a conceptual framework built around organisational commitment and its antecedents and consequences.The results are used to propose how employers might take action to maximise retention, and to discuss the importance of career guidance in helping graduates to develop realistic and practical notions of what they can expect from work and what will be expected of them.     

The changing relationship between people and their job – the validity of career information

ABSTRACT

An overview of the evolution of career information in light of the changing nature of the world of work is presented. Owing to the constant fundamental changes in the labour market, the distribution of paid work has been also constantly changing. In this article, a more dynamic and – often temporary – interplay between citizens and their professional context is proposed. The case of Hungary has been used to describe the changing nature between people and their jobs. The historical overview helps explain the development of career information from pre-modernity to post-modernity and justifies the need for a more dynamic model of work adjustment and individual career development.     

Story telling: crafting identities

ABSTRACT

Career guidance clients are seeking to craft new identities that better position them in their careers. The focus of the present article is on narrative career counselling's potential contribution in providing a meaningful and useful experience for career guidance clients. To illustrate the potential of narrative career counselling, the story telling approach is offered as an example to illustrate how identity can be crafted in contextually and culturally sensitive ways.     

The professional career on the right track: A study on the interaction between career self-management and organizational career management in explaining employee outcomes

This article explores the relationship between organizational career management and career self-management and addresses the impact on employee outcomes. Within six large organizations, a sample of 491 employees reported on their career self-management initiatives, on their expectations towards organizational career support, and on their commitment and career success. This was complemented by information from their supervisors on career management support offered by HR and line management to these employees. Results show that individuals who take more initiatives to manage their career expect more career support from their employer. Career self-management positively impacts affective commitment and perceived career success, while organizational career management is positively related with affective commitment and career progress. Career self-management moderates the relationship of organizational career management with affective commitment and subjective career success.     

Career counsellors and suicide risk assessment

ABSTRACT

Recent discussions suggest that career counsellors need to be trained in more holistic frameworks in order to deal with the career and psychological issues of their clients. In particular, research shows a strong connection between employment and suicidality, including changes in socioeconomic status, disruption in employment, sudden unemployment, learning disabilities, occupational stress, difficulties at work and interpersonal conflicts. Many people struggling with work-related issues are likely to suffer from anxiety, depression, isolation or substance misuse, all significant risk factors associated with suicidal ideation. Therefore, by becoming competent in dealing with both vocational and personal issues, career counsellors might be in a unique position to be effective in assessing suicidal risk due to their less stigmatised role in the field.     

Towards a strong career learning environment: results from a Dutch longitudinal study

ABSTRACT

To prepare students for the flexible labour market of nowadays, schools are increasingly acknowledging their responsibility to guide students in their career development. The project ‘Career Orientation and Guidance in Secondary Vocational Education’ was developed to encourage Dutch schools to initiate and/or continue the creation of a strong career learning environment for their students. Central in this learning environment is a dialogue with the students, where meaning is attached to concrete experiences with work. This longitudinal study is designed to gain theoretical and practical insight into the influence of the project. Results show that, although the school’s vision on career orientation and guidance is clear to the teachers, it is not supported by all of them. It appears that the renewed vision is imposed on the teachers, and this absence of a shared and widely supported vision appears to withhold the teachers and the project managers to engage in collective action.     

Technology and the evolution of clinical methods for stuttering

The World Wide Web (WWW) was 20 years old last year. Enormous amounts of information about stuttering are now available to anyone who can access the Internet. Compared to 20 years ago, people who stutter and their families can now make more informed choices about speech-language interventions, from a distance. Blogs and chat rooms provide opportunities for people who stutter to share their experiences from a distance and to support one another. New technologies are also being adopted into speech-language pathology practice and service delivery. Telehealth is an exciting development as it means that treatment can now be made available to many rural and remotely located people who previously did not have access to it. Possible future technological developments for speech-language pathology practice include Internet based treatments and the use of Virtual Reality. Having speech and CBT treatments for stuttering available on the Internet would greatly increase their accessibility. Second Life also has exciting possibilities for people who stutter.Educational objectives: The reader will (1) explain how people who stutter and their families can get information about stuttering from the World Wide Web, (2) discuss how new technologies have been applied in speech-language pathology practice, and (3) summarize the principles and practice of telehealth delivery of services for people who stutter and their families.     

