Super's Career Stages and the Decision to Change Careers

This study examined Super's (1990) concept of recycling through the stages of adult career development in a sample of 226 Australian men and women who were approximately evenly distributed across the following four steps in the uptake of a second career: (a) contemplating a change, (b) choosing a new field, (c) implementing a change, and (d) change fully completed. A group of adults of similar age, gender, education, occupation, and career history who had no intention of switching careers was also included for comparison. Recycling predictions were supported by the finding that the three groups who were in the throes of career change displayed greater concern with Super's first (exploration) stage than the nonchanging control group. In addition, the two groups who were most intensely involved in the change process (choosing field and implementing) scored higher in exploration concern than the group whose career change was fully completed. Satisfaction also varied as a function of the participant's stage in the process of switching to a new career. Global satisfaction with the present job was highest in workers who had completed the change to a new career, but nonchangers were more satisfied than the three groups who were actively caught up in the change process. On the other hand, satisfaction with the overall pattern of career development was higher in the two stable groups (nonchangers and change-completed) than among the three groups still actively involved in making a change. Implications of these results for midlife career counseling were considered.     

Women and Career Competence: A Theoretical and Experiential Model

The authors describe an experiential workshop, developed to help women with career difficulties, that emphasizes freedom and responsibility for choice.     

Women Who Choose a Man's Career: A Study of Women in Ministry

Fifty women who chose to pursue a male-dominated career, the ministry, were interviewed about components of career choice and professional development including sex and function of their role models and educational experiences. Sex-role orientation employing the Bern Sex Role Inventory and family data were also collected. Findings indicate a complex interaction of sex and function of role models with age and sex-role orientation of subjects.     

Personal Factors Related to Typicalness of Career and Success in Active Professional Women

Eighty women from the field? of medicine and law, in careers ranging from very atypical to very traditional for women, were compared on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (Vocabulary and Block Design subtests), Bern Sex-Role Inventory, Atkinson's measure of achievement motivation, and a childhood experiences questionnaire developed in conjunction with the study. Subjects in atypical, relative to those in typical careers were found to score higher 011 cognitive measures, psychological masculinity, and, in law, achievement motivation. Childhood experiences of women in atypical careers included: more traditionally masculine play patterns, greater unhappiness during adolescence, and less coercion by parents to fit a traditionally feminine stereotype.     

Women in Technology: A Program to Increase Career Awareness

Most women work to help support themselves and their families. Unfortunately young women are not often encouraged to explore occupational options that offer increased economic mobility. This article describes a program designed to develop awareness of nontraditional technical careers for women, careers that require less than four years of postsecondary education. Attended by guidance counselors and math and science teachers, the conference explored the psychological implications of nontraditional choices as well as provided information about these occupations. The article also discusses funding, program development and design, and evaluation.     

Self-Esteem and Extrinsic Career Success: Test of a Dynamic Model

It has been proposed that one's self‐esteem is both a cause and a consequence of one's extrinsic career success, but empirical research examining the direction of these effects is lacking. We tested a model which examines the relationships among self‐esteem, education, occupational prestige, and income over a span of seven years during early careers. We use social identity theory to propose that self‐esteem will be affected by extrinsic career success, and self‐consistency theory to propose that extrinsic career success will be affected by self‐esteem. Our results, based on a cross‐lagged regression design, suggest that self‐esteem increases occupational prestige (β= .22), and income (β= .22), but career outcomes did not alter self‐esteem. Implications of these results for the study of self‐esteem and careers are explored. Que l’estime de soi d’une personne soit à la fois une cause et une conséquence de son succès externe en termes de carrière est établi, mais les recherches empiriques examinant la direction de ces effets manquent. Nous testons un modèle examinant les relations entre l’estime de soi, l’éducation, le prestige professionnel et le revenu sur une durée de 7 ans à partir du début de carrière. Nous nous référons à la théorie de l’identité sociale pour montrer que l’estime de soi est affectée par un succès externe intervenant dans la carrière, et la théorie de consistance de soi pour montrer que ce succès externe est affecté par l’estime de soi. Nos résultats, basés sur une analyse de régression croisée, montrent que l’estime de soi accroît le prestige professionnel (b = .22) et les revenus (b = .22), mais les résultats relatifs à la carrière n’affectent pas l’estime de soi. Les implications de ces résultats pour l’étude de l’estime de soi et de la carrière sont explorées.     

