Women working in the Canadian Federal Public Service (CFPS) face complex issues and competing demands. However, despite challenges such as obtaining further education, managing home responsibilities, and dealing with workplace issues, some have also developed and managed successful careers. Problems highlighted within literature on career development for women relate to the nature of women’s lives with their many transitional points, in which personal and organizational factors inextricably intertwine. The purpose of this qualitative research study was to explore the career development and advancement of women towards and into entry executive level positions within the Canadian Federal Public Service (CFPS). Three research questions guided this inquiry: 1) How have personal factors influenced career development and advancement of women in the CFPS towards and into pre-executive and entry executive levels? 2) How have organizational factors influenced their career development and advancement? and 3) How have personal and organizational factors combined to influence their career development and advancement? This research was grounded in a social constructivist paradigm which guided the research both ontologically and epistemologically. Schwandt (1994) contends that “objective knowledge and truth is a result of perspective. Knowledge and truth are created, not discovered” (p. 125). The inquiry attempted, therefore, to understand women’s complex career development processes from a holistic perspective through their career life stories. Ten women at the pre-executive or entry executive level from various departments within the CFPS took part in the study. Data collection was carried out mainly through a series of three semi-structured interviews. The findings of the study describe how participants’ personal dispositions, formal education, and home lives (personal factors) influenced their career development and advancement. In addition, it was found that the organization’s culture of long hours, its support for learning, participants’ organizational networks, and superiors’ contributions (organizational factors) also influenced women’s careers. This study contributes to our understanding of women’s career development, thereby providing important insights for future research. The study may have implications for CFPS policymakers, career counsellors, universities responsible for educating future career counsellors, as well as for individual women themselves, and perhaps even men.

Women working in the Canadian Federal Public Service (CFPS) face complex issues and competing demands. However, despite challenges such as obtaining further education, managing home responsibilities, and dealing with workplace issues, some have also developed and managed successful careers. Problems highlighted within literature on career development for women relate to the nature of women’s lives with their many transitional points, in which personal and organizational factors inextricably intertwine. The purpose of this qualitative research study was to explore the career development and advancement of women towards and into entry executive level positions within the Canadian Federal Public Service (CFPS). Three research questions guided this inquiry: 1) How have personal factors influenced career development and advancement of women in the CFPS towards and into pre-executive and entry executive levels? 2) How have organizational factors influenced their career development and advancement? and 3) How have personal and organizational factors combined to influence their career development and advancement? This research was grounded in a social constructivist paradigm which guided the research both ontologically and epistemologically. Schwandt (1994) contends that “objective knowledge and truth is a result of perspective. Knowledge and truth are created, not discovered” (p. 125). The inquiry attempted, therefore, to understand women’s complex career development processes from a holistic perspective through their career life stories. Ten women at the pre-executive or entry executive level from various departments within the CFPS took part in the study. Data collection was carried out mainly through a series of three semi-structured interviews. The findings of the study describe how participants’ personal dispositions, formal education, and home lives (personal factors) influenced their career development and advancement. In addition, it was found that the organization’s culture of long hours, its support for learning, participants’ organizational networks, and superiors’ contributions (organizational factors) also influenced women’s careers. This study contributes to our understanding of women’s career development, thereby providing important insights for future research. The study may have implications for CFPS policymakers, career counsellors, universities responsible for educating future career counsellors, as well as for individual women themselves, and perhaps even men.

In this dissertation, I investigate how capabilities drive firm performance as an industry evolves. I show that in spite of significant research on firm capabilities, we do not understand whether technological capabilities continue to drive firm performance as an industry evolves or whether they become weaker drivers of performance over time. This question is also important to managers because its answer would inform whether in a given context, firms should invest in building technological capabilities or not. I predict and find that in low complementarity contexts, as technology advances, customer demand for greater product performance becomes satiated. As a result, customers neither pay for greater product performance nor buy higher performing products pre maturely. As firms lose these two levers by which technological capabilities drive performance, they find that technological capabilities become weaker drivers of performance. I also propose that when technological capabilities become weaker drivers of performance, firm performance becomes more persistent, in the sense that past performance drives future performance. Through a rigorous quantitative analysis, complemented by an in-depth qualitative analysis of the US CT scanner industry from its inception, I find support for the theory. Using robust regression and multinomial logistic regression models, I find that as technology in an industry advances, technological capabilities become weaker drivers of firm performance. I discuss the shortcomings of this research and potential for future research. I also discuss the implications of this research on capability theory, resource based view, and on existing explanations of industry shakeout. / Dissertation

