“To grow up masculinized is to learn to value hierarchies. We are taught that it is a positive thing to ‘move up’.”
(Maier 1997, 244)
What is a career? How can one differentiate career and non-career work? Is there work without career? Silius (1995) interprets career as professionalism, with visible and public results; only certain kinds of careers are legitimate and valued (cf. Cohen et al. 2004).
The public (paid work) has superiority over the private (care, home work, motherhood).
Professionalism is free from other life and commitment to work is top class, which requires significant emotional sacrifices in social relations. As a cultural code professionalism is imbued with masculine gender, expressing power, control and hierarchies. The care (provided by women) enables the abstract ideas and great policies (of professional men).24
Arthur & Rousseau (1996, 3) argue that “everyone who works has a career”. The idea of careers is central in the modern Western culture (Inkson 1995); we are raised to career-like thinking from early on. “What are you going to do when you grow up?” is a usual question repeated through our childhood, though work does not even play any significant role at that time. And it only gets worse. “We soon learn that we ought to have job or career ambitions.” (Gabriel, Fineman & Sims 2000, 223) As Inkson & Arthur (2001, 48) state, career is one of the most important facets in our lives. “Along with our close relationships and our families, our careers are what we judge our lives by.” And careers not only have to do with work, “everyone’s life outside work is connected to the career”
(Arthur & Rousseau 1996, 3). In the context of multiple educational and vocational opportunities, careers have become a means for self-expression and self-determination (Blustein et al. 2004).
24 Julkunen (1995) interprets professionalism in the hierarchical sense: professions present the top of the hierarchy; in the lower steps it is easier to mix public life and private life.
Traditionally career has been considered as a series of related jobs through which a person moves in a sequential manner (Wajcman 1998; White 1995): the very meaning of career traces back to individuals moving through a sequence of positions or work roles in the course of their work lifetime (Gunz, Evans & Jalland 2002; Kanter 1977), serving only one organization (Baruch 2004; Bird 1994). The concept of time is of high relevance here (see e.g. Arthur, Khapova & Wilderom 2005), and there lies the assumption of going upwards hierarchically, gaining one position after another, implicitly offered to ‘bright young men’ (Mainiero & Sullivan 2006; Baruch 2004; Reitman & Schneer 2003; Schein 1978). MacDermid, Lee, Buck & Williams (2001, 306) argue that “the traditional organizational career is evident in the typically male pattern of working steadily full-time for the same employer for an entire career, always seeking vertical advancement and external rewards”. Women have been expected to behave in the same manner and to pursue the same goals as men.
Traditional careers, especially in management practice and theory, have emphasized structure, succession and status (Baruch 2004; Adamson 1997) and they are thought to be bind to something, be it organizations, roles, positions or jobs (Bird 1994); the concept of psychological contract25 has been in the fore. Inkson (1995) suggests that career structures are inseparable from other structures and institutions in society. “In essence, the word ‘career’ speaks of a promise, the vow that an organization makes to the individual that merit, diligence and self-discipline would be rewarded by steady progress through a pyramid of grades”. This also embodies an assumption that ‘the career promise’ holds good for decades; career is “a lifelong moral project” (McKinlay 2002, 596; see also Inkson 1995), and a linear trajectory (Eby, Butts & Lockwood 2003). The idea of careers provides individuals with coherence and stability (Inkson 1995). In all this, it is noteworthy that careers are most often examined from organizational an perspective (cf. Anand, Peiperl & Arthur 2002; Inkson & Arthur 2001; Arthur &
Rousseau 1996). Miles & Snow (1996) talk about effective careers, which refer to a constant match of individuals’ competencies and organizations’ needs.
