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Ans De Vos · Jean-Marie Dujardin
Tim Gielens · Caroline Meyers
Developing
Sustainable Careers
Across the Lifespan
European Social Fund Network on
Career and AGE (Age, Generations,
Experience)
Developing Sustainable Careers Across
the Lifespan
Ans De Vos • Jean-Marie Dujardin
Tim Gielens • Caroline Meyers
Developing Sustainable
Careers Across the Lifespan
European Social Fund Network on Career
and AGE (Age, Generations, Experience)
Ans De Vos Jean-Marie Dujardin
Antwerp Management School and University of Liège
University of Antwerp HEC-Management School
Antwerp, Belgium Liège, Belgium
For many people, a job is more than an income – it’s an important part of who we
are. So a career transition of any sort is one of the most unsettling experiences you
can face in your life.
The “career” concept is very broad, and it is often filled in differently depending
on the type of organisation and the individual involved. While the traditional mean-
ing of a career could be summarised in terms of making a number of (generally)
vertical steps, we now see that a career can refer to much more.
“Career-making” today in many organisations is considered as being much more
than climbing up the hierarchy; it requires skills that enable people to assess what
they need to develop to steer their career in the desired direction. Each one of us is
confronted with a simple question “What am I good at, and what do I want to do or
achieve?” which, however, is not that easy to respond to. During our studies, we
never needed to answer such questions. Our education system is still geared towards
a lifelong career with a single employer. But things have changed and transitions
throughout the life course are now becoming the everyday reality.
Of course, education and work cannot be separated. Yet the type of study and
diploma are not anymore the most decisive factors as regards our career paths. There
is a growing consensus that everyone should be involved with lifelong learning.
Knowledge is passé before you know it, and it’s not because you are older that you
may not have up-to-date knowledge in order to enable you to navigate smoothly in
life.
Ready or not, we all go through numerous transitions in our lives – leaving high
school to go to college or work, changing jobs, getting married, having children.
While it sounds like a cliché, the next step after an end is a new beginning, a new
chapter, and keeping this in mind can give you a sense of a fresh start. And while the
particular circumstances are new, the process itself is familiar. You have, after all,
made transitions before – changing schools, neighbourhoods, relationships, jobs.
You know the territory; you have acquired experience and skills along the way. You
can do this again, and this time even better.
Almost all of us will experience a few of these during our lifetime, so being able
to manage these situations in a healthy manner is crucial.
v
vi Preface
ESF (European Social Fund) Flanders together with ESF of the Autonomous
Province of Trento took up the challenge of addressing this issue through the estab-
lishment of the transnational network “Career and AGE (Age, Generations,
Experience)” in order to explore the life course approach and how it can contribute
to the creation of sustainable careers and longer working lives.
This “life course” framework takes into account the different needs and expecta-
tions of the individuals during their entire working life, especially in times of transi-
tions. During these transition moments, it is extremely important to take into
consideration the specificities of each individual in order to provide them with the
appropriate tools for getting on with their lives.
The innovative model, developed within the scope of this network, can help
human resources departments and intermediate organisations, for example, public
employment services, to adapt their services by incorporating the life course
approach in the way they perform their tasks. The different tools provided along
with the theoretical models, such as methodologies, manuals and examples, will
help companies and intermediate organisations to work on sustainable careers for
the different target groups in order to enable them to provide the support that is
needed.
Finally, I would like to thank all the stakeholders who, in the course of the net-
work’s short lifespan, brought in their valuable expertise and experience in order to
build the knowledge base needed for making transitions throughout life a success
story.
This book is the result of the efforts of many people. Our journey started when the
European Social Fund initiated the “Career and AGE (Age, Generation, Experience)”
network, which brought together ten countries around the timely topic of sustain-
able careers.
We would like to express our indebtedness to many people. In the first place, we
are grateful for the opportunity the European Commission has given us, via the ESF
network, to explore a wide variety of examples of good practice across Europe and
to share our experiences with the actors involved and with ESF representatives dur-
ing several learning seminars.
