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This study arose from an 'intellectual puzzle' (Mason, 2003) that careers advisers, when faced with personal career dilemmas, found little apparent attraction in seeking career guidance for themselves. This puzzle resonated with the concern, often mentioned in the literatures on career and career guidance, that practitioners continue to espouse outdated, positivist methods of working with their clients. The research set out to explore how careers advisers think about 'career' in their personal and their professional lives. The study was conducted from a social constructionist metaperspective, which took worldviews and ways of knowing to be individually shaped by relationships and social experience. Data collection was through a storied approach to explore participants' retrospective accounts of their own careers to date, putting considerable effort into hearing stories rather than engaging in professional discourse. A second stage of each interview sought accounts of their ways of working with specific, recent clients. Analysis focused on attending to unique personal voices, and particularly the possibility that people may construe a single idea in different ways in different arenas of their life, exploring ideas of 'conceptual dispersion' (Linder and Marshall, 2003), contrapuntal voices (Gilligan et aI., 2003) and 'I-positions' (Hermans et aI., 1992). Differences emerged in the implicit concepts of career underlying personal career stories, both amongst the sample group of careers advisers, and intrapersonally when comparing personal career stories with discussions of their work with clients. Careership theory proved a powerful explanatory tool, but has not given adequate attention to the subjective nature of turning points alongside their visible manifestations in changes of status or occupation. The findings include identification of aspects of careers advisers' ways of working , which are inadequately recognised and celebrated. They also include an emergent understanding, framed within Careership theory and Bourdieu's work, of how careers advisers could better conceptualise their ways of relating with clients. The Listening Guide, a central tool in analysis of the data, was indentified as having potential in this conceptual development. Preparatory work for the study discovered that a remarkable lack of attention has been paid to the careers of careers advisers themselves. The study makes a contribution to this neglected field, as well as offering a firmly qualitative contribution to a research field noted by Stead et al. (20 11) to be strongly biased towards work in quantitative and positivist approaches.

The central question being asked of the study concerned personality and expertise individual difference explanations for the behavioural conduct of careers advisers during vocational guidance interviews. The enquiry also had a number of secondary concerns. These were: the consistency and inconsistency of interviewing behaviour across interviews; the significance of situation on that consistency; and the relationship between interview situations and interview duration. The findings make a contribution to a number of theoretical debates concerning the role of personality and expertise in explaining behaviour and also contribute to practical implications for the conduct of interviews. Personality and expertise constitl-lted the predictor variables in regression analyses with behaviour constituting the responsive variable. Additionally interviewing behaviour was treated as being composed of five dimensions. These were characterised as: (a) the interviewer's contribution to interviewing atmosphere; (b) interviewer's style of expressiveness; (c) interviewer's selected means of communication; (d) the interviewer's engagement with the topic; (e) and the interviewer's focus on the interviewee. The identification of distinct components of behaviour enabled supplementary analysis of the central research question to be replicated with the separate formulation for behaviour. Audio-visual recordings of 352 naturally occurring vocational guidance interviews conducted in seven universities were made. The interviews constituted 20úminute dyadic interactions. The methods employed in the study were adaptations of standardised observational procedures. Personality was measured using a standardised self-report personality instrument, Cattell's 16 PF, using both primary and second order factors. Expertise and interviewing behaviour were measured using devised and validated inventories for the specific purpose. Two additional and distinct studies made an assessment of client needs and expectations. A principal components analysis of a survey of 967 potential clients derived four factors, which were portrayed as: information- based needs; reductions in anxiety needs; self-preparation; and readiness for decision-making. A small repertory grid study made analyses of the perceptions of seven clients and produced a matrix of more subjectively determined needs of the vocational guidance process. The results for the central' research question showed that 63% percent of the variance was accounted for by the two predictor variables. However personality was not found to be a significant contributor to the variance in behaviour. Expertise was the dominant determinant of behaviour in the conduct of interviews and constituted most of the explained variance. The extent of the significance of expertise did however vary with the component of behaviour being addressed. Behaviour demonstrated variability across interviewing situations. Expertise was found to result in lower interview duration in more complex interview situations. It was also found to correspond to greater interview duration in less complex situations. These findings correspond to explanations in the literature for how expertise is used for optimum performance. The discussion considered operational, measurement and contextual issues in relation to the findings which were at variance from that which was anticipated by the significance given to the personality individual difference factor in the literature in others areas of activity.