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Syftet med studien var att undersöka om och hur löneform, möjlighet till avancemang samt företagets CSR-arbete påverkar potentiella arbetssökandes intentioner att söka en ledig tjänst. Studien genomfördes på studerande vid Högskolan i Gävle. 78 personer deltog i studien och genomfördes som enkätundersökning. Resultatet analyserades med multidimensionell skalning (MDS). Det analyserade resultatet visade på två dimensioner där samtliga tre faktorer tycks påverka attraktiviteten hos en arbetsgivare. Dock verkar möjlighet till avancemang och intern karriär vara den faktor som har störst inverkan på potentiella arbetssökandes intentioner att söka en ledig tjänst. Då alla tre faktorer kan ha påverkat attraktiviteten drog vi slutsatsen att alla tre faktorerna är viktiga när det kommer till att attrahera blivande medarbetare. / The purpose of the study was to examine if and how salary, career advancements and a company´s CSR activities influence potential jobseekers intentions when it comes to applying for a job. The study was conducted among students at the University of Gävle. 78 persons participated, and the study was conducted as a survey. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) was used to analyze the result. The result showed that all three factors may have had an influence over how attractive an employer was perceived by the potential jobseekers. However according to the result, career advancements seems to have had the greatest impact when it came to influence potential jobseekers intentions to apply for a job. Although all three factors may have proven to have influence on the attractiveness of the employer, therefor is our conclusion that all three factors are crucial when it comes to attracting future employees

The purpose of this study was to examine how the racial composition of a mentoring relationship influences three types of judgments made by individuals external to the relationship: (1) causal attributions formed to explain successful protégé performance; (2) evaluations of protégé career advancement potential; and (3) reward recommendations for the mentor and protégé. Additionally, the associations among causal attributions, evaluations of potential, and reward recommendations were investigated. A 2 (protégé race: white vs. black) x 2 (mentor race: white vs. black) factorial between-subjects design was used. Mentor and protégé races were manipulated within a written vignette. After reading the vignette, participants responded to items measuring their judgments about the mentor and protégé depicted in the vignette. The final sample consisted of 194 white, employed individuals. Overall, results did not support the hypothesized racial effects on the three types of judgments. However, support was found for the predicted associations among the different judgment types. Implications of these findings, as well as directions for future research, are discussed.

That minorities face a greater risk of career barriers is a problem that has been discussed and studied for a long time. A concept which is continuously used to describe the problems minoritoes face is the so-called glass ceiling effect. It describes how minorities are prevented to reach top positions in particular in an organization because of their gender, sexuality or ethnicity. As there are only about 2.5% of the accountants in Sweden that belongs to the ethnic minority, a interest was brough to our attention to investigate the ethnic minorities career advancement from a different perspective; How do auditors reason regarding career advancement in relation to ethnicity. The purpose of the study is to create a deeper understanding of how the auditors construct career advancement in relation to ethnicity. We have used theories about diversity, socialization, organizational culture, identity theory, intersectionality, social networking and mentoring to achieve the purpose of the study. The empirical data were collected through a qualitative approach in which semi-structured telephone interviews and questionnaires via email were conducted with 13 experienced accountants with a foreign background. The auditors were considered to have valuable experiences and perceptions of how their career advancement have worked out for them. This study has contributed to a deeper understanding of how auditors with foreign background in Sweden construct career advancement in relation to ethnicity. Since previous research has focused on minority structures in organizations and not how auditors constructs career advancement in relation to ethnicity, this study may be considered to have contributed to fill a research gap. The conclusion of this study is that the authorized public accountants have different opinions about how they design career advancement. A suggestion for further research is to investigate the phenomenon surrounding the accounting assistants’ perspectives that are of foreign origin. / Att minoriteter löper större risk att drabbas av karriärsbarriärer är ett problem som har diskuterats och studerats länge. Ett begrepp som kontinuerligt används för att beskriva minoriteternas karriärsproblem är den så kallade glastakeffekten. Begreppet beskriver hur minoriteter hindras att i synnerhet nå toppositioner i en organisation på grund av deras kön, sexualitet eller etnicitet. Då det endast är cirka 2,5 % av Sveriges auktoriserade revisorer som tillhör den etniska minoriteten väcktes intresset om att undersöka den etniska minoritetens karriärsavancemang ur ett annat perspektiv; hur resonerar revisorer kring deras karrärsavancemang i relation till deras etnicitet. Syftet med studien är att skapa en djupare förståelse kring hur revisorerna konstruerar karriärsavancemang i relation till etnicitet. Vi har i denna studie använt oss av teorier som behandlar mångfald, socialisation, organisationskultur, identitetsteori, intersektionalitet, socialt nätverk, och mentorskap för att kunna uppnå syftet med studien. Empirin har samlats in via en kvalitativ metod där semistrukturerade telefonintervjuer och frågeformulär via e-post genomförts med 13 erfarna auktoriserade revisorer med utländsk bakgrund. Revisorerna ansågs ha värdefulla erfarenheter och upplevelser kring hur karriärsavancemanget har sett ut för dem. Studien har bidragit till en djupare förståelse kring hur revisorer med utländsk bakgrund i Sverige konstruerar karriärsavancemang i relation till etnicitet. Då tidigare forskning fokuserat på minoritetsstrukturer i organisationer och inte hur en revisor konstruerar karriärsutveckling i relation till dennes etnicitet kan denna studie anses ha bidragit till att fylla en forskningslucka. Slutsatsen av denna studie är att de auktoriserade revisorerna har skilda meningar kring hur de konstruerar karriärsavancemang. Förslag till vidare forskning är att undersöka fenomenet kring redovisningsassistenters perspektiv som är av utländsk bakgrund.