Getting access to the examples of good practice would not have been possible
without the active cooperation of the local ESF authorities from the ten countries
involved: Belgium (Flanders), Belgium (Wallonia), Italy (Trento), Spain (Andalusia),
Czech Republic, Romania, Finland, Hungary, Northern Ireland and Germany). We
would like to thank the whole team for the fruitful collaboration we have experi-
enced throughout the project.
This book contains a selection of examples of good practice that demonstrate
how sustainable career management can be put into practice in diverse contexts.
This would not have been possible without the consent from the organisations
involved and the input and feedback we received from the people concerned with
the project in each organisation. Therefore, our profound thanks to Mieke Smet
(Janssen), Herman Verhoelst (KBC), Bernadette Thomas (Cité des Métiers),
Heikkilä Titi (City of Helsinki), Susan Russam (GEM Northern Ireland), David
Meulemans (VDAB), Philippe Bernier (C.I.F.) and Heidi Brie (Novartis).
We would like to thank Monique Valcour for her contribution to this book. Her
reflection on the examples of good practice from a broader, non-European perspec-
tive underscores the broader relevance of sustainable career management.
We would also like to thank European Commissioner Marianne Thyssen,
Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility, for
writing an epilogue to this book and Marie-Anne Paraskevas, Senior Policy Officer
European Commission, DG EMPL, for writing the preface.
vii
viii Acknowledgements
We are also indebted to Pat Donnelly for his careful revision of the text. Pat put
in a great deal of time, and his editing abilities added greatly to the clarity of the
book.
We would like to thank our partners at Springer, for their enthusiasm about pub-
lishing this book and their support throughout the publication process, especially
Corina van der Giessen, Stefan Einarson and Stephen O’Reilly.
Contents
ix
x Contents
Ans De Vos, PhD, holds the SD Worx chair “Next generation work: Creating sus-
tainable careers” at Antwerp Management School, Antwerp, Belgium and is full
professor at the University of Antwerp, Faculty of Economics and Business
Administration. Her focal areas of interest are career development, sustainable
career management, employability and psychological contracts, which she
approaches both from an individual and organizational perspective. She frequently
cooperates with organizations on challenges related to sustainable career manage-
ment, and is a well-known speaker on this topic. She has published in Journal of
Organizational Behavior, Journal of Vocational Behavior, European Journal of
Work and Organizational Psychology, among others. She is co-editor of the
Handbook of Research on Sustainable Careers (EE Publishing).
xiii
xiv About the Authors
This book also contains a contribution by Monique Valcour who was involved in
the Career & AGE network as an international expert. Monique Valcour, PhD CPCC
(Certified Professional Co-Active Coach) is a coach and management academic.
She delivers executive education and workshops on sustainable careers, work-life
integration, leadership, and well-being. She coaches leaders who want to engage
and energize their employees as well as individuals and dual-career couples seeking
to craft successful careers and lives. She has worked with clients from over forty
countries. Her research has been published in academic journals as well as in several
edited volumes and she is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review.
Chapter 1
Introduction: ESF Network Career & AGE
(Age, Generation, Experience)
Abstract This chapter outlines the objectives and scope of this book and intro-
duces the Career and AGE (Age, Generation, Experience) learning network set up
by the European Social Fund. It starts with highlighting the challenges of making
careers more sustainable
(continued)
(continued)
1.2 Aims and Scope of This Book 3
As these three stories make clear, Ben, Patricia and Timothy are in different
stages of their career and life. They have different family contexts and the sequence
of experiences making up their careers is quite different – and also age related.
What they have in common is that their experiences and how they evaluate their
careers are influenced by a variety of factors, both professional and personal.
Moreover, their career decisions are also influenced by who they are as people, by
their motivations and competencies, as well as by policy measures at a societal
level.