Although the number of transnational institutions worldwide has increased dramatically over the past decade, little is known about the “independent academic expatriates” (IAEs) teaching in those institutions. This study investigates the influences that have shaped the decisions of 14 IAEs to seek and retain positions in a transnational institution in a developing country in Southeast Asia. Specifically, this study examines their reasons for leaving their previous job(s) and for joining and staying at the case institution. It also looks at potential and actual reasons for leaving the case institution. The major outcome of this study is a grounded theory of how the respondents made decisions about whether to change job locations. Using grounded theory approaches, categories of reasons and types of IAEs emerged, on the basis of which a foundational theory of decisional job location is proposed. The key concepts of this theory are that IAEs make decisions about a change of job location on the basis of personal, vocational, relational, institutional, and geographical reasons which exert “push”, “pull” and “static” forces, the interplay of which influences the outcome of their decision-making to stay at or stray from their present job location. Furthermore, the relative prominence of each category and their overall pattern varies across IAEs, generating a typology. This typology consists of four types: Opportunist, “Kin-nected”, Expatriate Partner, and Altruist. The substantive theory of decisional job location contributes to the fields of transnational education, academic career development and expatriation by providing insights into the myriad of influences that shape the individual’s decision to change job locations, thus enabling the case institution and similar transnational institutions to improve recruitment and retention. The study also gives a voice and identity to the growing number of IAEs working in transnational institutions around the world.

This thesis draws together a wide variety of sources in order to explore the way in which the adult female role was presented, and may have influenced, girls making their school leaving career decisions in England in the late 1950s. Career is understood throughout the thesis to include periods of domesticity as well as periods of full-time and part-time paid employment. The thesis uses Morwenna Griffiths' Feminisms and the Self: The Web of Identity (1995) as a theoretical framework of analysis. The metaphor of the web is employed to tease out the contradictions and ambivalence inherent in expectations of women's adult lives. Themes considered within the analysis of the different chapters are: the gendered nature of autonomy and independence; notions of women's citizenship in the emergent welfare state; the relationship between constructions of a universal Woman and individual women; and women's membership of different, yet overlapping, communities. Each chapter focuses on a different area of the web of identity using a number of sources. The first archival chapter focuses on the foundation of the welfare state using the Beveridge Report and evidence submitted to the Interdepartmental Committee on Social Insurance and the Allied Services by women's organisations. It considers alternative proposals by the Women's Freedom League and the reaction of the general public through the records of the Mass Observation Archive. This is followed by a consideration of employment advice offered in manuals, career novels and Women IS Employment. A chapter on educational sources initially considers 1950s sociological and educational research before turning to the records of the Association of Headmistresses and the Association of Assistant Mistresses to explore their expectations of school leavers. It also considers material submitted to the Crowther Committee for their Report in 1959 on educational provision from 15-18. In chapter five, constructions of the adult female role presented in Woman, Housewife and Girl are explored in relation to their construction of a female community and attitudes to paid employment. The thesis concludes with a discussion of twenty three interviews with women who left school between 1956 and 1960 between the ages of fifteen and eighteen. In drawing together this diversity of material the thesis demonstrates that the end of the 1950s was a period when attitudes towards the relationship of women to domesticity and paid work were marked in their complexity rather than in their consensus. It highlights the necessity of exploring both constructions of 'woman' as a unitary subject and the experiences of individuals in a historical evaluation of women's role in late 1950s England.

