The mobility of students has increased dramatically in the past decades which primarily is a consequence of globalization (Ninnes & Hellstén, 2005). Many higher education institutions (HEIs) around the world have responded to the global educational trend by actively recruiting students from abroad, with the incentive of maintaining a competitive position on the global, knowledge-based market (Knight, 2004). Simultaneously, an increasing number of students have responded to the expanded opportunities which have become available, aspiring to secure the best education to facilitate their path into a well-remunerated career (Waters & Brooks, 2011). By employing a qualitative research approach, this study explores how international degree-seeking students undertaking engineering studies in Swedish HE, take on their career development within a global framework. The findings are compared and analyzed in order to provide further insights into the career trajectories of engineering students from different countries. The findings suggest that the participants in the study have employed a large degree of agency and independence in advancing their career development further. Moreover, it has also been indicated that they, as global professionals, uphold a flexible stance towards future career opportunities, regardless of where in the world these would be located. Considering the increasing numbers of international students that occupy Swedish HEIs, the study concludes that further attention needs to be paid to gain further insights into the realities of this student population, both to increase our understanding of how they respond to the forces of globalization and to safeguard that career services address the real career needs of this population.

Detta examensarbete har haft som syfte att undersöka hur det gränslösa arbetet uttrycker sig bland chefer inom stadsbyggnadsförvaltningen i Luleå kommun. Därför har studien haft följande frågeställningar; 1) Hur uttrycker sig det gränslösa arbetet hos chefer på olika nivåer vid stadsbyggnadsförvaltningen i Luleå kommun? 2) På vilket sätt har cheferna påverkats av det gränslösa arbetet? Vilka konsekvenser har det fått? 3) Vilka insatser kan förvaltningens HR-funktion tillämpa för att förbättra eller utveckla chefernas arbetssituation i relation till det gränslösa arbetet? Studien har haft en kvalitativ ansats där femton stycken semistrukturerade intervjuer har legat som grund för studiens resultatavsnitt. Studiens teoretiska ramverk har bestått av en samlad teoribildning om gränslöst arbete (Allvin, et, al,1998;2006). Det teoretiska ramverket har även kompletterats med Karasek och Theorells (1990) trefaktors-modell om krav, kontroll och socialt stöd för att få en djupare förståelse om intervjupersonernas arbetssituation. Studiens resultat har visat att det gränslösa arbetet uttrycker sig främst genom en hög grad av flexibilitet och arbetsbelastning. Resultatet har även visat att både positiva och negativa konsekvenser av det gränslösa arbetet framkommit bland cheferna. Inom diskussionsavsnittet argumenteras det därför att stadsbyggnadsförvaltningen behöver applicera ett antal insatser för att minska och förebygga de negativa effekterna av det gränslösa arbetet. Argumentationen har mynnat ut i förslag om att reducera antalet fysiska möten, ett säkerställande av kompetensutveckling bland nya chefer, uppmuntra och kommunicera inför chefer om att ta till vara på sin lediga tid, skapa mer privat arbetstid bland cheferna och slutligen säkerställa en tillräcklig nivå av stöd från olika stödfunktioner. / This master thesis has been designed to investigate how the boundaryless work is expressed among managers of City building department in Lulea county. The purpose of the study has therefore been communicated with the following research questions; 1) How does the boundaryless work among managers at various levels of the City building department express itself? 2) In which ways have the managers been affected by the boundaryless work? What consequences has it resulted in? 3) What actions can the departments HR function apply by improving or developing the managers' work situation in relationship to the boundaryless work? The study has had a qualitative approach in which fifteen semi structured interviews have been the basis for the study’s result. The theoretical framework of the study has consisted theories on boundaryless work by Allvin et al. (1998; 2006). The theoretical framework has also been supplemented with Karasek and Theorell's (1990) three-factor model to gain a deeper understanding of the interviewees' work situation. The study's results have shown that the boundaryless work expresses itself through a high degree of flexibility and workload. Both positive and negative consequences of the boundaryless work have emerged among the managers. Within the discussion section, it is argued that the City building department needs to apply several efforts to reduce the negative effects of boundaryless work. The argument has resulted in proposals to reduce the number of physical meetings, increase the skills development of new managers, encourage and communicate to managers that they need to be off duty on their spare time, create more private working hours among managers and finally ensure an increasing level of support from the supporting functions (HR, etc.) among managers.