We could all add our own personal story to those of Ben, Patricia and Timothy
and although each career story would be a unique combination of experiences, the
same influencers would come into play. This book is about careers and about how
careers can be made more sustainable. Our focal point is the individual’s career but
although careers are dynamic and unique to each person, the way we deal with
careers within organisations and within society in general does have a significant
impact – positive or negative –on how careers unfold and on the sustainability of
careers over time.
The basic message of this book is that the pattern of individual career experi-
ences and how it is affected by factors at multiple levels (the individual and his or
her broader life context, the organisations within which careers unfold, and policy
measures taken by governments, social partners, industries) needs attention from
all the actors involved. Why? Because over the past decades the career context has
4 1 Introduction: ESF Network Career & AGE (Age, Generation, Experience)
Changes in the career context have caused a serious shift in thinking about careers
and in conceiving these careers. The long held model of labour as defined by Henry
Ford, which emphasised job security and tenure within one company, has come
under increasing pressure since the seventies when companies could no longer guar-
antee long term job security. Economic forecasts became less predictable and more
insecure, and careers followed this pattern (Cappelli, 1995). These developments on
the demand side of labour were the prelude to a discontinuity in careers (Howard,
1995). In recent years, labour market conditions and career patterns have evolved
significantly, including a general and ongoing weakening of the employment con-
tract between individuals and the organisations that employ them (Cappelli &
Keller, 2012). In addition, demographic factors such as the greying of the work-
force, dual careers, increased international migration, are driving increased career
complexity (Greenhaus & Kossek, 2014).
Together, these developments have caused a radical change in the nature of what
is understood by a “career”: the linear, predictable and single lifelong employment
within one organisation, a model held for decennia, belongs to the past. The new,
dramatically different nature of a career is non-linear, highly unpredictable, transi-
tional, unique and very personal (Cappelli & Keller, 2012; Greenhaus & Kossek,
2014; Lyons, Schweitzer, & Ng, 2015). Contemporary workers have to work longer,
but yet at the same time the sequence and length of career episodes have become
less predictable (Van der Heijden & De Vos, 2015). Increasingly, career mobility
and employability are being considered a prerequisite for career security (Arthur,
2014) and this has made individuals more ‘in charge’ of their own career (Van der
Heijden & De Vos, 2015). Together these evolutions urge us to further rethink and
reshape the existing ways by which we define, manage and support careers.
Over the past decades, many books and articles have been written about the
changing nature of employment relationships and careers. Ensuring sustainability
of careers in a socio-economic environment where the careers of many individuals
are at risk has become a pertinent challenge (see also the recently published
“Handbook of Research on Sustainable Careers” by Ans De Vos & Beatrice Van der
Heijden, 2015). Today, the question is no longer “should we facilitate individuals in
working longer in a sustainable way” but rather “how can we realize this chal-
lenge?”. Given this complex mix of changes on a macro-, meso- and microeco-
nomic level that have affected the nature of a career in a profound way, governmental
1.3 ESF Career and AGE Network: Methodology and Approach 5
bodies, organisations and individuals can benefit from initiatives which investigate
and spread examples of good practice.
The examples of good practice, around which this book is built, were collected and
validated as part of an ESF international learning network in which ten countries
participated (Belgium -Flanders & Wallonia-, Italy (Trento), Spain (Andalusia),
Czech Republic, Romania, Finland, Hungary, Northern Ireland and Germany). The
final goal of the network was to develop a website that practitioners can consult to
learn more about the examples of good practice validated during the project (esf-
vlaanderen.be/en/career-and-age). In order to achieve this, a process of identifying
and validating good practice within European countries (not limited to those coun-
tries which were part of the network) was set up (for more information see De Vos
& Gielens, 2014a, 2014b, 2014c). Three international learning seminars took place
in which these examples were introduced and discussed. During the preparatory
phase prior to each seminar the members of the network and the experts submitted
practices using a structured format. These were subsequently validated by a com-
mittee of four international academic experts in the careers field and by two ESF
representatives.
