King (2000, p. 21) comments that individual responsibility for career is referred to in a number of ways in the literature review encompassing: "managing one's career" (for example, Jackson 1996), "career self-management" (for example, Stickland, 1996), "career management" (for example, Greenhaus and Callanan, 1994), "career strategies" (for example, Gould and Penley, 1984) and "career self-reliance" (Byster, 1998). She adds that even though the employment of the term "career self-management" was discovered in earlier works (for example, Hall, 1976;
Sofer, 1970), the first empirical study to examine it directly was the one conducted by Hammer and Vardi (1981) to study the locus of control effects on self-initiated job moves. They did not supply a definition of career self-management but, rather, operationalised it in terms of effort made by individuals toward obtaining required jobs, informing the supervisor when he/she is seeking a job movement, bidding for other jobs and attempting to prove to the supervisor that he/she is the right person for a job. Amongst non-supervisory employees in two industrial settings, they find no impacts of locus of control on effort or frequency of employment of career strategies, but that internals initiated more of their own job moves. In addition, employees who are working in environments that encourage career self-management reported higher employment of these strategies than people in limiting environments and these differences are more significant than the effects of locus of control. Thus this section addresses various
definitions of career self-management and its association with different aspects which will be discussed below:
2.3.2.1 Definition Related to Career Strategies Setting
The first definition is the one constructed by Gould and Penley (1984) who investigated the association between career strategies and career success. Career strategies according to these authors, is defined as:
"behaviours which may be utilised by an individual to decrease the time required for and uncertainty surrounding the attainment of important career objective" (p. 244).
They argue that the successful utilisation of career strategies would result in the efficient achievement of careers and lead to career progression. For instance, seeking guidance from a mentor (one type of career strategy) may assist individuals to enhance their career by gaining valuable feedback and ideas, which would likely assist the individuals to subjectively succeed in their careers. Based on earlier studies (for example, Hall, 1976; Jennings, 1971; Wortman and Linsenmeier, 1977), Gloud and Penley (1984) develop an inventory of seven types of career strategies: creating opportunities, extended work involvement, self-nomination/self-presentation, seeking career guidance, networking, opinion conformity, and other enhancement. They conducted a study to involve a sample of clerical, professional and managerial employees in a USA organisation. They examine the impact of career strategies on salary progression and find that a strategy is significantly employed by managers versus non-managers. The study also finds that creating opportunities and extended work involvement are positively related to salary progression for all employees. Other enhancement is counterproductive for managers only, and opinion conformity is counterproductive for all employees.
Feij, Whitely, Peiro and Taris (1995) explore career-enhancing strategies in a longitudinal panel study involving younger workers employed in eight countries as machine operators and office technologists. They discovered that career-enhancing strategies (operationalised based on consultation behaviours, networking and skill development) are linked with work centrality and that deployment is linked with supportive relationships with supervisors and co-workers. In
addition, career-enhancing strategies contribute to the subsequent development of intrinsic work values, social relations and endeavours at job content innovation. They define career enhancing strategies as:
"the development of work objectives and plans, seeking advice and information from others about training or work assignments to increase knowledge and skills, skill development by working on varied job assignments, working extra hours, and networking" (pp. 232-233).
Noe (1996) conducted a study in a state agency in the USA involving 120 employees and their managers. He examines the association between different aspects of the career management process and employees' developmental behaviours and performance. His study finds that employees supply information related to their personal characteristics, career management strategies, their manager's career development support and willingness to participate in developmental activities. Managers supply ratings of each employee's job performance and developmental behaviour. Position, support for development, environmental exploration and distance from career goal explicate importance difference in employees' willingness to contribute in development activities and developmental behaviour. Noe's study depicts career self-management as a process which consists of three stages:
"by which individuals collect information about values, interests and skill strengths and weaknesses (career exploration); identify a career goal; and engage in career strategies that increase the probability that career goals will be achieved" (p. 119).
King (2001) suggests that career self-management consists of four steps: "charting the institutional landscape, identifying gatekeepers, implementing career strategies and evaluating the effectiveness of those strategies" (pp. 2-3). She regards career self-management as a recursive process in which the perceived effectiveness of a specific strategy influences the decision to deploy that strategy in the future. It is an active process as well, not encompassing simply a one-off execution of a discrete behaviour, but rather of continuing implementation of a set of co-occurring behaviours. Strategies may be employed continuously or at irregular
intervals, and in conjunction with one another or independently. She adds that a definition of career self-management will be drawn from three themes of behaviour: self-interest and enhancement to control. She defines career self-management as:
"...deployment by an individual of behavioural strategies intended to exert a controlling influence over his or her career outcomes" (p. 27).
2.3.2.2 Definition Related to Collecting Information
The second career self-management definition is constructed by Kossek et al. (1998) who argue that this notion is related to collecting information which helps in problem solving and decision- making. Kossek et al. (1998) examine the effectiveness of training and intervention with the intention to maximise people's degree of career self-management. Their study includes several hundred salaried professionals in a US transport organisation. Career self-management is operationalised based on two behaviours: developmental feedback seeking and job mobility preparedness. They assess employees' career perceptions issues (for instance adaptability, career self-efficacy, or perceived competence to self-manage a career, attitudes to feedback-seeking and training motivation). The study discovers that the training has a negative result on career self-management behaviours as well as career perceptions six months after the intervention. The study proposes that this could result from the rhetoric of the training which does not line up with the reality that trainees encounter subsequently, when they attempt to gain responsibility for their careers in an environment which is disappointing and unreceptive, resulting in withdrawal because of unmet expectations. These authors state that employees endorsed with self-initiated career initiatives expect opportunities to transform in common and, more chiefly, for changes in employment. Career self-management, according to Kossek and his colleagues, is defined as:
"the degree to which one regularly gathers information and plans for career problem solving and decision making. It involves two main behaviours: one related to continuous improvement in one's current job; developmental feedback seeking; and the other related to movement: job mobility preparedness" (p. 938).
2.3.2.3 Is Career Self-management Definition Related to Behaviour, Attitudes or Cognition?
There is some confusion about whether career self-management is related to behaviour, attitudes or cognition (King, 2000). King, in her study, indicates that some scholars point to behaviour or attitudes at a very general level; for instance Arnold's "attempts to influence the careers of one or more people' or Bridges' "looking at yourself as if you were self-employed" (p. 26). Others scholars, for instance Kossek et al. (1998), point to behaviour as specified in exact terms, that is developmental feedback seeking and job mobility preparedness. Some accounts identify the results of such behaviour, for instance, empowerment (Feij et al., 1995) or self-direction (Hall, 1976). King states that even with these and other differences, some similar themes emerge from these writers. A first common theme is that career self-management is a behavioural phenomenon. The second common theme is that this behaviour is initiated at the individuals' behest and with their priorities in mind. A third related theme is the suggestion that the effective deployment of such behaviour enhances perceptions of control over one's career. Out of these definitions which have been offered, no one single definition can be considered to summarise all of these themes. King argues that the nearest conclusive definition is probably that of Feij et al.
(1995), although the idea of enhancement to control is implied rather than made explicit. She adds that for this reason the operation of the definition of careers self-management will be drawn from these three themes of behaviour, plus self-interest and enhancement to control.