Article De Bos et al. (2020) Flashcards
1
Q
What has made sustainable careers an increasingly salient concern for individuals, organizations and societies?
A
The rapidly changing and unpredictable global economic environment in which careers unfold.
2
Q
Sustainable careers
A
Sequences of career experiences reflected through a variety of patterns of continuity over time, thereby crossing several social spaces, characterized by individual agency, herewith providing meaning to the individual.
3
Q
Why might some career sequences be more sustainable than others?
A
Not all career sequences are equally sustainable; multiple factors impact career sustainability throughout one’s working life.
4
Q
What two main elements create diversity in career sustainability?
A
Careers are a complex mosaic of objective experiences and subjective evaluations, leading to varied perceptions of career sustainability.
5
Q
How does the idea of sustainable careers comprise an addition to the prevailing sustainability debate?
A
Career sustainability can be considered as a particular form of human sustainability, that is, the capacity to create, test and maintain one’s adaptive capability.
6
Q
What are the three key starting points suggested to develop the concept of sustainable careers?
A
- Greater conceptual clarity
- Theory building
- Development of appropriate research designs and methodologies.
7
Q
What is needed for more conceptual clarity in sustainable careers research?
A
A clear framework (nomological network) describing what comprises a sustainable career and what the indicators and dimensions of a sustainable careers are.
8
Q
Why is theory-building important for understanding sustainable careers?
A
To explore which existing theories or theoretical frameworks might provide further ground for a better understanding of sustainable careers, and to shed more light onto how and why sustainable – and non-sustainable – careers develop
9
Q
What recent developments contribute to devloping appropriate research designs and methodologies of sustainable careers?
A
The rise of complex longitudinal models and data mining techniques.
10
Q
What does the scholarly field of sustainable careers need?
A
Strong empirical studies
11
Q
What is the objective of this paper?
A
To:
- build conceptual clarity
- approach sustainable careers from a systemic perspective
- elaborate on core theoretical frameworks
- present three key dimensions
- propose a research agenda
12
Q
What perspective on career development does the paper advocate?
A
A cyclical, rather than linear, perspective to capture the diversity of career paths.
13
Q
What has been the underlying ideology of career research?
A
The idea that careers reflect the continued employment of individuals in jobs that facilitate their personal development over time.
However, perceptions of personal development and career success vary greatly among individuals.
14
Q
How has the topic of sustainable career devlopment recently been discussed?
A
From slightly different perspectives.
15
Q
What is missing despite the rising momentum in studying sustainable careers?
A
An overarching and clear theoretical framework that allows grounded empirical investigation of this phenomenon.
16
Q
What is theoretical framework that this paper develops?
A
It considers the individual as the focal person yet takes a systemic approach to understand the multiple factors affecting career sustainability and a dynamic approach to capture how changes over time affect career sustainability.
17
Q
What is the challenge of sustainability?
A
It encompasses more than individual career management and requires the active involvement of all parties involved.
18
Q
What is a crucial assumption in developing a theoretical framwork of sustainable careers?
A
That, in order to better understand individual career sustainability, a multiple-stakeholder perspective needs to be taken.
19
Q
What does contemporary career theory suffer from?
A
A lack of systematic attention to context and the stakeholders operating within this context, as it tends to put a strong emphasis on the individual as the central career actor.
20
Q
What is the extent of ‘activeness’ by the person dependent on and interact with?
A
The context, creating more or less space for personal initiative, or (unconsciously) affecting personal initiative.
21
Q
What is needed in order to reflect an integrative approach?
A
Different levels of influential factors have to be taken into account in addition to the individual level.
22
Q
What sets the sustainable career concept apart from other contemporary ‘types’ of careers?
A
The systemic perspective while recognizing all of the added values of other contemporary ‘types’ of careers.
23
Q
The view of sustainable careers as a dynamic process sheds further light on?
A
How both factors within the person and within their context change over time, thereby affecting the sustainability of careers.
24
Q
How can sustainable careers be understood?
A
They can be understood as a clynical, self-regulatory process in which (positive and negative) experiences and events, and how these are perceived and interpreted by the individual and the different parties involved, provide opportunities for ‘dynamic learning’.
25
What does dynamic learning enable?
It enables individuals to adapt to and to influence their environment, as their career evolves, by sharpening their understanding of themselves, their personal and organizational context, and the broader labor market. Ultimately, this allows them to continuously refine perceptions regarding their person-career fit over time.
26
What is inherent to any indiviaul's career?
That events and evolutions in the person and in their context affect a person's experiences and may bring alongg opportunities as well as needs, constraints, challenges, and dilemmas.
It is how people and the other stakeholders involved deal with those internal and external changes that might affect the sustainability of a career over time.