6 1 Introduction: ESF Network Career & AGE (Age, Generation, Experience)
This book is structured as follows. In the next chapter (Chap. 2) we describe the
changing nature of careers and the challenges for the sustainability of careers fol-
lowing from this. We introduce the framework for sustainable career management
that was used within the network to validate examples of good practice. In Chap. 3,
we describe in detail nine measures that were retained as examples of good practice.
These examples represent a variety of measures taken by governments or organisa-
tions within Europe, that were developed in response to specific needs but that have
a potential for transfer to other contexts. In Chap. 4 we further elaborate on how this
transfer can be realized, departing from the literature on transfer of policy measures.
Next, in Chap. 5, based upon the 46 good practices validated within the network, we
formulate five recommendations for facilitating sustainable careers. In Chap. 6
these recommendations are translated into more concrete advices for all stakehold-
ers involved. As it is the individual who is considered to be the “owner” of his or her
career, it is important that measures for sustainable careers create opportunities for
all workers to feel motivated and be competent in navigating their own career.
Therefore, in Chap. 7, we elaborate further on the career competencies capital of
workers and how this can be developed through lifelong and lifewide learning.
Finally in the Epilogue of this book, an outlook on how careers and labour markets
References 7
are changing and the measures needed in view of these trends, is provided by the
European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour
Mobility Mrs. Marianne Thyssen.
1.5 Conclusion
In this chapter we introduced the Career and AGE network and the aims and scope
of this book. In the subsequent chapter, we will elaborate further on the notion of
sustainable careers.
References
Arthur, M. B. (2014). The boundaryless career at 20: Where do we stand, and where can we go?
Career Development International, 19(6), 627–640.
Cappelli, P. (1995). Rethinking employment. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 33(4),
563–602.
Cappelli, P., & Keller, J. R. (2012). Classifying work in the new economy. Academy of Management
Review, 38(4), 575–596.
De Vos, A., & Gielens, T. (2014a, January). System level practices to facilitate sustainable careers.
White paper for the European Network on Career and AGE (Age, Generation, Experience)
learning seminar, Seville. Antwerp, Belgium: Antwerp Management School.
De Vos, A., & Gielens, T. (2014b, July). Organisational level practices to facilitate sustainable
careers. White paper for the European Network on Career and AGE (Age, Generation,
Experience) learning seminar, Belfast. Antwerp, Belgium: Antwerp Management School.
De Vos, A., & Gielens, T. (2014c, November). Good practices to facilitate the sustainability of
individuals’ careers. White paper for the European Network on Career and AGE (Age,
Generation, Experience) learning seminar, Trento, Italy. Antwerp, Belgium: Antwerp
Management School.
De Vos, A., & Van der Heijden, B. (Eds.). (2015). Handbook of research on sustainable careers.
Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Greenhaus, J. H., & Kossek, E. E. (2014). The contemporary career: A work-home perspective.
Annual Review of Organisational Psychology and Organisational Behavior, 1(1), 361–388.
Howard, A. E. (1995). The changing nature of work. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Lyons, S. T., Schweitzer, L., & Ng, E. S. (2015). How have careers changed? An investigation of
changing career patterns across four generations. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 30(1),
8–21.
Van der Heijden, B., & De Vos, A. (2015). Sustainable careers: Introductory chapter. In A. De Vos
& B. Van der Heijden (Eds.), Handbook of research on sustainable careers (pp. 1–19).
Cheltehnam, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Chapter 2
Conceptual Framework for Sustainable
Careers
Abstract This chapter introduces the most important concepts that will be used
throughout this book. The changing career context brings a need for a fresh perspec-
tive to understand career dynamics and the implications for individuals as well as
stakeholders at different levels. Starting with the changing nature of careers and the
meaning of sustainable careers, we present the framework for facilitating the sus-
tainability of careers that was used by the ESF Career & AGE network to describe
and evaluate good practices. This framework will be used in the next chapter to
introduce and discuss good practices for facilitating sustainable careers.
