Ethos de humanidad

The term 'environment' connotes external forces, basically the surrounding factors and institutions that influence career decisions and outcomes, but are primarily uncontrollable. They make an impact on people at different time frames, which can be positive or negative. Some factors may take years to permeate down to the individual level, whereas some may have an immediate impact. The following discussion illustrates.

Socio-cultural environment

The socio-cultural environment is a key factor in shaping beliefs, norms, and forming career orientations, particularly for female participants. Sue shared how a few of her colleagues would comment on her working patterns, basically reflecting societal norms prevalent at the time, “I used to come on the weekends and occasionally my male colleagues… there was this one guy who used to say, ‘What are you doing here on the weekend? Who’s looking after your children?’ And I’d say, ‘Well, my husband is their parent as well.” Sarah talked about the low proportion of working women, “It’s wasteful for the country, for the personal life. There’s a long way for the society to appreciate the full potential of women, working in conjunction with men, of course not against each other.” On a positive note, changes in the social environment inspired Jane and put her on a career pathway, “I remember one of the catch phrases at the time, ‘the world is your oyster and you can do whatever you want to’. I think, back then the girls were being encouraged that they could do more.”

Natural environment

The earthquakes in Christchurch in 2010-11 disrupted the physical and social environment for people to a large degree. As one participant shared, “We are a bit isolated because we are over here, but our building is being remediated at the moment after the earthquake. The sort of environment we work in is not really conducive in that we work in separate buildings… before the earthquake we were much more aware of when people were in. It was much easier to sort of knock on people’s door, but now it’s a bit of an effort. A lot of colleagues are in that building over there on different levels… I don’t know whether they are in or out.”

One of the academic participants also expressed concerns about relationship with students, “After the earthquake I have set up most of my stuff at home to be honest, that’s where I do a lot of my reading and research. A lot of students… not so much now because we are away from the campus, but in the old building prior to the earthquake, I’d often have students come in, and sometimes it was not discipline related, it was just for a bit of advice about applying for a job, or something else.”

Economic environment

A few participants had to relocate due to the global economic changes. One of them shared that, “The global crisis basically, we were ok in 2008, 2009 and 2010 over there [Europe], and then it really started to hit home about 2010 and 11, and they were looking to remove all of the people who were in a position where they didn’t go further…”, and since she was not interested in a promotion, she resigned and decided to come back to New Zealand.

Business environment

Sarah found the environment conducive for entry into the job market when she completed her accounting qualification, “Accounting is something… I could go anywhere and say I am an

accountant, and of course once I am qualified that’s fine, you had a piece of paper that says CA and you can go to any country anywhere, and have this qualification, and immediately, there’s work of some kind.”

Country environment

A few participants reflected on the advantages of working in New Zealand, maintaining that it has a more conducive work culture as compared to some other countries19_{. Philip has no ambition of going}

overseas at present, “There is also the balance, the lifestyle as well, and that is something New Zealand can offer, that a lot of the other countries can’t. It’s not you must be seen to be here at 7 o’clock at night to prove that you’re doing a good job.”

The view is echoed by Patrick, “I suppose one of the things I see in New Zealand as opposed to some of my US colleagues is that there is a lot more focus in New Zealand on having a work-life balance and whereas my colleagues in the States, it’s sort of like you’ve got to be seen to be working 50-60 hours a week.”

Participants with children were unanimous in their view of New Zealand as a nice place for families, and they shared that their career decisions were influenced by this. Daniel decided to come back home as, “New Zealand is a much better place to bring up the kids.”

Political-legal environment

Amanda benefitted from the government policy of offering support to students; in her days it meant that she could go back to university to complete her degree with full financial support – “I didn’t work at all. For me back then we got quite a good allowance that you could actually live on.” This was crucial for her as she did not have the family support, “Not my parents particularly, they just being that older generation, they didn’t particularly encourage me, so it was quite self-directed.” James

also acknowledged the government support, “Student loans and that ‘pay as you go’ environment was in its infancy, and there were still student allowances being paid.”

Changes in GST (Good and Services tax) rules helped Philip find a new career pathway as a specialist when he was commissioned to Australia by his firm. He shared, “The thing I have most enjoyed about that was, because there wasn’t a lot of GST knowledge in Australia at that time, you could basically design the project the way you wanted it to be.”

Academic policy changes, especially PBRF and other decisions have impacted on academics’ lives to a large extent. Many of them commented that the changes in academia have resulted in more micro- management, restrictive research areas, commercialisation, more bureaucracy, less freedom etc. resulting in teaching being relegated in priority.

