In this essay we have chosen to study single mothers who in conjunction with their parental leave have chosen to change career direction. Through personal and previous experiences during our time at Malmö University we have come into contact with single mothers who had gone through a journey such as the one described which in form led us to question what influences this group and how guidance counsellors can guide them through these turning-points. To be able to identify the reasons for the change of career direction we have chosen to use the following questions: What factors have influenced single mothers'  who have decided to change career direction? Have single mothers' views on their career development changed in the context of parenthood? If so, how? How can career counsellors best guide single mothers in their career transitions?     We have carried out qualitative interviews with six informants who have decided to change career direction by studying or changing workplace. The theoretical framework this essay will be analysed through is based on Bourdieu's research regarding habitus, capital and fields and Hodkinson and Sparkes’ Careership Theory and its horizons of action, turning-points and periods of routine.     The results state that many single mothers, mainly those who have worked in the tourism-, restaurant- or event business previous to their parenthood find it difficult to combine those fields of work with the responsibility of being a single parent. As a result they have either tried to find jobs that fit with their new needs or they have chosen to study. The decision to study has been one with dual purposes; one being the possibility of a higher paying job, for which an education is quite important in Sweden, and the other being the freedom it gives you as the parent of a young child to shape your schedule to fit your current situation.

Abstract in English, Southern Sotho and Afrikaans / South African chartered accountants (CAs(SA)), who are primarily trained as financially orientated technical specialists, play a significant role as part of management teams, which require expertise in leadership, strategy, marketing, communication and teamwork among other managerial skills. However, it has been found that accounting professionals have inherent characteristics that could act as barriers to career transition and adaptability in the volatile and challenging accounting profession. This study employed an interpretative phenomenological analysis research design to gain insights on the way CAs(SA) in the financial services sector have managed to overcome barriers and leverage enablers to transition their careers. Accordingly, interviews were conducted with CAs(SA) who occupy or have occupied a management position in the financial services sector. The findings revealed that the participants had prepared themselves for transition by gaining credibility and confidence by means of exposing themselves to challenging work, leading others, taking part in varied activities, updating their substantive knowledge base and using mentors. Through their attitudes, behaviour and decisions, participants were able to influence their career development context by being adaptable. Further, participants revealed that they were able to overcome barriers by gaining practical experience and exposure to varied tasks and career development opportunities, reading, listening and further training and education. Participants were also able to overcome barriers and create enablers by learning from others through informal mentorships and working in strong teams, which limited the extent to which they had to learn from their own mistakes. These insights could benefit not only CAs(SA) themselves but also professional accounting bodies, academic institutions, training organisations and employers of CAs(SA). / Di-chartered accountant tsa Afrika Borwa (CAs(SA)), ba rupetsweng ka sehlooho jwalo ka ditsebi tsa setekgeniki ka tsa ditjhelete, ba bapala karolo