In 1971 the United Arab Emirates was established as a new Arab country. Building the nation and developing its different sectors has required the assistance of millions of expatriates over many years due to the low number of native people. This situation encouraged the government to enforce several policies to create a balance between expatriates and citizens. Among these policies was Emiratisation that aims to achieve many goals including providing training to the national graduates to ensure they are ready for work in both public and private sectors. Within this thesis I have focused on the situation of the nationals before they graduate from higher education institutions; specifically the policy of preparing them for employment and its implications on Emiratisation. The hypothesis that the study was based on was: 'higher education institutions in the United Arab Emirates have appropriate policies of preparing the graduates for employment, which positively affect the policy of Emiratisation'. Besides, I have attempted to address the answers of three research questions: 1) How effective are the HEIs in preparing national undergraduate students for employment in the UAE? 2) How successful are the HEIs in playing their role in order to meet the needs of the local labour market (outcomes versus requirements) within the policy of Emiratisation? 3) What do graduates see the role of HEIs being in preparing them for the labor market in the UAE? With regard to the first research question; the preliminary findings from the questionnaire and interviews seemed to give the impression that the higher education institutions were on the right track but this situation was not completely adequate. To support this observation, the higher education institutions did have specific graduate skills embedded in the curriculum but it seemed that this was not completely sufficient. First, there were many graduates who encountered lack of employment skills after graduation. Second, employers pointed out the lack of certain skills among the graduates after graduation and the need to have the graduates trained in those skills during higher education programs. Third, the government had to train the graduates in a number of employment skills before helping them get new jobs. Fourth, the work placement course seemed in a need to be revised, extended, formally managed, evaluated and re-structured. With respect to the second research question; many graduates confirmed the relationship between higher education degrees and the job tasks of many respondents; and both higher education institutions that participated in this thesis had relationships with many employers. However, there was no evidence of a clear joint policy or cooperation between higher education institutions and the government to implement an effective national policy of Emiratisation. I did not find any channels between those two parties to discuss the developments of Emiratisation and the future actions required to meet the needs of employers. I have noted also that the study of the future needs of employers was conducted by the government not the higher education institutions. However, despite efforts on the part of higher education institutions and the government, the rogress towards Emiratisation continues to be very slow. Within the context of the third ~esearch question; although there were some positive opinions on the efforts of higher education institutions, many graduates proposed significant actions to be taken in order to have better policies of preparing national under-graduates for employment. This included the need for a new practical-based curriculum with embedded vocational skills more related to the labour market than the existing graduate skills; higher education institutions should pay more attention to the Arabic language as part of the key communication skills work placement and skills should be tested by them. Besides, employers should contribute to the design of the higher education curriculum and the evaluation of students during the work placement course. Among the recommendations of this thesis are: the need for a national framework of graduate skills embedded in the curriculum of the higher education institutions; the government needs to set up an accurate and nationwide action plan in order to assure an effective implementation of the policy of Emiratisation and, consequently, there should be a unified policy to prepare graduates for employment implemented by the higher education institutions and the government; higher education institutions should have more practical than theoretical subjects with more focus on the Arabic language skills which are required in the public, semi-public and local labour sectors; and higher education institutions should have more focus on educational research on the local labour market and the findings of this research should be published.

This research is concerned with the barriers and opportunities experienced by working class British Pakistani women who aspired to higher education and to obtaining professional jobs. It examines the career trajectories of nine second generation British Pakistani women who were born in a working class area of a former textile town in the north of England. These women pursued educational qualifications as the means to acquire new knowledge and experiences and in order to secure higher status jobs. This is in marked contrast to the traditional trajectory which they saw other British Pakistani women following, of marrying and having children soon after leaving school. My informants viewed a career outside the home as affording advantages in terms of personal and social development, family pride and economic rewards. While, at the time of the research, some of them were still caught up in 'making themselves' in terms of their careers, others had already secured professional jobs. The women in this study reflect on changing ideas about British Pakistani womanhood, their educational routes to social mobility, and the effects of problematic perceptions of Pakistani Muslims in schools and workplaces. In this thesis I explore the kinds of cultural capital relevant to their careers, the obstacles they faced, and how they negotiated these. I conducted in-depth biographical interviews using a qualitative approach that was designed to be culturally sensitive, revealing how relationships with parents, siblings, peers, neighbours, teachers and colleagues, as well as local contexts and opportunities, feature in informants' lives. The study is a contribution to the small but growing literature that sets out to understand social mobility through qualitative research methods, exploring the processes involved. It also illuminates the life stories of a specific group of British Pakistani women at a particular time in their community's history.