Supporting dual career in Spain: Elite athletes' barriers to study

ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to analyze whether a Career Assistance Program (PROAD) facilitates the dual career.Design and methodA cross-sectional, prospective and quantitative design was used. A questionnaire was sent to all of Spain's elite athletes from Olympic sports. Of the 2378 elite athletes, 575 (332 men and 243 women) completed the 29-item questionnaire. The overall response rate was 24.2%.ResultsMost of the athletes perceived the dual career as difficult. Their most significant barriers are related to time management. The PROAD athletes and the non-PROAD athletes encountered the same barriers to studying. In general, the PROAD program seemed to have a positive effect on the academic level an athlete achieves. The athletes enrolled in the PROAD were more informed than the non-enrolled athletes. PROAD athletes were more proactive in demanding help and they had a closer relationship with the Spanish Sport Council than the non-PROAD athletes.ConclusionsStudent-athletes have several problems with the normalized educational system. Sport psychologists should reinforce the athlete's strengths, and they should seek the opportunities the sport context provides to athletes. The barriers could be minimized by adopting certain strategies. The PROAD program seems to be useful in terms of providing information, in ensuring elite athletes work or study before the end of their sports career, in making them responsible and autonomous, and in being more active.     

Beliefs of teachers versus non-teachers about people who stutter

PurposeAlthough prior research has investigated teachers’ beliefs about people who stutter (PWS), this work has not indicated how these beliefs compare with those of the general public or taken into account key demographic variables that may be related to these beliefs. The main purpose of this study was to evaluate whether beliefs about PWS in teachers are different from those in the general public. The second purpose of this study was to examine whether gender is related to beliefs about PWS for teachers, who are more frequently women.MethodsAnalyses were based on questionnaire responses regarding beliefs about PWS from 269 teachers and 1388 non-teachers in the United States. Due to their potential link to beliefs about PWS, familiarity with PWS and sociodemographic variables were included in the statistical model for this study.ResultsTeachers’ beliefs about PWS are no different than those of people in non-teaching professions. Findings also indicated that, regardless of whether respondents were teachers, women had more accurate beliefs about PWS than men. The statistical model tested indicated that beliefs about PWS were more accurate when the respondents were older, had more education, and had familiarity with a PWS.ConclusionIn the first study to compare teachers’ beliefs about PWS to the general public, findings indicated that teachers are no more accurate than the public in their beliefs about PWS. Associations found between these beliefs and several variables may indicate some promising mechanisms for improving beliefs, such as increased familiarity with individuals who stutter.Educational Objectives: Readers should be able to: (a) describe stuttering's potential effects on children's participation in the school setting; (b) identify actions teachers can take to improve the school experience of their students who stutter; (c) summarize findings regarding teachers’ beliefs about people who stutter (PWS); (d) identify key variables that are associated with beliefs about PWS.     

CAREER SELF-MANAGEMENT: A QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL ASSESSMENT OF THE EFFECTS OF A TRAINING INTERVENTION

A growing trend is to encourage employees to become actively involved in the management of their own careers. Career self-management, the degree to which one regularly gathers information and plans for career problem solving and decision making, includes two main behaviors: developmental feedback seeking and job mobility preparedness. Although career self-management training is a commonly used employer intervention to re-socialize individuals to increase their own career management activity, it is rarely rigorously evaluated. Relying on an expectancy theory framework, the goal of this study was to evaluate the general effects of career self-management training using a quasi-experimental design. Based on data from several hundred professionals at a major U.S. employer, the results showed formal training efforts were generally not successful in resocializing people to engage in career self-management activities, and when done as an isolated human resource strategy, decreased trainees' likelihood of engaging in career self-management behaviors. To the extent that Time 2 expectancy perceptions got worse, the results showed that an individual's attitudes toward feedback seeking mediated the relationship between the training intervention and the level of preparation for job mobility conducted 6-8 months following the training.     

Autonomie en transition de carrière. Développement d’un modèle et validation d’une échelle originale

IntroductionBased on the observation that autonomy is a fundamental concept in a world of work characterized by many transitions, this paper presents the construction and validation of a model and a scale of autonomy in career transitions.ObjectiveThe scale was developed to measure autonomy during adult career transitions.MethodA series of items was first produced following interviews with experts and employees. Three successive surveys involving 336, 314 and 450 participants made it possible, through item analysis and factor analysis, to reduce the number of items and to build a model composed of 14 items and 4 oblique factors.ResultsAfter confirmatory factor analysis, the data fit the model well and a study of external validity shows strong convergences with other measures of autonomy.ConclusionThe model and the measure of autonomy in career transition can be of great help in supporting employees. It makes it possible to identify the people who are most in difficulty and offers benchmarks to support and train organizations to modulate career paths and strengthen the acquisition of certain resources.     

The Drugs May Be Synthetic but the Consequences are not:Analysis of Synthetic Cannabinoid User Accounts

ABSTRACT

Synthetic cannabinoids are the second most used illicit substance among U.S. adolescents. Despite their prevalence and dangers, we know little about the characteristics associated with use. While clinical samples have shed some light on how synthetic cannabinoids differ from marijuana, they have not explored career trajectories of synthetic cannabinoid users. We analyze online forum posts about people’s synthetic cannabinoid use to understand more about these novel psychoactive drugs and the drug careers of those who use.     