A career is defined as the sequence of work experiences that evolve over the indi-
vidual’s lifecourse (Arthur, Hall, & Lawrence, 1989). Careers are highly subjective
and complex, unique to each individual and dynamic over time (Khapova & Arthur,
2011). Yet, individuals’ careers do not develop in a vacuum but are affected by the
multiple contexts in which they unfold; the organisational context as well as the
broader labour market, the policy-measures taken by governments, initiatives from
labour market intermediaries but also the private context of individuals’ personal
lives (Arthur et al., 1989; Greenhaus & Kossek, 2014; Van der Heijden & De Vos,
2015). Careers are part of a wide eco-system which operates across internal and
external labor markets (Baruch, 2015) (Fig. 2.1).
To fully understand careers, one has to realize the influences of these multiple
career contexts and the changes occurring within them, the career actors that take
part in the play, and the dynamic nature of the system. The sustainability of indi-
viduals’ careers relies not on their stability but on their ability to adjust, develop and
fit an ever-changing work environment (Baruch, 2015).
There are many changes occurring within the career landscape that affect con-
temporary careers. Greenhaus and Kossek (2014) summarize these as follows: First,
International context
National context
Political
system
Labour
market
Educational
system
Organisational
context
Individual
there are substantial changes in the business environment which have led to
increased job losses, reduced opportunities for internal upward career advancement,
and increased external mobility. Second, advances in information technology have
increased the portability of work leading to blurred boundaries between work and
non-work. Third, family structures have become more diverse, resulting in different
types of earning-structures and in new moves to combine work and care at different
life stages. Fourth, increasing retirement ages imply that individuals will have to
stay in the workforce for a longer period, and hence that careers will extend over a
longer portion of employees’ lives.
Together these changes have many implications for careers but also for the actors
involved in policy making regarding careers, both at the organisational level and the
societal level. Whilst organisations need to reconsider the meaning of an organisa-
tional career and how career development can be managed in order to match indi-
vidual and organisational needs, policy makers are faced with challenges related to
sustainable employment and employability of all individuals in the workforce.
The ultimate challenge this presents is the inherently dynamic, idiosyncratic and
often unpredictable nature of careers: even though it is a given that all individuals
have a career, the complex combination of factors affecting an individual’s career
decisions, behaviors and outcomes over time call for measures that facilitate indi-
2.2 Sustainable Careers 11
viduals in making career choices that are in line with their individual needs, yet also
contribute to organisational (e.g. high performance, loyalty, employability) and
societal (e.g. postponing retirement) needs. Or, differently stated, the highly unique
and dynamic career needs of individuals need to be matched with organisational and
societal needs which are also undergoing substantial changes. Developing adequate
measures is therefore not an easy task.
Table 2.1 Four dimensions for understanding the challenges pertaining to the sustainability of
contemporary careers
Time Increasing retirement age
Shorter and less predictable sequences of jobs
Social space Fading of borders between work and private life
Increasing number of jobs/employers throughout the career
Agency Growing emphasis on individual responsibility and accountability for the
career
Importance of career competencies
Meaning Rising variety of subjective rather than objective career success criteria
Employability as a prerequisite for attaining whichever meaning of career
success
First, the time dimension refers to the fact that every career implies the move-
ment of a person through time, making time an essential ingredient of a career.
Considering such changes as decreasing predictability, having longer careers, and
the shortening of individual career episodes, it is clear that careers have been chang-
ing significantly over the past decades. The essence of sustainability is that there is
continuity over time, i.e. that present needs are being fulfilled without compromis-
ing future needs. In that sense, the cycle of career-related events and decisions mak-
ing up an individual’s career over the course of one’s professional life will determine
sustainability of a career in the long run. However, many different patterns of conti-
nuity are possible: in the sequence of career experiences, periods of employment
can be interchanged by periods of part-time work, volunteering, unemployment,
sabbatical leave, care-giving, and so on.