One of the academic participants decided to relocate to complete his PhD due to the changes in the university policy, “Initially when I joined having a professional qualification and what have you was all that mattered… over the last few years, not having the PhD. So it’s moved from being teaching being the relevant thing and having professional background was great, that ticked all the boxes initially. That was one of the reasons for leaving, I was going no further. I wouldn’t have become a reader or a professor without getting a PhD.” Therefore, he moved to New Zealand through his contacts at the university for his doctoral research.

External organisations

External organisations influenced the career decisions of some participants. For example, IRD (Inland Revenue Department) played an important role in forming the initial career pathway for some participants. IRD’s studentship programme facilitated qualifying students to work in the holidays or part time while they pursued their tertiary studies, and IRD paid student fees. From our 36

participants, three took up this opportunity in the initial days, and all have reached the highest positions in their firms.

Sharon benefitted enormously as she shared, “I had a studentship with the IRD, so I got to do the work holidays basically for the Revenue. Three years, the whole time that I was studying they gave me holiday jobs basically, so I always had some guaranteed work instead of picking fruit and doing all that sorts of things that would be the alternative.”

James wanted to drop out of school, and he wanted to work. He could do both work and study and pursue a career because – “… being able to work full time and study part time, allowed me to get the work experience, they [IRD] paid every year’s fees and gave me time. I got a scholarship basically for

the year from IRD on full pay, and went and studied full time, but then I was bonded for three years after that.”

Another important professional organisation, NZICA seemed to have played a big role in the career progression of accounting academics who did not have the professional qualification, but had academic experience. NZICA changed the qualification rules which meant that the contribution of accounting academics was recognized and they were given the status of Associate Chartered Accountant (ACA), at a non-practicing level.

Sue recalled the process,”…well actually if people have done a PhD then they have peer review, they have got expertise, they have developed in the area and if they are teaching on courses which are required for the Institute, so they are actually training the people who are becoming CAs, why aren’t they able to become a CA? And so they [NZICA] made this new pathway [ACA] for academics. So if you have got a PhD in accounting and you are teaching in the required courses, then they let us in.” This has enhanced the professional qualifications of the accounting academics where they feel that their academic experience is acknowledged and validated by the professional organisation.

4.8.

Conclusion

The above discussion of how the career pathways were formed, the factors determining it and their future plans has helped to analyse the career development of accounting profession participants. In particular, the qualitative approach has helped to understand the “why” and “how” of this

phenomenon.

Investigation of career orientation revealed distinct gender differences. While career flow of most male participants was uninterrupted; all married female participants with children but one, had taken a career break for family reasons. It was also noted that women had an adaptive focus on career whereas men could focus on their careers to a greater extent confirming the traditional male career pattern. Six women participants have a stay-at-home partner, but this does not seem to have freed them of the family responsibilities as their male counterparts experienced with a supportive wife.

With regard to the pathways of the academics, ten of the 15 participants had shifted from firms and other sectors, but there were no shifts in reverse, that is from academia to firms. Moreover, none of the academics had academia as a career with a single minded focus, whereas about half of the accounting practitioners (11) had focused on accounting as an initial goal. About two-third of the participants have navigated their career trying out different pathways. At this stage, almost all had a greater clarity about their future career goals though comparatively fewer women wanting to reach

The overall support from family of orientation and school was found pivotal in paving the initial career pathway. Family of procreation, specifically spousal support in terms of family responsibilities is constructive for later career development. Workplace was also found important for professional development and facilitating work-life balance.

Thus, the numerous examples and related discussion have demonstrated the reasons for the variety of career patterns at the same time displaying commonalities with regard to gender. The external factors of family, organisation and environment have played an important role in the process. The following chapter builds on this material to construct a framework which the researcher has termed “career crafting”. It then explores the association between career crafting and personal success by linking the developments in the career pathways with the career crafting practices of the

Chapter 5

Towards an Extended Paradigm of Career Crafting

5.1.

Introduction

The previous chapter elaborated on the career pathways of the study’s participants. It presented career lattice and examined how different career orientations were with regard to gender. It outlined the different routes the participants had taken to becoming an accounting professional and looked closely at how the career goals were formulated at different life stages which shaped the career pathways. The analysis in the previous chapter confirmed that family, organisation and environment were the major influential external factors in their career progression. The individual factors were not expounded in the discussion, but were evident.

