Article De Bos et al. (2020) Flashcards
What has made sustainable careers an increasingly salient concern for individuals, organizations and societies?
The rapidly changing and unpredictable global economic environment in which careers unfold.
Sustainable careers
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.
Why might some career sequences be more sustainable than others?
Not all career sequences are equally sustainable; multiple factors impact career sustainability throughout one’s working life.
What two main elements create diversity in career sustainability?
Careers are a complex mosaic of objective experiences and subjective evaluations, leading to varied perceptions of career sustainability.
How does the idea of sustainable careers comprise an addition to the prevailing sustainability debate?
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.
What are the three key starting points suggested to develop the concept of sustainable careers?
- Greater conceptual clarity
- Theory building
- Development of appropriate research designs and methodologies.
What is needed for more conceptual clarity in sustainable careers research?
A clear framework (nomological network) describing what comprises a sustainable career and what the indicators and dimensions of a sustainable careers are.
Why is theory-building important for understanding sustainable careers?
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
What recent developments contribute to devloping appropriate research designs and methodologies of sustainable careers?
The rise of complex longitudinal models and data mining techniques.
What does the scholarly field of sustainable careers need?
Strong empirical studies
What is the objective of this paper?
To:
- build conceptual clarity
- approach sustainable careers from a systemic perspective
- elaborate on core theoretical frameworks
- present three key dimensions
- propose a research agenda
What perspective on career development does the paper advocate?
A cyclical, rather than linear, perspective to capture the diversity of career paths.
What has been the underlying ideology of career research?
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.
How has the topic of sustainable career devlopment recently been discussed?
From slightly different perspectives.
What is missing despite the rising momentum in studying sustainable careers?
An overarching and clear theoretical framework that allows grounded empirical investigation of this phenomenon.
What is theoretical framework that this paper develops?
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.
What is the challenge of sustainability?
It encompasses more than individual career management and requires the active involvement of all parties involved.
What is a crucial assumption in developing a theoretical framwork of sustainable careers?
That, in order to better understand individual career sustainability, a multiple-stakeholder perspective needs to be taken.
What does contemporary career theory suffer from?
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.
What is the extent of ‘activeness’ by the person dependent on and interact with?
The context, creating more or less space for personal initiative, or (unconsciously) affecting personal initiative.
What is needed in order to reflect an integrative approach?
Different levels of influential factors have to be taken into account in addition to the individual level.
What sets the sustainable career concept apart from other contemporary ‘types’ of careers?
The systemic perspective while recognizing all of the added values of other contemporary ‘types’ of careers.
The view of sustainable careers as a dynamic process sheds further light on?
How both factors within the person and within their context change over time, thereby affecting the sustainability of careers.
How can sustainable careers be understood?
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’.
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.
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.
What is a first step in furthering our understanding of what makes a career (non-)sustainable?
Describing the major characteristics of sustainable careers.
What does this paper focus on in their conceptualization of sustainable careers?
On indicators rather than on discrete outcomes.
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.
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.
What might cause one’s career to stagnate?
Serious life events with an enduring character
- E.g., serious illness of a loved one
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.
What are the groups of indicators of a sustainable career?
- Health
- Happiness
- Productivity
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.