Second, the social space dimension refers to the fact that careers are situated in
a broad societal context, where various factors (e.g., organisations, family) influ-
ence their trajectories. Because individual careers no longer follow one specific path
or organization, and because the number of choices has become seemingly endless,
careers have become much more complex. Moreover, the blurring of boundaries
between work and non-work has made the ‘career space’ more fluid, and employees
face the challenge of managing the boundaries versus spillover between work and
non-work in a way that fits their personal needs. Careers are enacted within and
across different types of contexts (work, home, friends, leisure…) (Greenhaus &
Kossek, 2014), and they have become more boundaryless (Arthur, 1994, 2014).
Continuity here implies that influences of actors and factors in the social space, as
well as the choices individuals make regarding (the combination of) these different
social spaces, may impact on the sustainability of their careers.
Third, the agency dimension means that individuals are nowadays considered to
be the primary agents of their own career success. How the career develops over
time is the result of many choices made by the individual owner of the career, not
the mere consequence of external influences and constraints stemming from the
social space. Sustainability in careers will stem from alignment between the
individual and the organisation, from mutual benefits for both parties, as well as
mutual benefits for the individual and his or her broader life context. However, this
2.2 Sustainable Careers 13
is not an easy task as individuals need to adopt a long-term approach, they need to
balance different domains in their lives (e.g., work and family), and they need to
align their individual goals and aspirations with their organisation’s objectives and
norms. This requires the development of career competencies that make individuals
competent in navigating their own careers. Agency is also a timely topic when con-
sidering the sustainability of careers for those groups who are more vulnerable in
the labour market (e.g., young workers without qualifications, unemployed older
workers). The latter often experience a lack of agency due to a lack of required
(career) competencies, or due to the negative experiences they encounter when put-
ting this agency into practice without the desired result of obtaining a job.
Finally, the meaning dimension implies that the meaning of careers is changing
due to the rise of the employability-based psychological contract. Thus, career suc-
cess is no longer only (solely) focused on objective success criteria (e.g., financial
performance or number of promotions) but also on subjective ratings of career suc-
cess (e.g. work-life balance or personal growth) relative to an individual’s internal
career anchors, leading to what Mirvis and Hall (1994) call “psychological success”
as the major indicator of career success. What psychological success entails to an
individual can vary depending on their career stage or broader life phase they are in.
Skills, needs, passion, motivation, purpose, concerns and values change more often
and faster than ever over the span of a career and have become highly idiosyncratic
(Hall, 2002). This implies that individuals need to have a good understanding of
what matters to them. Yet, at the same time, underlying this new view on career suc-
cess is that employability has become a core element and a critical vehicle for
attaining whatever type of subjective success criterion that individuals might strive
for.
In sum, sustainable careers refer to 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 indi-
vidual” (Van der Heijden & De Vos, 2015: 7). They imply the continuous develop-
ment, conservation, and renewal of individuals’ career-related resources over time.
There are challenges pertaining to the sustainability of careers for individuals in
all key stages of the career life cycle: career starters, mid-career employees with
carer responsibilities and older adults (Greenhaus & Kossek, 2014). Furthermore, as
workers have moved away from an expectation of life-time employment towards a
need to protect their employability, it is important to increase our knowledge of ele-
ments that contribute to sustainable careers for all workers, and to further our under-
standing of the factors at different levels that affect this sustainability.
This challenge of sustainability encompasses much more than individual career
management. Organisations – and their HR departments – also have a crucial role to
play in safeguarding the well-being and development of their employees (Rodrigues,
Guest, & Budjanovcanin, 2015), which they need to balance with their own needs
and goals (Clarke, 2013). Moreover, sustainability is a societal issue in terms of the
aging workforce and ways to keep both young and older employees active and moti-
vated at work (De Vos & Van der Heijden, 2015).
14 2 Conceptual Framework for Sustainable Careers
Depending on the career and life stage they are in, individuals have different needs
which call for different types of measures. For instance, individuals in their early
career might need opportunities to put into practice what they have learned at
school, young parents might need measures that allow them to combine career and
care without compromising their future career growth. Older workers might need
measures that improve workability or allow them to transfer their experience to the
younger generation through coaching. When searching for measures to facilitate
sustainable careers it is therefore important that this time component is taken into
account.