27
What is a first step in furthering our understanding of what makes a career (non-)sustainable?
Describing the major characteristics of sustainable careers.
28
What does this paper focus on in their conceptualization of sustainable careers?
On indicators rather than on discrete outcomes.
29
What are sustainable careers characterized by in this study? And how should it be considered?
Sustainble careers are characterized by mutually beneficial consequences for the person and for their surrounding context, and should be considered by taking a long-term perspective.
30
What could be the consequences of accepting a promotion in terms of sustainable careers?
Accepting a promotion might result in individual career success in the short-term, but from a sustainable career perspective this is only an indicator of a sustainable career if this promotion does not come at a cost of strain or fatigue, or stress in the home context.
Therefore, to understand sustainable careers, taking one snapshot in time might be insufficient.
31
What might cause one's career to stagnate?
Serious life events with an enduring character
- E.g., serious illness of a loved one
32
What can be argued for sustainable careers using a systemic perspective?
That the different aspects of the system need to be aligned and balanced.
In terms of individual sustainability of careers, this means there needs to be a strong person-career fit over time.
33
What are the groups of indicators of a sustainable career?
- Health
- Happiness
- Productivity
34
Health as an indicator of a sustainable career
It encompasses both physical and mental health, and refers to the dynamic fit of the career with one's mental and physical capacities.
35
Happiness as an indicator of a sustainable career
With happiness we refer to the subjective elements of feeling successful or satisfied with one's career, yet seen from a broader life perspective.
Happiness concerns the dynamic fit of the career with one's values, career goals, or needs regarding work-life balance or personal growth.
36
Productivity as an indicator of a sustainable career
Productivity means strong performance in one's current job as well as high employability or career potential in the future or in other jobs and hence refers to the dynamic fit of the career with organizational human capital needs.
It also encompasses elements such as engagement and extra-role behaviors which are essential for the long-term performance of organizations.
37
What characteristic of sustainable careers is the most important? And is it more important for the person, the organization or the context?
The three characteristics of sustainable careers are equally important for the person as for the organization and the broader context, as indicated by the notion of fit.
38
What is the dynamic fit?
The capacity to adapt and change according to changing needs is important to consider.
This is also core in the definition of human sustainability, which is why the notion of a dynamic person-career fit in terms of health, happiness, and productivity is at the core of sustainable careers.
39
Why are resources important for career sustainability?
Resources are essential for ensuring sustainable growth and continuity in one’s career, much like in environmental sustainability.
40
What is career sustainability?
A process involving both the preservation and generation of resources across one’s career span.
41
What is the Conservation of Resources (COR) Theory
A motivational theory stating that people are motivated to protect their current resources and acquire new ones.
42
What is the first principle of COR Theory?
The Primacy of Resource Loss:
Losing resources is more psychologically harmful than the benefit of gaining equivalent resources.
43
What is the second principle of COR Theory?
Resource Investment:
People invest resources to (1) protect against loss, (2) recover from loss, and (3) gain new resources.
44
How does COR Theory apply to career sustainability?
COR Theory helps explain career sustainability by combining the resource conservation and investment principles.
45
In what case will one's career sustainability be more likely preserved?
In case one manages to adjust well to losses.
46
Which individuals will be better able to protect the sustainability of their career?
Those individuals who proactively react to internal and external forces by investing in conserving and acquiring alternative, beneficial resources.
47
How do resource gain and loss cycles affect career sustainability?
Resource gain cycles contribute to career sustainability, while resource depletion, such as through injury or job loss, can undermine it.
48
How does COR Theory help in understanding sustainable careers?
It provides a framework for understanding how cycles of resource gain and loss impact career sustainability over time.
49
What is an important strategy to protect and further enhance one's career sustainability?
To portray proactive behaviour and individual growth.
50
According to Self-Determination Theory (SDT), what are the three innate psychological needs a proactive-grown- and development-oriented individual strives for when interacting with their surrounding social world?
- Autonomy
- Competence
- Relatedness
51
What are the important building blocks of SDT that can be used for the further conceptualization of sustainable careers?
1. individuals are inherently proactive and have the tendency to act in order to master both internal and external forces, instead of being passively controlled by those.
2. they have an inherent tendency towards growth, development, and integrated functioning.
3. individuals may actualize their capabilities in a proactive way, but they need a supportive environment that provides resources and, as such, support activity, growth, and psychological well-being.
52
What is highly beneficial for individuals in order to have a sustainable career?
To interact with their surrounding stakeholders when striving for the fulfillment of their psychological needs and coping with changing motivation and goals throughout the life-span.
53
Resource caravans
A pattern in which resources are associated with other resources.