Globalisation, technological advancements and changing social needs result in virtual work arrangements becoming more prominent. Virtual work is conducted away from the traditional office setting and usually occurs in employees’ personal home environments. Virtual work has been called virtualling in this study, and virtual employees are referred to as virtuallers. A phenomenological orientation was adopted in studying completely virtual workers in a completely virtual context; sourcing of participants and data collection were also conducted completely virtually. This study presented new ways of conducting research in the modern, virtual world of work. An autoethnography was included, as the researcher is also a virtualler and insider of virtualling. Four key case studies are presented to provide a holistic picture of virtualling and virtuallers. Thematic results indicate key influencing factors that originate from virtualling, as well as factors and mindset requirements that pertain to the virtualler personally. It was further found and proposed that the resulting virtual environment changes virtuallers’ ways of doing things and viewing the world, hence results in changes in their lifestyle and career identity. The abstract psychological structure as it resulted from the thread of meanings was presented as virtualness. Authentic psychological identification with virtualling and adopting a boundarylessness employability mindset oriented towards psychological success are highlighted as key requirements in order to experience virtualness. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / M.Comm. (Industrial and Organisational Psychology)

High school teachers have a crucial role in shaping the next generation by educating and guiding adolescents on their way into adulthood. During the COVID-19 pandemic, which entailed a sudden shift to digital teaching, the work of high school teachers was affected.  Aim: The aim of this study is to investigate how the psychosocial work environment and professional identity of high school teachers have been affected by the transition to digital teaching during the pandemic and moreover what valuable lessons they carry into future work. Theoretical concepts: The theoretical concepts that the study is based on are boundaryless work, professional identity, and the demand-control-support model from a work environment perspective. Method: This qualitative study is based on an inductive approach using semi-structured interviews. The empirical material has been compiled from ten different interviews with high school teachers that have been transcribed and processed with a thematic analysis. Results: The results show that the transition to digital teaching has had a direct impact on the psychosocial health and professional identity of high school teachers. The factors behind this are a lack of social contact between students and teachers, increased workload, and a decreased sense of control over work. Conclusion: The most notable conclusion that can be drawn from the study is that the need for social interaction between high school teachers and students is essential. The fact that school is a social place is evident, and there is no doubt that teaching in physical classrooms cannot be compared to distance teaching. / Gymnasielärare har en avgörande roll i att forma nästa generation genom att utbilda och vägleda ungdomar på väg in i vuxenlivet. Under covid-19 pandemin som innebar en plötslig omställning till digital undervisning blev gymnasielärares arbete påverkat.  Syfte: Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur gymnasielärares psykosociala arbetsmiljö och professionella identitet har påverkats av övergången till digital undervisning under pandeminsamt vilka lärdomar de bär med sig in i framtidens arbete. Teoretiska begrepp: De teoretiska begrepp som studien utgår ifrån är gränslöst arbete, professionell identitet och krav- kontrollstödmodellen ur ett arbetsmiljöperspektiv. Metod: Denna kvalitativa studie utgår ifrån en induktiv ansats med hjälp av semistrukturerade intervjuer. Det empiriska materialet har sammanställts utifrån tio olika intervjuer med gymnasielärare som sedan transkriberats och bearbetats med en tematisk analys. Resultat: Resultatet visar att omställningen till den digitala undervisningen har haft en direkt inverkan på gymnasielärares psykosociala hälsa och professionella identitet. Faktorerna bakom detta är utebliven social kontakt mellan elever och lärare, ökad arbetsbelastning och en minskad kontroll över arbetet. Slutsats: Den mest utmärkande slutsatsen i undersökningen som kan dras är att behovet av social interaktion mellan gymnasielärare och elever är essentiellt. Skolan är en social plats och att undervisningen i de fysiska klassrummen inte går att jämföra med distansundervisning råder det ingen tvekan om.