Career Education Reconsidered: A Life-Experiences Model

Work can be conceived as a significant aspect of everyday school, home, and community life giving it a “here and now” character. These life experiences provide a structure for the introduction of concepts about work, work roles, and work functions as an integral part of the teaching-learning process. In providing for the experiential and evolutionary aspects of living on career learning-maturation, the life experiences model emphasizes the importance of classroom exposure and the involvement of classroom teachers in the creation and presentation of career education activities.     

Women in Professional Selling: A Human Resource Management Perspective

The authors present a set of human resource management tactics that can assist women who are pursuing sales careers and organizations that need effective salesforces. Topics discussed include recruiting selection, training, mentoring, managing and supporting.     

Professional Career Services: An Exploratory Study

This study assesses the willingness of three groups of job seekers to use professional career counseling services.     

Professionals' Use of Different Mentor Sources at Various Career Stages: Implications for Career Success

Abstract

The authors investigated the various sources of mentors used by professionals, how these sources influenced both objective and subjective career success, and whether the participants used different sources of mentors at different stages of their careers. According to data from 430 faculty members at 2 U.S. research institutions, assistant professors with mentors in their professions, associate professors with mentors outside the work place, and professors with mentors within their organizations had the highest levels of objective career success. Assistant professors with multiple sources of mentors yielded significantly higher levels of both objective and subjective career success than did those with single sources or no mentor. If one links professorial rank to career stage, the results suggest that the participants used different sources of mentors at different stages of their careers.     

Career Aspiration in Black College Women

No abstract available for this article.     

Bereavement and Stress in Career Women

Several studies on the role of individuals and groups in social support networks indicate that such networks are instrumental in preventing depression and low morale as the result of major life events. In several African countries the existence of a strong kin-group relationship and communal style of living nurtures the proliferation of a social support network. This article explores the operation of significant individuals and groups for widowed women within the contemporary Nigerian context.     

Reexamining the Influence of Career Stages on Salesperson Motivation: A Cognitive and Affective Perspective

Career stage theory suggests that salespeople vary in their motivation systematically across career stages. However, empirical evidence using valence, expectancy, and instrumentality components of motivation have failed to find consistent support. Drawing on social psychology and recent sales literature, we decompose global intrinsic and extrinsic (I/E) motivation into distinct cognitive and affective dimensions to empirically test a more current conceptualization of salesperson motivation. Empirical results using a cross section of salespeople indicate that salespeople’s I/E motivation differs along the cognitive, but not affective, dimensions across career stages. Specifically, salespeople in the establishment stage were found to have higher levels of challenge seeking than those in the disengagement stage, and compensation seeking was higher among exploration- and establishment-stage salespeople than those in the maintenance stage. The research findings highlight the need to distinguish between cognitive and affective dimensions of I/E motivation in understanding career stage–based expectations of salesperson motivation.     

A Stage Approach to Career Counseling With Christian Women

Almost 75% of married women ages 25–54 years are in the labor force in the United States. Many are in occupations that are below their potential or are not personally satisfying. Lack of role satisfaction can result in depression, but the career issues of women in treatment are often ignored. Christian women may be particularly vulnerable to role dissatisfaction. The authors offer a stage model for assessment of Christian women who present with symptoms of depression, in hopes of addressing issues of role satisfaction from work and lessening depressive symptoms.     

University Based Career Education: A Model for Infusion

This article presents a field-tested model for training and introducing university faculty to the philosophy, concepts, and practices of career education.     

A Model for Individual Career Counseling

The focus of the article is on a visual model for individual career counseling. The model takes into account psychological, social, and economic factors and describes decision making as a journey with four discernible stages.     

A Longitudinal Test of the Job Demands‐Resources Model among Australian University Academics

A longitudinal test of the Job Demands‐Resources (JD‐R) model of work stress and engagement ( Bakker & Demerouti, 2007 ; Demerouti et al., 2001 ) was conducted in a sample of Australian university academics (N= 296). The aim was to extend the JD‐R model by (1) determining how well job demands (work pressure, academic workload) and job resources (procedural fairness, job autonomy) would predict psychological strain and organisational commitment over a three‐year period, and (2) incorporating longitudinal tests of reversed causation. The results of SEM analyses showed that Time 1 resources directly predicted Time 2 strain and organisational commitment, but that Time 1 demands predicted Time 2 strain only indirectly via job resources. We did not find evidence for reversed causation. We discuss possible mediators of the relationships between working conditions and work stress outcomes, and the practical implications of the results.