This implies that individuals with (many) resources are better able to gain additional ones, herewith inducing a gain spiral.
54
What is career sustainability strongly related to?
The way in which individuals utilize their resources and proactively shape their careers.
55
Matthew effect
If people with ample resources are more easily able to gain additional resources and satisfy their needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness as means of enhancing their career sustainability, this also implies that those who end up in a resource loss cycle will find it increasingly more difficult to satisfy those needs, thereby creating a situation in which “the weak get weaker and the strong get stronger”.
56
How does the Selection Optimization and Compensation (SOC) theory explain how goals change over the life-span?
It states that individuals maximize the gains and minimize the losses they experience over time, by using different strategies.
- To maximize gains, individuals select desirable outcomes or goals and optimize their resources to reach these desirable outcomes.
- To minimize losses, individuals select fewer goals in response to these actual or impending losses, and compensate for these losses by investing their remaining resources in counteracting these losses.
By employing these strategies, individuals strive to achieve three different life-span goals:
- Growth (i.e., reaching higher levels of functioning)
- Maintenance (i.e., maintaining current levels of functioning or returning to previous levels of functioning)
- Regulation of loss (i.e., functioning adequately at lower levels).
The allocation of resources aimed at growth will decrease with age, whereas the allocation of resources used for maintenance and regulation of loss will increase with age.
57
How does the Socio-emotional Selectivity Theory (SST) theory explain how goals change over the life-span?
Age-related changes in the perception of time result in changes in social goals or motives, thereby shifting the motive for social interaction from gaining resources (i.e., instrumental) towards receiving affective (emotional) rewards and strengthening one's identity.
- Instrumental goals involve knowledge acquisition, autonomy, social acceptance, and status attaintment.
- Emotionally meaningful goals involve generativity, emotinoal intimacy, and feelings of social embeddedness.
58
What happens to an individual's goals over the course of one's career?
They tend to alter due to a chaning future time perspective (FTP), which makes them more concerned with preserving certain resources than investing in new resources.
Thus, the value of a particular resourceis likely to vary significantly over time and across different contexts.
59
Who is more likely to protect the sustainability of their career when their employing organization is going through a major restructuring?
A person who manages to cope with these kinds of changes, in this case implying losses of valuable resources.
60
How are life-span theories connected to the COR theory and SDT?
Life-span theories help us to understand the sustainability of careers especially from the perspective of changes that occur during the life-span based on evolving motivations and attitudes.
COR theory: which resources to focus on
SDT: what are the main motivational factors guiding behaviour
61
Dimensions that can be used to analyze the sustainability of careers
The person
- The central actor in the definition of sustainable careers.
The context
- Careers are affected by the multiple contexts in which they evolve: the work context, private life context, the broader labor market context and one's society and culture.
Time
- Careers evolve over time, both intra-individual changes and changes occuring within the different layers of context.
62
What kind of approach is the person dimension of sustainable careers?
Person-centered appracoh
63
What are relevant elements of this dimension?
Agency and meaning
64
How does an individual have a major impact on the sustainability of their carer? And what does it imply?
They are the central actor and 'owner' of the career and have an impact through
- proactivity and control
adapting and reacting to career events and changes
Both actions imply agency.
65
Agency and sustainable careers
Agency can vary from very proactively taking charge to very reactively adapting to a situation that is not under the person's control.
Hence, a sustainable career is as much about proactive shaping (e.g., career crafting) as it is about adjustment and dealing with external influences (e.g., career adaptability).
66
Meaningfulness and sustainable careers
It is important for a person to be mindful about who and what matters to them in their career, making meaning an important element.
67
What are an important anchor points against which to make career decisions that increase the likelihood of person-career fit?
Personal needs and the values of specific career and private life outcomes
- Even though they may vary over time they are important
68
What impact does a meaningful experience of working life have on an individual?
This is likely to postively impact, among other things, their motivation, commitment, engagement, and life satisfaction.
It will also provide them with a clear sense of purpose and mission.
These aspects are dynamic and idiosyncratic to the person within their particular life and work context.
69
What are the different orientations people may have in terms of how they see their work?
As a job
- Not per se as a major positive element of their life
- With a focus on financial rewards and necessity rather than pleasure or fulfillment
As a career
- Focusing on advancement
As a calling
- Focusing on enjoyment of fulfilling, socially usefol work
70
What is important for analyzing a sustainablec areer from the perspective of agency and meaning?
A person's career competencies and career adaptability.
71
Career comptenecies
Knowledge, skills, and abilities that are central to career development, and consist of a reflective, a communicative, and a behavioural component.
72
Career adaptability
The psychosocial resource for coping with current and anticipated career-related tasks, transitions, and traumas.
73
What does career adaptability constitute?
