2..2.2 TIPOS DE APLICACIONES MÓVILES

2.2 Overview of Career Related Theories

A significant amount of literature has been published on careers with various definitions and interpretations of 'career' being offered (Arthur et al., 1999; Hall, 1996; Herriot and Pemberton, 1996; King, et al., 2005; Mirvis and Hall, 1994; Peiperl, Arthur, Gofee and Morris, 2000).

Arthur, Hall and Lawrence (1989) argue that the concept of career cannot be expressed in terms of any particular person or discipline, listing eight disciplines to which the study of careers benefits and contributes: psychology, social psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics,

political science, history and geography. Khapova and Kortov (2007) state that in Western career literature, the most cited career definition is:

"The unfolding sequence of a person's work experiences over time." (Arthur, Hall and Lawrence, 1989, p. 8).

The term did not appear in academic literature until Frank Parsons wrote about it in his work in 1909 (McDaniels and Gyspers, 1992). Parsons (1909) used the terms 'occupation' and 'vocation' interchangeably and in the subsequent decade the term 'career' emerged in the literature. Parsons argued for an organised plan of vocational guidance, which is still present even now, after some modifications. He was an advocate of social reform, calling for fairness and equal opportunities.

He advocated a number of actions or steps to help the individual to choose a career based on his tastes and aptitudes by giving him or her information on careers that were available within his or her community. In 1908 Parsons gave a lecture that had a significant impact on the development of vocational guidance and in 1909 published his famous book 'Choosing a Vocation'. He suggested three steps to help the individual choose a career:

 To know and understand one's individual aptitudes, abilities, dispositions, sources of power, boundaries and so on.

 To know the requirements and conditions for success in each profession or group of occupations, and the advantages and disadvantages, opportunities and benefits offered and so forth.

 To take a conscious decision based on the earning potential and the match between the facts learned from the first two steps.

A number of researchers and authors have recognised that these three steps proposed by Parsons have had a great influence on the way vocational guidance has developed. In addition, Parsons' views led to considerable interest in vocational guidance in the US.

Brewer (1922, p. 290) defines life career as:

"The occupation of a person; that which offers him opportunity for progress and satisfaction in his work."

The twentieth century witnessed a significant interest in the concept of career. The first to perceive career as a total life experience was the Chicago School of Sociology which focussed attention on career and attempted to explore it from a social perspective. They saw career as something beyond the conventional idea of employees working for pay, recognising it instead as a concept constructed by the individual (Hughes, 1937). Thus Hughes defines career as:

"The moving perspective in which persons orient themselves with reference to the social order, and of the typical sequences and concatenation of office." (Hughes, 1937, pp. 409-10).

The significance of time shapes this definition rather than any static work arrangement and it ignores any constraints regarding where people work and how different people characterise career success. It assumes that career success for any individual is about upward movement in an organisational structure within one organisation accompanied in each case by wider responsibilities. The concept embraces not only upward but horizontal and in some specific cases downward movement within familiar organisational, occupational, industrial or national contexts as well as movement between any of these contexts (Arthur, Khapova and Wilderom, 2005).

In the early 1950s, ideas such as career development and choice began to appear in the matter of professional growth and career choice and have contributed very significantly to the development of vocational guidance. One of these is Super Theory (Super, 1957) leading to an increased attention by researchers into vocational guidance and the conduct of numerous research projects in this field.

Whereas there are some variances of opinion on what constitutes a career, the aspect dominating most portions of career studies is the idea that career contains an external in addition to an internal dimension. Hughes (1937) states these two dimensions as the objective (external) career, and the subjective (internal) career. According to Hughes (1937, p. 404) internal career explains

the subjective career as "the moving perspective in which a person sees his life as a whole and interprets the meaning of his attributes, actions and the things that happen to him". However, Sparrow and Hiltrop (1996) argue that internal career is characterised based on career orientations, career anchors, balance or decisions between personal and professional life and advancement throughout psychological life stages. Derr and Laurent (1989) argue that internal career suggests people make a career, perceive career from psychological and personal standpoints, and concentrate on self-development, career orientation, motivation and psychological change that occurs and, finally, the main question for people who hold this notion is "What do I want from work, given my perceptions of who I am and what is possible?". The internal aspect is subjective and it is regarding the individuals' internal value and assessment of their career, observed against aspects that are significant to that individual (Van Maanen, 1977).

Individuals have unalike career ambitions, and place diverse values on things similar to income, employment security, work location, status, success in various jobs, access to learning, and the balance of significance between personal life and the job (Van Maanen, 1977).