This chapter focuses on the role of individuals in crafting careers. “Self” is of particular interest to this study, as the central concept of career crafting is based on the idea that careers can be developed in an intentional manner if individuals make it a conscious process, and thereby proactively make positive changes. Understandably, certain aspects of the above mentioned external constructs cannot be changed, and they are not entirely within the control of the individual; but career crafting proposes that what can be managed to some extent is the individual’s response to and action on the changes. Thus, this research is primarily interested in the role of the individuals – how well they have adapted to the situation or have invented a new way of dealing with life. This can be called the adaptation/invention approach to career crafting wherein the participants are open-minded about the change, are willing to take risks to change a situation, or sometimes change their thinking to adjust to the situation, thus primarily focusing on what one can control to a certain extent. In this study, participants’ career development did not appear to be a linear process that entirely moved with age or life stage. It was rather found to be a unique process that differed from individual to individual depending on his/her life stage and needs, and the decisions and actions taken from the point of entry into the workforce to the later career stages. Rather, career development seemed to be due to some other factor in force. In fact, it was observed in the analysis that it could be due to certain career crafting elements that were “implicit”. These elements are further explored in this chapter to examine the concept of career crafting and to test the validity of the paradigm by identifying instances of behaviour of the participants that might be termed career crafting. Building on the results of Chapter 4, this chapter draws on the material gathered in the interviews20 _to

develop the career crafting paradigm. The analysis centres on how individuals take different decisions and actions, and how these can be linked to examine the presence and impact of career crafting on desired career outcomes. Thus, this chapter uses the career crafting lens to confirm the role of individual crafting by emphasizing on the following areas as the main focus of the enquiry:

 Can specific instances of career crafting be identified with regard to different career decisions?

 Is there evidence of whether career crafting leads to personal success?

The hypothesis is that if individuals design their career pathways through cognitive crafting by managing relationships and activities, it leads to greater satisfaction and personal success. In this research study, the term personal success refers to the account of the participants about their career trajectory, as indicated by:

 Participants’ rating of life and job satisfaction (last two items in the data sheet, Appendix C); and

 Interpretation of the participants’ inputs about their own career trajectories in the interviews which is summarised to understand personal success.

The following section addresses the Research Question 5 (section 1.7) concerning what role does career crafting play in the career development process, drawing in particular on how the participants have made changes to the task, relational and cognitive aspects of their personal and professional lives.

5.2.

Career crafting

The main aim of this research is to explore if career crafting enables people to develop their possible selves and build their capabilities to achieve desired outcomes in the given circumstances. Based on the job crafting model, it was proposed that the principal pillars of career crafting would be

cognitive, relational and task crafting practices of individuals. The analysis in the previous chapter illustrated the different ways in which individuals take career decisions. Therefore, career crafting components are further expanded by synthesising the proposed model in Chapter 2 (section 2.7) and the analysis in Chapter 4:

1. Cognitive Crafting (CC) – self-awareness, prioritizing, conceptualisation of ideal career goal, reframing goals, perception and reality, and reframing perception of personal and

2. Relational Crafting (RC) – personal and professional relationships, the role of important others, altering the nature and extent of relationships, and selecting and nurturing relationships with key people.

3. Task Crafting (TC) – managing personal (family and leisure) and professional (routine, developmental, social) activities, community work, selecting tasks to achieve desired outcomes, and balancing personal and professional fronts.

As explained in Chapter 3 (section 3.7.6), participants’ responses with regard to the above were value coded and rated independently, that is, one construct was rated at a time, not taking into account the rating of it for the others. This was to mitigate any risk of biased coding. The interview inputs were labelled as per the type of crafting if the participants’ accounts covered any one or more of the above aspects, and then the participants were rated on that basis to measure the extent of their career crafting abilities. These instances were then value coded – low, medium and high – and tabulated to provide an indication of the level of crafting (see Appendix L). It is important to note here that in this qualitative research study, the numbers were primarily used for facilitating the mapping of the responses, not to present a phenomenon or a formula.

To illustrate the rating, Nancy was found to be a high level crafter as she resonated with the main principle of career crafting, of taking charge, making things happen. Nancy believes in,

When you decide to do something, you have got to go and create it.

Nancy demonstrated this through her cognitive, task and relational crafting. She is aware of her work and family demands, and has worked out a schedule accordingly so that she can be around for her kids on the weekends, “I don't work on weekends; I do my 50 hours between Monday and Friday.