[pt] As diferenças geracionais têm influenciado o comportamento do mercado de trabalho e a literatura dedicada a descrever as aspirações profissionais dos jovens contemporâneos têm enfatizado a tendência destes em transitar entre diferentes organizações. Todavia, ainda que minoritárias no âmbito desta mesma literatura, há pesquisas que ressaltam que este comportamento não deve ser generalizado. As mesmas características organizacionais valorizadas por aqueles que buscam construir carreiras sem fronteiras podem ser encontradas no discurso de jovens que se interessam por construir carreiras de longo prazo em uma organização, daí a importância de entendermos o que de fato motiva os jovens que vem construindo suas carreiras nos moldes tradicionais, isto é, em uma mesma organização. Este é o objetivo deste estudo, que buscou entender por que jovens profissionais que atuam numa empresa privada nacional escolheram construir suas carreiras nesta organização, em meio à efemeridade e ao declínio das carreiras tradicionais. A pesquisa tentou compreender o que os motiva a trabalhar na atual empresa, e como se sentem diante das oportunidades existentes. Foram entrevistados profissionais de até 34 anos de idade, que atuam nesta empresa por, pelo menos, 4 anos, e que tenham apresentado movimentos de carreira relevantes neste período. Os principais resultados da pesquisa indicam que a exposição a grandes desafios e responsabilidades, aliadas à autonomia que lhes foi dada e ao dinamismo do negócio são os principais fatores que vêm motivando esses jovens a seguirem trabalhando na empresa atual. / [en] The difference between generations has made some changes in the labor market behaviors, and the literature aimed at career aspirations of contemporary youth has emphasized the trend to move across different organizations. Although almost inexpressive within the same literature, some researches emphasize that this behavior should not be generalized. The same organizational characteristics valued by those who seek to build a career without borders can belong in some young people argue who are interested in building a long-term career. For this reason, it is important to understand what motivates the young people who build their careers in the traditional path, it means in the same organization. In this scenario, this study s main goal is to understand the reason why some young professionals who work in a private national company chose to build their careers in this organization. The research tried to understand what is the motivation for working in the same company, and how they feel about current opportunities. We interviewed professionals up to 34 years old, who have worked in this company for, at least, four years, and who have presented relevant career changes in this period. The main results of the research indicate that exposure to major challenges and responsibilities, combined with the autonomy given to them and the dynamism of the business are the main factors that have motivated these young people to continue working in the current company.

In the shift to a globalised creative economy where innovation and creativity are increasingly prized, many studies have documented direct and indirect social and economic benefits of the arts. In addition, arts workers have been argued to possess capabilities which are of great benefit both within and outside the arts, including (in addition to creativity) problem solving abilities, emotional intelligence, and team working skills (ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, 2007). However, the labour force characteristics of professional artists in Australia and elsewhere belie their importance. The average earnings of workers in the arts sector are consistently less than other workers with similar educational backgrounds, and their rates of unemployment and underemployment are much higher (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2005; Caves, 2000; Throsby & Hollister, 2003). Graduating students in the arts appear to experience similar employment challenges and exhibit similar patterns of work to artists in general. Many eventually obtain work unrelated to the arts or go back to university to complete further tertiary study in fields unrelated to arts (Graduate Careers Council of Australia, 2005a). Recent developments in career development theory have involved discussion of the rise of boundaryless careers amongst knowledge workers. Boundaryless careers are characterised by non-linear career progression occurring outside the bounds of a single organisation or field (Arthur & Rousseau, 1996a, 1996b). The protean career is an extreme form of the boundaryless career, where the careerist also possesses strong internal career motivations and criteria for success (Baruch, 2004; Hall, 2004; Hall & Mirvis, 1996). It involves a psychological contract with one's self rather than an organisation or organisations. The boundaryless and protean career literature suggests competencies and dispositions for career self-management and career success, but to date there has been minimal empirical work investigating the predictive value of these competencies and dispositions to career success in the boundaryless or protean career. This program of research employed competencies and dispositions from boundaryless and protean career theory to predict career success in professional artists and tertiary arts graduates. These competencies and dispositions were placed into context using individual and contextual career development influences suggested by the Systems Theory Framework of career development (McMahon & Patton, 1995; Patton & McMahon, 1999, 2006a). Four substantive studies were conducted, using online surveys with professional artists and tertiary arts students / graduates, which were preceded by a pilot study for measure development. A largely quantitative approach to the program of research was preferred, in the interests of generalisability of findings. However, at the time of data collection, there were no quantitative measures available which addressed the constructs of interest. Brief scales of Career Management Competence based on the Australian Blueprint for Career Development (Haines, Scott, & Lincoln, 2003), Protean Career Success Orientation based on the underlying dispositions for career success suggested by protean career theory, and Career Development Influences