25 For an extensive discussion of psychological contracts, see e.g. Rousseau (1995) and Schein (1978).
It is argued that women’s success criteria and routes to career success differ from those of men (see e.g. Cornelius & Skinner 2008; Sturges 1999; Melamed 1996). Powell &
Mainiero (1992; see also Buttner 2001; Sturges 1999; Arthur & Rousseau 1996;
Sheppard 1992) argue that women are more concerned on how they feel about their careers (defined subjectively in terms of individuals’ own interpretations of their careers, so-called internal or subjective career)26 than what their careers actually look like (measured objectively by promotions, salary etc., so-called external or objective career).
The traditional rewards of pay and status that are considered to be of masculine nature, are less emphasized among women (Simpson 1998).
Anand et al. (2002, 3-4) argue that “careers… serve as reference points, both for shared social understanding and for personal interpretation and action”. In this research, I examine careers from an individual’s point of view; “the career is what the person construes it to be” (Hall et al. 2002, 161). However successful career can be from the objective point of view, it does not necessarily guarantee individual’s psychological feeling of success (Hall & Chandler 2005). Eby et al. (2001) argue that career success is closely related to career insight and career identity, which emphasize individuals’ roles rather than their employers’ roles, in managing careers. Careers are always personal and unique (Nicholson & de Waal-Andrews 2005), and as is argued by Gabriel et al. (2000;
cf. Mitchell et al. 1999; Schein 1987), despite all career planning stories, in reality many of us have only a vague idea what we want to do, if even that.
Changes in careers are often something totally different than what the traditional theories of career stages and adult development suggest. Rather, careers are made up of several short cycles or episodes during which an individual learns to master something new.
After completing the prevailing mission, or for other external (like changes in work
26 Mirvis & Hall (1994) talk about ‘psychological success’ that derives from individual’s experiences of achieving goals that are meaningful specifically to the individual, not for example to the organizational peers or to the society. Arthur et al. (2005, 180, 182) see that “people experience objective reality, create understandings about what constitutes career success, and then individually act on those understandings, regardless of their predictive accuracy… People develop their careers and seek career success by orienting themselves to certain relevant peer groups or work-related communities”.
environment) or internal (like personal needs) reasons, an individual moves on.
Additionally, the stage models do not address the complex assemblage of life, career and search for balance (Mainiero & Sullivan 2006; Hall et al. 2002); the private spheres of life only cause distraction (cf. Höpfl & Matilal 2007). Prasad (1997; see also Maier 1997) states that careers are discursively constructed as belonging exclusively to the organizational sphere and requiring devotion and commitment to work only; “work is separate from the rest of life and it has first claim on the worker” (Acker 1992, 255).
Those committed to their paid employment are seen as naturally more suited to authority and responsibility; those dividing their commitments belong to the lower ranks (Acker 1990).
For Arnold (2001; see also Baruch 2004; Sturges 1999; Schein 1987), career management is difficult but still necessary for both individuals and organizations. Nowadays, career choices to be made are far more complex and varied by nature, they concern much more than just the type of work, and the career success is more and more defined by individuals themselves, what is individually perceived to be important, rather than by socially accepted norms. This individuality aspect is under inspection here. As Schein (1987, 155, 170) argues, “from the individual point of view, the career comprises a series of psychologically meaningful units… ultimately, we must manage our own careers”.
Organizations provide contexts for careers, but never own them (Inkson & Arthur 2001).
According to Schein (1987), the more an individual gains work experience, the more ready he/she is to make managed and constructive career decisions, and to distinguish what is ‘me’ and what is not ‘me’.
The masculine model of work and career making is giving way to a postmodern pluralism, as Cooper & Lewis (1999) call it. The changes in the nature of work are euphemistically thought to benefit above all women (Thimm et al. 2003; Woodd 1999), and the new career realities are thought to be more feminine (Fondas 1996). Rosenbaum
& Miller (1996, 350) state that “the company man, if not entirely extinct, is a rapidly dying species… His environment has changed and become inhospitable, and a new
species, more adaptive to the changed environment, is taking his place”. Let us take a closer look what this means.