ya bohlokwa dihlopheng tsa bookamedi tse hlokang botsebi ho tsa boetapele, meralo, papatso, dikgokahano le tshebetso ya sehlopha, hara ditsebo tse ding tsa bookamedi. Leha ho le jwalo, ho fumanwe hore diprofeshenale tsa accounting di na le ditlwaelo tse tebileng tse ka iketsang dithibelo tsa kgolo mosebetsing le phetophetoho kahare ho profeshene ya accounting e dulang e sa tsitsa hape e na le diphephetso. Boithuto bona bo sebedisitse moralo wa patlisiso wa kutlwiso ya batho ya ntho e itseng ho fumana tsebo ka mokgwa oo diCA(SA) lekaleng la ditshebeletso tsa ditjhelete ba kgonneng ho fenya dithibelo tse jwalo le ho sebedisa dithutso ho hola mesebetsing ya bona. Ka tsela eo, di-inthavu di entswe le diCA(SA) tse maemong (kapa tse kileng tsa ba maemong) a bookamedi kahara lekala la ditshebeletso tsa ditjhelete. Diphetho di bontshitse hore bankakarolo ba itokiseditse phetoho ka ho iphumantsha bokgolwehi le boitshepo ka ho ipepesetsa mosebetsi o phephetsang, ho etella ba bang pele, ho nka karolo mesebetsing e fapaneng, ho ntjhafatsa ditsebo tsa bona le ka ho sebedisa batataisi. Ka mehopolo ya bona, boitshwaro le diqeto, bankakarolo ba ile ba kgona ho susumetsa ntshetsopele ya mesebetsi ka hore ba kgone ho fetofetoha. Ho feta moo, bankakarolo ba supile hore ba kgonne ho fenya dithibedi ka ho fumana tsebo ya ketso le ho ipepesetsa mesebetsi e fapaneng le menyetla ya ntlafatso ya tshebetso, ka ho bala, ho mamela le ho etsa dithuto le dithupelo tsa ntshetsopele ya thuto. Bankakarolo ba boetse ba kgonne ho hlola dithibelo le ho hlahisa dithusi ka ho ithuta ho tswa ho batho ba bang ka ditataiso tse sa hlophiswang le ka ho sebetsa le dihlopha tse matla, e leng ho neng ho fokotsa makgetlo ao ka ona ba neng ba tlameha ho ithuta ka diphoso tsa bona. Dintlha tsena di ka ba molemo eseng feela ho diCA(SA) ka bo tsona, empa le ditheo tsa profeshenale tsa accounting, ditsi tsa accounting, mekgatlo ya thupelo le bahiri ba diCA(SA). / Suid-Afrikaanse geoktrooieerde rekenmeesters (CA’s(SA)) wat primêr as finansieelgeoriënteerde tegniese spesialiste opgelei is, speel 'n beduidende rol in bestuurspanne wat kundigheid in leierskap, strategie, bemarking, kommunikasie en spanwerk en ander bestuursvaardighede vereis. Daar is egter bevind dat rekeningkundige praktisyns inherente eienskappe het wat struikelblokke kan wees vir loopbaanoorgang en aanpasbaarheid in die ongestadige en uitdagende rekeningkundige beroep. Hierdie studie het 'n interpretatiewe fenomenologiese ontledingnavorsingsontwerp gevolg om insig te bekom oor die wyse waarop CA’s(SA) in die finansiële sektor daarin geslaag het om sulke struikelblokke en hefboominstaatstellers te bowe te kom om loopbaanoorgang te bereik. Onderhoude is dienooreenkomstig met die CA’s(SA) gehou wat bestuursposisies in die finansiële sektor beklee of beklee het. Die bevindings het gewys dat die deelnemers hulleself vir oorgang voorberei het deur geloofwaardigheid en vertroue te verkry deur blootstelling aan uitdagende werk, om ander te lei, deelname aan gevarieerde aktiwiteite, om hulle substantiewe kennisbasis op te dateer en om mentors te gebruik. Deur aanpasbare houdings, gedrag en besluite kon die deelnemers hulle loopbaanontwikkelingskonteks beïnvloed. Die deelnemers het ook aangedui dat hulle struikelblokke te bowe kon kom deur praktiese ervaring en blootstelling aan gevarieerde take en loopbaanontwikkelingsgeleenthede, en deur lees, luister en deelname aan verdere onderwys en opleiding. Die deelnemers was voorts in staat om struikelblokke te oorkom en instaatstellers daar te stel deur by ander te leer deur informele mentorskap en om in sterk spanne te werk, wat die mate waarin hulle uit hulle eie foute moes leer, beperk het. Hierdie insigte behoort nie net CA’s(SA) te baat nie, maar ook professionele rekeningkundige liggame, akademiese instellings, opleidingsorganisasies en werknemers van CA’s(SA). / Management Accounting / M. Phil. (Accounting Sciences)

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.