based on the Systems Theory Framework of career development (McMahon & Patton, 1995; Patton & McMahon, 1999, 2006a) were constructed and validated via a process of pilot testing and exploratory factor analyses. This process was followed by confirmatory factor analyses with data collected from two samples: 310 professional artists, and 218 graduating arts students who participated at time 1 (i.e., at the point of undergraduate course completion in October, 2005). Confirmatory factor analyses via Structural Equation Modelling conducted in Study 1 revealed that the scales would benefit from some respecification, and so modifications were made to the measures to enhance their validity and reliability. The three scales modified and validated in Study 1 were then used in Studies 3 and 4 as potential predictors of career success for the two groups of artists under investigation, along with relevant sociodemographic variables. The aim of the Study 2 was to explore the construct of career success in the two groups of artists studied. Each participant responded to an open-ended question asking them to define career success. The responses for professional artists were content analysed using emergent coding with two coders. The codebook was later applied to the arts students' definitions. The majority of the themes could be grouped into four main categories: internal definitions; financial recognition definitions; contribution definitions; and non-financial recognition definitions. Only one third of the definition themes in the professional artists' and arts graduates' definitions of career success were categorised as relating to financial recognition. Responses within the financial recognition category also indicated that many of the artists aspired only to a regular subsistence level of arts income (although a small number of the arts graduates did aspire to fame and fortune). The second section of the study investigated the statistical relationships between the five different measures of career success for each career success definitional category and overall. The professional artists' and arts graduates' surveys contained several measures of career success, including total earnings over the previous 12 months, arts earnings over the previous 12 months, 1-6 self-rated total employability, 1-6 self-rated arts employability, and 1-6 self-rated self-defined career success. All of the measures were found to be statistically related to one another, but a very strong statistical relationship was identified between each employability measure and its corresponding earnings measure for both of the samples. Consequently, it was decided to include only the earnings measures (earnings from arts, and earnings overall) and the self-defined career success rating measure in the later studies. Study 3 used the career development constructs validated in Study 1, sociodemographic variables, and the career success measures explored in Study 2 via Classification and Regression Tree (CART - Breiman, Friedman, Olshen, & Stone, 1984) style decision trees with v-fold crossvalidation pruning using the 1 SE rule. CART decision trees are a nonparametric analysis technique which can be used as an alternative to OLS or hierarchical regression in the case of data which violates parametric statistical assumptions. The three optimal decision trees for total earnings, arts earnings and self defined career success ratings explained a large proportion of the variance in their respective target variables (R2 between 0.49 and 0.68). The Career building subscale of the Career Management Competence scale, pertaining to the ability to manage the external aspects of a career, was the most consistent predictor of all three career success measures (and was the strongest predictor for two of the three trees), indicating the importance of the artists' abilities to secure work and build the external aspects of a career. Other important predictors included the Self management subscale of the Career Management Competence scale, Protean Career Success Orientation, length of time working in the arts, and the positive role of interpersonal influences, skills and abilities, and interests and beliefs from the Career Development Influences scale. Slightly different patterns of predictors were found for the three different career success measures. Study 4 also involved the career development constructs validated in Study 1, sociodemographic variables, and the career success measures explored in Study 2 via CART style decision trees. This study used a prospective repeated measures design where the data for the attribute variables were gathered at the point of undergraduate course completion, and the target variables were measured one year later. Data from a total of 122 arts students were used, as 122 of the 218 students who responded to the survey at time 1 (October 2005) also responded at time 2 (October 2006). The resulting optimal decision trees had R2 values of between 0.33 and 0.46. The values were lower than those for the professional artists' decision trees, and the trees themselves were smaller, but the R2 values nonetheless indicated that the arts students' trees possessed satisfactory explanatory power. The arts graduates' Career building scores at time 1 were strongly predictive of all three career success measures at time 2, a similar finding to the professional artists' trees. A further similarity between the trees for the two samples was the strong statistical relationship between Career building, Self management, and Protean Career Success Orientation. However, the most important variable in the total earnings tree was arts discipline category. Technical / design arts graduates consistently earned more overall than arts graduates from other disciplines. Other key predictors in the arts graduates' trees were work experience in arts prior to course completion, positive interpersonal influences, and the positive influence of skills and abilities and interests and beliefs on career development. The research program findings represent significant contributions to existing knowledge about artists' career development and success, and also the transition from higher education to the world of work, with specific reference to arts and creative industries programs. It also has implications for theory relating to career success and protean / boundaryless careers.