Traditionally organisations have incorporated this ingredient of ‘time’ in their
career policies by departing from a linear view on career development, with career
progress being interlinked with employees’ age. Think for instance of initiatives
like high potential management where high potentials are typically only young
employees – the underlying assumption being that potential should be turned into
performance in the early career stage. Also, traditional promotion systems tend to –
implicitly – consider age as a factor determining the pace of upward movement or
the opportunities individuals have in a certain age category. With career mobility
often being restricted to upward mobility, and career ladders being limited to a small
number of possible steps, in practice this often led to a majority of employees over
45 having no further prospect of career advancement due to plateauing. Moreover,
this has led many organisations to stop career counselling or annual career conver-
sations for employees having arrived at their career plateau, thereby confirming the
idea that your career potential is mainly determined by your age. It is this linear and
age-based way of dealing with careers that has caused many of the problems we are
facing now that careers are becoming longer and many people are envisioning hav-
ing to continue working without the prospect of opportunities to make their career
more dynamic again.
The age-based thinking of careers is also reflected in the notion of career stages.
Traditionally, a career stage assigns a person’s age in the context of his or her career
or occupation. This measure of age calibrates the person’s acquisition of knowl-
edge, competencies, and experiences against a developmental yardstick. Although
the progression of mastery varies from occupation to occupation, the concept of
career stage acknowledges that most of us progress in our work lives from basic to
advanced skills (Kooij, De Lange, Jansen, & Dikkers, 2008 in Pitt-Catsouphes &
Matz-Costa, 2009; Super, 1990 in Pitt-Catsouphes & Matz-Costa, 2009). Yet, in the
contemporary career context it is generally acknowledged that there is no such thing
as one idealised general career path characterised by a set of predictable transi-
tions all workers go through at specific points in their life.
The changing nature of careers thus provokes the question to what extent it is still
relevant to distinguish career stages. Careers will be increasingly driven by the
changing skill demands of the fields in which a person works, and thus by the need
for the meta-skills of adaptability. Individuals need to be able to self-reflect, to con-
2.3 Career Dynamics: Careers as Learning Cycles 15
tinue assessing and learning about themselves, and to change behaviors and atti-
tudes to adapt to changing circumstances.
This is also what we learn from the career cases introduced in Chap. 1. Patricia
developed her competencies in a direction that allowed her to do a job that is
more in line with her career interests but it took her some time to discover
what her real passion was. Tim seemed to have a passion for cooking from the
beginning of his career, but discovered gradually where his real talents were
and how the development and application of new competencies allowed him
to grow within the HORECA sector and to contribute to the growth of the
companies where he worked.
The longer a career, the more it becomes clear that individuals’ continuously
affect their career potential through the choices they make with regard to mobility,
lifelong learning, and the various ways in which they acquire new competencies.
Each person will fill his or her “backpack” with competencies that generate new
career options in the future and this constant process of development and renewal
will impact the sustainability of one’s career in the long run. In Chap. 7 we will
elaborate further on this continuous process of competency development.
To facilitate sustainable careers throughout the lifecourse it is therefore impor-
tant to move away from this linear, age-based view on careers and focus on lifelong
learning instead. This means that the individual should continue to learn, to develop
his or her competencies and to challenge him or herself throughout the lifecourse
(Mirvis & Hall, 1994). A certain behavioural repertoire, which proved to be effec-
tive in an earlier stage and which resulted in prior psychological success, may
thereby become a pitfall that evolves into an obstacle preventing any further learn-
ing (Hall, 2002). Careers should hence be conceived as learning cycles: A succes-
sion of mini-stages or short-cycle learning stages of exploration-trial-mastery-exit.
The key issue determining a learning stage will not be the chronological age but
career age, where perhaps 5 years in a given specialty may be midlife for one area
or only the early career for another area (Hall, 2002).