Les carrières artistiques constituent un domaine très peu étudié dans le champ des relations industrielles. Celles-ci représentent pourtant un observatoire très puissant pour examiner et anticiper l’évolution des professions dans un contexte où plusieurs auteurs ont émis l’hypothèse que de nombreux métiers, notamment ceux du domaine de la recherche scientifique et des professions créatives, sont appelées à évoluer selon des formes qui se rapprochent des conditions d’organisation et des formes d’emploi des métiers artistiques. La présente recherche a pour objet l’étude des facteurs qui influencent les artistes professionnels de la danse à entreprendre une transition de carrière. Plus précisément, il s’agit d’étudier comment s’opèrent et sont vécues les transitions de carrière provoquées par des blessures ou des maladies professionnelles, incluant l’usure, la diminution des capacités physiques et l’invalidité, chez les danseuses et les danseurs professionnels à Montréal. La réalisation de cette recherche repose sur une analyse transversale du matériel de recherche qui comprend des données quantitatives et qualitatives. La double comparaison des données convergentes et divergentes de l’expérience vécue des participants relativement aux opinions, aux perceptions, aux sentiments et aux attitudes permet, par ces lignes de convergences et de fuites, de tirer des conclusions plus larges. À l’aide de cette méthodologie de recherche, cette étude vise à reconnaître: 1) que les transitions de carrière provoquées par ces facteurs physiques sont difficiles à vivre étant donné qu’elles sont inattendues, ce qui fait d’elles une forme de transition contrainte et, 2) que les transitions de carrière provoquées par ces facteurs physiques sont difficiles à vivre étant associées à d’importantes difficultés psychologiques et identitaires. Par cette analyse, nous constatons qu’il existe deux degrés de transitions de carrières provoquées par des facteurs physiques : celles qui sont provoquées par une blessure grave ou une maladie professionnelle et celles qui sont provoquées par une installation graduelle de la douleur en raison d’une microblessure, d’une usure ou d’une diminution des capacités physiques. En étudiant les évènements menant à ces types de transition, nous nous attardons à définir ce que nous entendons par « contrainte » et nous détaillons les caractéristiques des transitions qu’elles engendrent. Nous arrivons à la conclusion que ces deux degrés de transitions correspondent à la nature d’une transition de carrière contrainte ce qui fait d’elles des processus difficiles à vivre notamment raison de leur caractère inattendu. En plus de constater que celles-ci sont effectivement associées à différentes difficultés psychologiques et identitaires, nous identifions les raisons qui expliquent l’émergence de ces difficultés. Cette étude permet d’étudier la survenance des événements qui mènent à ces transitions de carrière et permet de porter un regard sur les services offerts par la Commission des normes, de l’équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CNESST). Au final, des enseignements plus généraux et applicables à d’autres professions précaires qui ne relèvent pas du domaine artistique sont tirés de cette étude. / Artistic careers have been under-studied in the field of industrial relations. This is the case despite several researchers having recently suggested that an increasing number of professions, including academic and creative ones, are likely to evolve and present similar organizational conditions and employment forms to the ones we observe in artistic labour markets. This research addresses the factors influencing professional dance artists to undertake a career transition. More precisely, we study how career transitions induced by occupational injuries and diseases operate, and how they are experienced by professional dance artists in Montreal. We take into consideration different manifestations of occupational injuries and diseases such as wear, decreasing physical abilities and disability. From a methodological standpoint, this research is supported by a transversal analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data. The double comparison of convergent and divergent data relating to the experience of career transitioning, including the participants’ opinions, perceptions, feelings and attitudes, allows us to draw larger conclusions. This study highlights that (1) career transitions induced by physical factors are challenging because of their unexpected nature. We consider these transitions to be constrained ones, because they are forced upon professional dance artists instead of being the result of a voluntary and planned process. This study also shows that (2) career transitions induced by physical factors represent a challenging experience for professional dance artists because of their association with major psychological and identity difficulties. This research shows the existence of two different degrees of career transitions induced by physical factors in the professional dance sector in Montreal. The first relates to transitions induced by occupational injuries or diseases. The second relates to transitions induced by a gradual settling of pain due to a microinjury, wear or decreasing physical abilities. By studying the events leading to these two degrees of transitions, we define our concept of constrained transition and detail the characteristics of the different types of transitions the formers can lead to. We conclude that the two types of transitions correspond to constrained transitions, which makes them challenging experiences because of their unexpected nature. Beyond concluding that constrained transitions are associated with different major psychological and identity difficulties, we also identify the reasons explaining the emergence of those difficulties. This study allows for a better understanding of the factors leading to constrained career transitions in the professional dance sector in Montreal. This opens up new perspectives to reflect on the services offered by the Commission des normes, de l’équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CNESST). General reflections and contributions applying to other precarious professions are also discussed.