50 M
AJOR
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HEORIES OF
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AREER
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EVELOPMENT
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HOICE
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DJUSTMENT
a ladder. Incremental progress up the occupational ladder is indexed by increas-
ing wages, benefits, and security. Progress stories do give hope and security to
many people; nevertheless, there are many other people whose experience does
not fit the story. Instead of progress, some people encounter barriers that force
them to regress, drift, flounder, stagnate, or stop. Unable to move ahead on a ca-
reer path, they drop back, get sidetracked, become stuck in a rut, run into a dead
end, or fall by the wayside.
The grand narrative of career tells a story, an account that people use to under-
stand themselves and others. It is not the account, it is an account of vocational
de
velopment tasks for one culture in one historical era. It was constructed in the
1950s to depict the then-current corporate culture and societal expectations for a
life, especially a male life that privileges the work role over family and friendship
roles. Other accounts are being narrated today as the global economy, information
technology, a nd social justice challenge dominant narratives and rewrite the social
organization of work and the meaning of career. These rich narratives chronicle
untold stories and voice complexity. These new stories, rather than focusing on
progress through an orderly sequence of predictable tasks in a maxicycle, will in-
creasingly focus on minicycles by emphasizing adaptability for transitions, espe-
cially coping with changes that are unexpected and traumatic. The new job market
in our unsettled economy calls for viewing career not as a lifetime commitment to
one or two employers but as selling services and skills to a series of employers
who need projects completed (Kalleberg, Reynolds, & Marsden, 2003). In negotiat-
ing each new project, the prospective employee usually concentrates on salary yet
also seeks control of the working environment, work-family balance, and training
for the next job.
While the grand narrative changes from stability to mobility to reflect the
labor needs of postindustrial society, the activities that characterize the five
principal career stages—growth, exploration, establishment, management, and
disengagement—are still useful and can be viewed as activities that compose a
minicycle around each of the many transitions from school to work, from job to
job, and from occupation to occupation. As each transition approaches, individ-
uals can adapt more effectively if they meet the challenges with growing inter-
est, focused exploration and informed decision making, trial behaviors followed
by a commitment projected forward for a certain time period, active role man-
agement, and forward-looking deceleration and disengagement. For example, a
high school graduate entering her first job usually progresses through a period
of growth in the new role, including exploration of the nature and expectations
of that role. She becomes established in it, manages the role for a long period,
and then experiences disengagement if with further growth she becomes ready
to change jobs or even switch occupational fields. Similarly, the established
worker, frustrated or advancing, may experience growth and explore new roles
and then seek to get established in one of them. In postindustrial economies,
people may not work at one job for 30 years. New technologies, globalization,
and job redesign require workers to more actively construct their careers. They
can expect to change jobs relatively often and make frequent transitions, each
time recycling through minicycles of growth, exploration, stabilization, man-
agement, and disengagement as they move within or across the career stages of
the maxicycle.
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