A multiple case study approach was used to investigate the pattern of experience in a career transition. The participants were five men and five women who had completed a career change. The participants were selected to represent a variety of occupations. The study produced ten rich, detailed narrative accounts of career transition. Each one is told from the perspective of the individual who went through the experience. The accounts were based on in depth descriptions of the experience, and a charting of the transition using terms drawn from relevant transition models. Each account was reviewed and validated by the case study participant, who was the subject of the narrative, and by an independent reviewer. A comparison of the individual accounts revealed a pattern of experience that was common to all ten cases of career transition. It can be best represented as a three phase process, with each phase involving a distinctive character and each subsequent phase building on the preceding one. Furthermore, in each case the career transition reflected a process that was cyclical rather than linear in nature. Several theoretical implications arise from this study. First, it supports those models that describe career transition as a three stage process. The common pattern bears a remarkable resemblance to the rites of passage process described by Van Gennep (1908/1960). Second, the accounts suggest that the meaning of one’s work can change over the course of one’s life and that a career change be considered a change in a person’s life path. Third, the accounts support rejecting the notion of career transition having to be a crisis or traumatic event. From a practical standpoint, the pattern of transition can serve as a guide for those who are going through a career transition and for those who counsel them.

A multiple case study approach was used to investigate the pattern of experience in a career transition. The participants were five men and five women who had completed a career change. The participants were selected to represent a variety of occupations. The study produced ten rich, detailed narrative accounts of career transition. Each one is told from the perspective of the individual who went through the experience. The accounts were based on in depth descriptions of the experience, and a charting of the transition using terms drawn from relevant transition models. Each account was reviewed and validated by the case study participant, who was the subject of the narrative, and by an independent reviewer. A comparison of the individual accounts revealed a pattern of experience that was common to all ten cases of career transition. It can be best represented as a three phase process, with each phase involving a distinctive character and each subsequent phase building on the preceding one. Furthermore, in each case the career transition reflected a process that was cyclical rather than linear in nature. Several theoretical implications arise from this study. First, it supports those models that describe career transition as a three stage process. The common pattern bears a remarkable resemblance to the rites of passage process described by Van Gennep (1908/1960). Second, the accounts suggest that the meaning of one’s work can change over the course of one’s life and that a career change be considered a change in a person’s life path. Third, the accounts support rejecting the notion of career transition having to be a crisis or traumatic event. From a practical standpoint, the pattern of transition can serve as a guide for those who are going through a career transition and for those who counsel them. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

Due to the introduction of the Employment Equity Act of 1998, the structure of management in South African companies has dramatically changed. This emphasizes the need for managerial generalists, especially now where we are faced with a competitive business environment and rapid changes in technology. Edgar Schein (1978) in the (Academy of Management Journal 1996) maintains that these changes have resulted in people forming what he called “internal careers”. He described an “internal career” as a subjective sense of where one is going in one’s working life. He continued to describe the external career as something that is more about formal stages and roles, well defined by organisational policies and societal concepts regarding what an individual can expect in an occupational structure”. The complexities in the occupational environment have implications for career development, and it has obviously become crucial that people form what Edgar Schein regarded a self-concept, to be a ““career anchor” that holds a person’s internal career together even if they experience intense changes in their external career”. An individual’s “career anchor”, as defined by Schein (1978; 1985; 1990; 1993), comprises of a person’s 1) “self-perceived aptitudes and capacities; 2) basic values; and most important, 3) the evolved sense of motives and desires as they apply to the career”. Using the instrument called the Career Orientations Inventory (COI) developed by Edgar Schein, the objective of this study to systematically examine the primary career anchors of a sample of engineers in management positions at one of the utilities in South Africa. This is a quantitative study which uses a statistical analysis to substantiate engineers’ motivation for pursuing managerial positions instead of remaining specialists. The results from this study will have a major contribution in the field of Psychology and in particular, Career Psychology. / Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Human Resource Management / unrestricted

Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Education in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Zululand, 1999. / Since the emergence of the new democratic dispensation in the South African political arena, promises of more work opportunities, and hence a better life-style for the previously deprived citizens, inundate the media. The financial staff of the Sunday Tribune (February 9, 1997 :1) state that the government has committed itself to a coherent market-oriented economic growth plan in its Growth, Employment and Redistribution strategy (Gear). There appears to be tremendous shortages of personnel skilled in the economic sciences and as a result more students have undertaken to study economics so that they may have the necessary qualifications to gain access to these economically-linked careers. By directing this research specifically at the career aspirations of undergraduate economic students, much could possibly be done in teaching, and guiding them toward the realisation of their aspirations. The aims of this study were: * To pursue a study of relevant literature on achievement motivation, career choice and the self-concept. * To undertake an empirical investigation into the career aspirations of a group of undergraduate economic students at the University of Zululand, Durban-Umlazi campus. * To provide certain guidelines and recommendations regarding the inclusion of economics in a university curriculum that may help the student realise his career aspirations. Research with regard to this study was conducted as follows: * A literature study of available, relevant literature. * An empirical study comprising self-structured questionnaires completed by 304 undergraduate economic students of the University of Zululand (Durban-Umlazi Campus). The findings revealed, inter alia, that there are more female students engaged in further tertiary education; some students find it difficult to obtain career information; great difficulty is experienced by some students in getting to 'know themselves'; some students are not adequately trained in decision-making skills, and there is a limited number of trained vocational guidance counsellors to help them with career related problems. In the light of the aims and findings of the study, the following were recommended to tertiary educational institutions: provision of career resource centres; availability of trained vocational and subject advisors; establishment of employment contact offices, and an active mechanism should be set in motion to assist students to 'know themselves' and to develop their decision-making skills. This investigation has the following value: * It provides information on necessary prerequisites to enter economic-related careers. * The research served as an indicator of the relevance of economics in certain career aspirations.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the difference between Black and White 9th grade suburban students in regard to career indecision and certainty, and to determine what relationship exists between career indecision/certainty, motivational level, locus of control, and attributional style. The sample size of this study was 95 ninth grade students from a Seminole County high school in the state of Florida. Some of the demographic variables taken into account for this study were student socioeconomic status, involvement in special programming at school (i.e. Exceptional Education, or Advanced Placement), parental education level, and parental occupation. The data in this study was collected through the use of the Career Decision Scale (CDS), Children's Attributional Style Questionnaire-Revised (CASQ-R), Children's Nowicki-Strickland Internal External Locus of Control Scale (CNISE), and the Five Item Polarized Motivation Scale. The results of this study came as a result of the use of an ANOVA and Mann Whitney test, as well as a series of simple linear regression analyses. The ANOVA and Mann Whitney test determined if there was a difference in career indecision/ certainty level based on race. The linear regression analysis compared the variables of career indecision/certainty, motivation level, attributional style, and locus of control to uncover any predictive relationships. Post hoc analyses were also conducted to determine if the variables of motivational level, locus of control, attributional style, and career indecision/certainty are predictors for race. The results of the data indicate that there is no statistical significance between race and career indecision between Black and White students. Also the results uncovered the only predictive relationships among the variables existed between career certainty and motivation, career indecision and attributional style, and locus of control and attributional style. The post hoc analyses uncovered that race cannot be predicted by any of the variables in this study. This study is exploratory in nature and should be replicated with the use of a larger sample size to further explore this phenomenon.

M.Com. (Industrial Psychology) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

Ma Chi Kwong. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 71-80). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter Chapter 1 --- Abstract --- p.4-7 / Chapter Chapter 2 --- Introduction & Literature Review --- p.8-20 / Chapter Chapter 3 --- Study 1 - Method --- p.21-26 / Chapter Chapter 4 --- Study 1 - Results & Discussion --- p.27-34 / Chapter Chapter 5 --- Study 2 - Introduction --- p.35-42 / Chapter Chapter 6 --- Study 2 -Method --- p.43-45 / Chapter Chapter 7 --- Study 2 - Results & Discussion --- p.46-58 / Chapter Chapter 8 --- General Discussion --- p.59-70 / Reference --- p.71-80 / Appendix --- p.81-87

The issue is making sense of identity and career as mutually contouring. I look at that contouring through a conceptual framework which constellates narrative theory, social theory, and existential theory as three related but significantly different ways of understanding human life and human action. That framework constitutes an advance upon thinking about identity and career in Modernist terms, in that each of the constituent theories goes beyond the duality of subjectivity and objectivity to reconceptualise the subject as entangled, inscribed, and involved. Given that conception, we begin to see why the achievement of a coherent identity through career is inherently problematic. To reach that way of seeing, I analyse the narrative accounts of two research partners: accounts of their lives and careers. The goal of the analysis is to demonstrate the illuminative potential of the combined theory that is developed in the first part of the thesis: a potential which is partly realized in the ways that the analysis reveals a mutual contouring that had not been fully recognised by the research partners. Finally, I conclude that career can be fruitfully seen as a nexus of opportunity for the construction and expression of narrative identity, social identity, and existential identity over time.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1982. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 126-132). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 145-152). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center