The idea of “one-life-one career” (Sarason, 1977 in Hall & Mirvis, 1995) is thus
changing towards a focus on adapting one’s career identity and acquiring new skills,
leading to much more complex career patterns which can be idiosyncratic to each
person, making the individual the central actor and, following from this, the need
for career competencies which allow individuals to navigate their career.
The notion of sustainable careers incorporates this long-term view on the dynam-
ics of careers, the outcomes of career decisions over time and the many factors and
contextual constraints affecting career choices and outcomes (Van der Heijden &
De Vos, 2015). Inherent in this notion of sustainable careers is that individuals
continuously affect their career potential through the career choices they make, the
learning cycles they go through, the opportunities they encounter, and this career
16 2 Conceptual Framework for Sustainable Careers
potential in turn affects subsequent career opportunities and hence the long-term
sustainability of one’s career. The challenge for organisations and policy makers is
to implement career policies that enable individuals to successfully go through
these learning cycles in view of both individual career success and organizational
performance.
A second central characteristic of a career is that it crosses several social spaces and
hence that the choices and decisions individuals are making regarding their career
cannot be isolated from their broader life context, which is dynamic and has become
less predictable as well (Arthur et al., 1999). The increased participation of women,
dual-earner partners, and single parents in the workforce juggling their work com-
mitments with caregiving responsibilities, combined with increasingly demanding
jobs that are flexible in time and location of work has blurred the boundaries between
work and private life (Greenhaus & Kossek, 2014). Age is no longer the best predic-
tor to understand and anticipate on the challenges that employees are facing in the
home domain. For instance, whilst some workers over 50 enjoy more freedom and
time to devote to their work because their children have grown up, others are strug-
gling to combine work with care for their own parents, or have started a new family
with young children and thus facing the same work-life balance issues as colleagues
in their twenties.
This was also clear from the cases described in Chap. 1. Although Ben is only
in the early phase of his career, he is already juggling to find a job that he can
combine with caring for his sick mother. Patricia’s choice to work freelance is
also determined by her need to combine her professional role with her mother
role. And although Tim did not seem to have such work-life balance issues,
his personal interest in travelling and exploring new cultures affected his
career choices.
(continued)
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134.2 Rev. P. Dehon, S.J., “Religion and Customs of the Uraons,”
Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. i. No. 9 (Calcutta,
1906), pp. 139 sq.
134.3 Lieut.-Colonel H. W. G. Cole, “The Lushais,” in Census of
of the Royal Asiatic Society, No. 14 (Singapore, 1885), pp. 291 sq.
137.2 W. W. Skeat and C. O. Blagden, Pagan Races of the Malay
460.
151.2 The Greek orator Antiphon observes that the presence of a
homicide pollutes the whole city and brings the curse of barrenness
on the land (Antiphon, ed. F. Blass, Leipsic, 1871, pp. 13, 15, 30).
See further L. R. Farnell, The Evolution of Religion (London, 1905),
pp. 139 sqq.
Chapter VI Notes
156.1 Lucian, Hermotimus, 64, κατὰ τοὺς Ἀρεοπαγίτας αὐτὸ
ποιοῦντα, οἳ ἐν νυκτὶ καὶ σκότῳ δικάζουσιν, ὡς μὴ ἐς τοὺς λέγοντας,
ἀλλ᾽ ἐς τὰ λεγόμενα ἀποβλέποιεν: id., De domo, 18, εἰ μὴ τύχοι τις
παντελῶς τυφλὸς ὢν ἢ ἐν νυκτὶ ὥσπερ ἡ ἐξ Ἀρείου πάγου βουλὴ
ποιοῖτο τὴν ἀκρόασιν.
The Scope of Social Anthropology Notes
166.1 This happened at Ballyvadlea, in the county of Tipperary, in
March 1895. For details of the evidence given at the trial of the
murderers, see “The ‘Witch-burning’ at Clonmel,” Folk-lore, vi. (1895)
pp. 373-384.
166.2 This happened at Norwich in June 1902. See The People’s
75 sq.
173.1 J. Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson9 (London, 1822), iv. 315.
174.1
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