Purpose: The aim of this bachelor thesis is to explain how advancement factors affect men and woman to advance in their careers in the accounting profession.                                  Methodology: A positivist approaches and a deductive approach, with a quantitative method was used to obtain the results of the analysis.   Theoretical perspective: The theory describes the career stages, audit assistant, approved auditor, registered auditor, manager and partner. Their responsibilities and what it takes to get there is explained. Theory section also describes the different advancement factors from a gender perspective.   Empirical: The empirical material is based on a survey conducted in respondents who represent the five career stages. The collected data is then analyzed using statistical tests.   Conclusion: The analysis shows that the identified career advancement factors that limit and stimulates the male and female auditors’ career ladder. Some advancement factors limited female auditors’ career ladder more than a generation. / Syfte: Syftet med denna kandidatuppsats är att förklara hur avancemangsfaktorerna påverkar män och kvinnor att avancera på karriärstegen inom revisionsbranschen. Metod: Ett positivistiskt angreppsätt och en deduktiv ansats, med en kvantitativ metod har använts för att få fram resultatet till analysen. Teori: Teorin beskriver de olika karriärstegen, revisorsassistent, godkänd revisor, auktoriserad revisor, chef och partner. Deras arbetsuppgifter samt vad som krävs för att ta sig dit förklaras. Teoridelen beskriver också de olika avancemangsfaktorerna utifrån ett könsperspektiv. Empiri: Det empiriska materialet är baserat på en enkätundersökning utförd på respondenter som representerar de fem karriärstegen. Datainsamlingen har sedan analyserats med hjälp av statistiska tester. Resultat: Analysen visar att de identifierade avancemangsfaktorerna både begränsar och stimulerar manliga och kvinnliga revisors karriärstege. Somliga avancemangsfaktorer begränsade en kvinnlig revisors karriärstege mer än en mans.

The recent invention of Google Glass has prompted me to contemplate how future technologies will affect the way we interact with one another. In this paper, I argue that Google Glass technology is the first sort of technology that will facilitate us to violate our genuine interactions with one another in a face-to-face setting. Once we diminish these types of interactions, we fail to respect one another on a fundamental level and as a result, we fail to genuinely pursue one of the most important classes of meaningful projects in our lives: developing and maintaining relationships.

The purpose of this work was to study the peculiarities and interrelations of achievement motivation, locus of health control (multidimensional and visual analogue scales) and academic advancement of senior schoolchildren (years IX – XII). 228 senior schoolchildren participated in the study. The study involved two methodologies. The first one, meant for the research of learning motivation of schoolchildren, was used A. Mehrabian’s achievement motivation test-enquiry, modified by M. Sh. Magomed – Eminov. The second one – K. Wallston’s (1978) health locus of control (multidimensional and visual analogue scales). The research results data confirmed the hypothesis that achievement motivation of senior girls is different from that of senior boys. It was established that the ratios of motivation of boys were higher than those of girls of the same age. It is confirmed by the statistically relevant relation (t(226)=2,004, p = 0,04). The analysis of research data showed that: achievement motivation of senior schoolchildren decreases with the age; senior schoolchildren’s belief that condition of health depends on contingencies or external influences decreases with the age; senior boys evaluate their health better than girls of the same age; advancement of senior schoolchildren increases with the age. Second hypothesis of probability of relation among achievement motivation, health control ratios and academic advancement in senior grades was not confirmed.