Managing and developing a boundaryless career: Lessons from dance and drama

Abstract

As the structure of employment opportunities has been transformed by economic and technological changes, we have been forced to re-examine our ideas about what careers involve. We expect to make more and different sorts of career transitions and to have to take more responsibility for managing our own careers. It is suggested that information from the pattern of employment and career opportunities in dance and drama can provide useful insights into the skills that many more of us will need to manage and develop our careers in the future. This article uses data from a study of careers and training in dance and drama (Jackson, Honey, Hillage, & Stock, 1994) to identify key features of the ways careers are managed in this labour market. Implications from this analysis are discussed as part of a review of the way careers are changing.     

“Sport has always been first for me” but “all my free time is spent doing homework”: Dual career styles in late adolescence

ObjectivesIn adolescence, personally meaningful autobiographical memories begin to integrate into cultural narrative structures to form a life story. We examined how and to what extent adolescent Finnish athletes narrate and integrate significant life events in sport and education into their identities and future narratives in order to delineate the different styles of athletes’ career construction.DesignLongitudinal qualitative study.MethodTen female and eight male, elite junior athletes, aged 15–16 at baseline, participated in individual conversational interviews. The resulting interview data were analyzed using narrative analysis.ResultsThirteen of 18 adolescent athletes drew primarily on the performance narrative plot to construct their life story and five of 18 athletes could not project into the future beyond their athletic selves. We identified three styles of athletes’ career construction. Employing musical terminology as a metaphor, the contrapuntal style entwines sport and education as harmonically related life-themes; monophonic style draws on a prominent athletic life-theme; and dissonant style is underpinned by discord of sport and education. We did not detect direct associations between narrative types (performance, discovery and relational) and career construction styles. We show the dominant style development within an exemplary story.ConclusionExploration of the future and possible selves are critical for developing meaningful (dis)continuity of a dual career pathway from adolescence to adulthood. We conclude that dual career discourse is gaining traction in directing young athletes’ future thinking; however, a broader repertoire of exemplary success stories which allow athletes to imagine achieving excellence in diverse ways would enable them to channel action.     

The Spatiality of Pain

Abstract

My remarks on Metz’s project will focus on another angle than the one Metz uses. I am more interested in thinking about whether and how far ethical standards from different cultures really differ, how to understand those differences, and how to relate them to what is objectively good, independently of people’s opinions on the matter. Of course one widely circulating opinion on the topic is that cross-cultural differences somehow demonstrate that there is no such thing as objective good at all - that each culture has its own conception of what is good, right, permitted, forbidden, and so on, and the differences are so wide that anyone at all familiar with this, can no longer take seriously the idea that there could be any “objective” values underlying such varied systems.     

The role of career adaptability resources in dual career pathways: A person-oriented longitudinal study across elite sports upper secondary school

ObjectivesObtaining education is an important milestone in athletes’ preparation for their professional career after sport. Literature indicates that combining school and sport is not an easy task for many aspiring youth athletes. It has been proposed that career adaptability, which refers to psychosocial resources enabling individuals to solve complex occupational transitions, present and anticipated vocational development tasks, and career related challenges could be a relevant concept for applied work with student-athletes. In this study, we examined whether there are distinct developmental profiles of career adaptability among adolescent athletes across the upper secondary school years. We also investigated the associations between career adaptability and sport withdrawal and academic achievement.Design and methodsA total of 391 Finnish-speaking student-athletes completed the questionnaire on career adaptability (Career Adapt-Abilities Scale – Dual Career Form; Ryba & Aunola, 2015; Ryba et al., 2017) at the beginning and end of upper secondary school. The participants’ background information about their sport participation and grade point average were collected upon completion of each grade of upper secondary school. The data were analysed using cluster analysis, cross-tabulation, and one-way analysis of variance.ResultsFour distinct adaptability profiles were identified: higher adaptability, lower adaptability, increasing adaptability, and decreasing adaptability. Higher and lower adaptability profiles showed stable levels of adaptability across time, whereas the adaptability level either increased or decreased in the other two profiles. Student-athletes with a lower career adaptability profile were overrepresented among those who withdrew from competitive sports, and they reported lower grade point averages than those with higher scores of career adaptability.ConclusionsHigh scores of career adaptability were associated with high grades, whereas low scores of career adaptability were associated with low grades and a probability to withdraw from competitive sport. Therefore, it is recommended that career adaptability be considered as important self-regulation resources for sustaining dual career pathways over time.