This thesis develops a theoretical framework for studying the impact of emotion on career, following Kidd's lament that emotion is `an absent presence in career theory' (Kidd, 1998). In the proposed framework, career is treated as a narrative construction (Bujold, 2004) and viewed as a significant component of an individual's identity (McAdams, 1995). Events which disrupt the career narrative will be experienced as disruptive to identity and to the achievement of the individual's goals, and will therefore stimulate emotion which in turn leads to sensemaking aimed at repairing the disruption (Weick et al, 2005). This sensemaking produces a revised career narrative, which the individual subsequently enacts. This proposition is explored through the use of autoethnographic case studies, and the use of this methodology is itself one of the major contributions of this thesis; autoethnography (Ellis, 2004) is an uncommon methodology in social science generally and its use is unheard of within organisational psychology. The case studies allow for theory development, though do not represent an empirical test of the framework, so following the autoethnographic analyses, a refined framework is outlined, together with proposals for research to test the framework. The thesis concludes that narrative coping is the dominant response to emotion in career, and outlines a number of implications for this proposition, including important directions for future research.

This thesis is an investigation of the organisation and conduct of academic research collaborations in Kenya and the factors shaping them. This contributes to an understanding of the status and processes involved in collaborative research, and how this is affected by the associated research environments, important in informing best practice in improving and promoting collaborative research. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have become indispensable tools for supporting collaborative work. This thesis also discusses the role ICTs are playing in collaboration processes, and the factors contributing to their adoption and use within the studied community. Factors and variables identified as affecting the processes of collaborative research from a range of models, theories and frameworks in past studies were analysed for their effects within the Kenyan context. A mixed methods research design was adopted. Data collection involved a quantitative survey involving 248 academic members of staff in four disciplines across four major Kenyan universities. This was supplemented by semi-structured in-depth interviews with selected individuals within the studied population. In addition, this was complemented by an extensive document review that targeted university websites, repositories and policy documents.

This study identifies, characterises and contextualises the role of others in shaping the careers of non-managerial employees. Seeking individuals' perspectives, the qualities and characteristics that employees value in their helpers are identified and discussed in relation to those expected of professional careers advisers. In so doing the study addresses limitations that arise from: the dominance of traditional differentialist theories; philosophical differences between positivist career research and constructivist guidance practice; and the division between sociological and psychological perspectives. From a constructionist perspective, qualitative data were gathered using semi-structured interviews with 28 non-managerial employees in 6 different organisations. Participants were asked to give accounts of their career from the time they left school to the present day. Particular attention was paid to their sense-making about the role of others. Both narrative and thematic analysis were used in order that the role of career helpers and hinderers could be understood in both the diachronic and synchronic context. Two conceptual frameworks that develop understanding of career help and career helpers, along with the paired concepts of career self-view and career world-view are proposed. First, a typology of career helpers distinguishes and contrasts helper categories according to their roles and impact on individuals' career world-view and career selfview. Second, an 'anatomy of credibility' shows the interrelationship between valued qualities and characteristics of career helpers. In discussing credibility, knowledge and impartiality are conceptualised, a distinction proposed between power and influence, and the concept of 'care' is introduced. It is suggested that valued careers helpers are those who are aware of their subjective frame of reference, their position on partiality, and of external pressures and internal beliefs that may shape their practice.