A self-regulatory, transactional, and malleable resource that enables workers to successfully solve unfamiliar, complex, and ill-defined problems throughout their careers.
74
What do workers with high levels of career adaptability do?
- Prepare for future career tasks (concern)
- Take responsibility for their career development (control)
- Explore possible future selves and career opportunities (curiosity)
- Believe in their ability to succeed in solving career-related problems (confidence)
They show more adaptivity (e.g., self-esteem), adapting (e.g., career planning), and adaptation (e.g., engagement, employability) in their careers.
75
What kind of approach is the context dimension of sustainable careers?
Systemic approach
76
What do employees have to deal with at a work group level?
Fluctuations in job demands and job resources that are prevalent at work.
77
How can a work group affect the sustainability of a person's career?
Through prevailing norms about 'normal' career transitions and through its diversity climate.
An inclusive work climate might facilitate sustainable careers. A negative climate might make it hard for some people to realize their career goals.
78
What has a powerful influence on individuals' careers at the organizational level?
- HR policies
- HR practices
79
How do HR-policies and practices have a powerful influence on individuals' careers?
Directly:
- by creating opportunities
- by setting boundaries to what is possible in terms of career progression, development, and flexibility
Indirectly:
- by supporting individuals' capacities to self-manage their careers
80
What are both organizations and individuals affected by?
The occupational sector and institutional context in which they operate.
Depending on one's occupation, technological changes might have a susbtantial impact on the sustainability of one's career.
Some jobs are likely to change or even disappear, making some competencies obsolete while raising the need for new competencies.
81
How is career sustainability affected on the national level?
Legislations and the institutional environment in general.
- E.g., income security differs across countries
National guidelines and cultures
- E.g., regarding education and training, welfare supports for parents with dual careers, and retirement systems
82
How does the private life context affect career sustainability?
Within dual earner families, the spouse or life partner has been identified as an important stakeholder of the person's career, who both affects and is affected by the latter's career decisions and career management.
Support or social influence from children, parents, and friends
83
What kind of approach is the time dimension of sustainable careers?
A dynamic perspective
84
The time dimension of sustainable careers
Sustainable careers imply a cyclical, self-regulatory process wherein individuals can capture opportunities for ‘dynamic learning’, by adapting to both positive and negative events, within their personal and broader context, over time.
Sustainability in careers implies protecting and fostering (rather than depleting) human and career development through redefining person-career fit over time.
85
Impact of time
Time might have an immediate impact on an individual's career sustainability, but it might also show its consequences after a longer period of time.
86
Meaning of time
Just like age, time can have different meanings for an individual, their stakeholders, and for different types or categories of workers.
87
Time in learning cycles
Depending on one's occupation, the learning curve to master all competencies for a certain position or role will be different.
88
Career dynamics
It may refer to both processes of development within a job or within a position over time, as well as across jobs or positions over the individual life cycle.
Time is an important intra-individual factor.
89
Career dynamics and a sustainable career
A sustainable career is not an end state but rather a characteristic or a relevant parameter to describe a career as it evolves over time.
Moreover, it is not a permant characteristic either.
90
What is needed when theorizing and in empirical work on sustainable careers?
An integrative and dynamic view of the sustainable career concept
91
Career shocks
Disruptive and extraordinary events that are, at least to some degree, caused by factors outside the individual's control and that trigger a deliberate thought process conerning one's career.
Career shocks can occur at various points in oné scareer and can thus be considered as events that happen over time.
Career shocks don't 'just happen' to individuals, but are interpreted in a certain way and cause a deliberate thought proces.
Career shocks can occur in different types of contexts.
92
How can shocks differ?
E.g., regarding their valence, frequency, duration, and intensity.
93
What has a significant impact on how individuals deal with career shocks?
- The focal person's personality
- career competencies and adaptability
- Agentic orientation
94
Explain career shocks with an integrative and dynamic view of the sustainable career concept
The context in which such a shock takes place interacts with the point in time of a person's career it happens, and with the way the individual deals with the particular shock. Together, they can have a significant impact on the sustainability of one's career.
95
What could future research look at?
- The 3 key factors indicated here (health, happiness and productivity) should not be considered in isolation. Because they vary over time due to intrapersonal and contextual changes, research should capture the dynamic perspective.
- The 3 key dimensions (person, context, time) should be researched addressing the possible interactions between these 3 dimensions.
- Given the variety in types of employment in our economy and rise of alternative work arrangements, challenges of career sustainability hold for all categories of workers (regular organization based, temporarily employed, self-employed, establishes professions). Sustainability probably differs across the categories of workers.
- More empirical work is needed to understand intra-individual changes over time (changes due to aging, changes in the organizational, occupational or societal context across the working life).