Hughes (1937, p. 404) argues that external career is objective. He defines the objective/external career as directly observable, measurable and verifiable by an independent third party. The external career concentrates on the objective, macro, institutional, or external realm. It relates the sequence of positions of offices which an individual occupies and is apparent by external observers (Hall, 1976). External career suggests that careers make people; it examines careers from sociological and organisational perspectives, concentrates on career paths, occupation streams, career stages within the organisations and the nature of occupations in society. The main question for people who hold an external career is "What is possible and realistic in my organisation and occupation, given my perception of the world of work?".

It is realised here that the discussion of Hughes (1937) regarding the impact of internal and external factors and what individuals want from it to meet their personal needs is obviously the pre-cursor to more emphasis on career self-management in very early years.

Other theories followed; for instance Holland (1985), contributing to an important theoretical framework which has been the subject of discussion in many symposiums and scientific journals.

It developed an occupational classification system that categorises six personality types: realistic (related to outdoor and technical interest), investigative (intellectual, scientific), artistic (creative, expressive in literary, artistic, musical or other areas, social (interest in working with people), enterprising (interest in persuasion, leadership) and conventional (enjoyment of detail, computation activity, high degree of structure).

The debate over the meaning of career continued on into the 1970s and 1980s, some scholars defining it as occupation, others arguing that it embraces almost all life's activities. The National Vocational Guidance Association (NVGA) constructed its own definition of career as:

"Time-extended working out of a purposeful life pattern through work undertaken by the individual." (National Vocational Guidance Association, 1973, p. 7).

The significant shift was made by the beginning of 1970 when the boundary of time was breached and career was perceived as happening throughout the lifespan rather than in the occupational moment. Super and Bohn (1970, p. 115) distinguished between occupation "what one does" and career "the course pursued over a period of time". The major transformation of the concept of the career goes back to the 1970s when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Arthur, 1994) tried to make a single definition of the term 'career' and put forward the notion of the career without boundaries. The objective was to create a definition of 'career' that would cover all types of worker. In combining 'Chicago' sociology (Hughes, 1958) and 'Columbia' educational psychology (Super, 1957), they applied four conditions to defining career (Arthur 1994). The first was that it be applied to all staff and all organisations; secondly, that it imply a time dimension, vital in the relationship between organisation and individual to reflect progress in the job for instance; thirdly, it establishes that a 'career' is not the personal property of anyone and that the study of careers must have an interdisciplinary dimension; and, finally it is the portrayal of a career from both a subjective and an objective perspective.

During the 1990s, writers began to see 'career' as something less driven by organisations and more as a universal 'given' aspect of human society. Mirvis and Hall (1994) argue that the 'new' concept of career is versatile and the 'new' concept of success is psychological. Their perspective

is to separate the notion of career from any particular organisation or even from being tied to paid employment but universally wide in scope, for example, 'boundaryless' (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996). Since that time there has also been an advancement of the idea of career mobility which requires the individual to be proactive in managing his or her career. Those who constructed the concept of the boundaryless career believe that this type might encourage employees to be independent from their employer; to change their job or occupation to get experience through external networks or information; and to perceive career as something independent from the organisation (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996).

But, despite evidence that boundaryless career is replaced by organisational career, other subsequent studies found the opposite. For example, in the study conducted by Granrose and Baccili (2006) exploring the perceived psychological contracts between organisations and employees that are relevant to careers, they found that characteristics of a traditional psychological contract, job security and mobility up the career ladder are still important to these employees. These results are consistent with the McDonald, Brown, and Bradley (2005) findings that many managers in a sample of Australian managers still want job security and upward mobility. In a qualitative study of New Zealand managers, Walton and Mallon (2004) found that the primary career themes of their qualitative study of managers consisted of learning new skills, advancement, enjoyment, change, personal development and occupation identification; several of these are similar to the findings of the significance rating of the managers in the Granrose and Baccili (2006) study.

In addition, although the boundaryless metaphor has succeeded in informing researches and theories (Briscoe, Hall, and DeMuth, 2006), it is increasingly receiving various critiques (Gunz et al., 2000; Pringle and Mallon, 2003; Arnold and Cohen, 2008; Rodrigues and Guest, 2010;

Inkson, Gunz, Ganesh, Roper, 2012). Possibly, one major anxiety in this aspect is regarding the normativity that is associated with this notion (Arnold and Cohen, 2008; Gunz et al., 2000).

Career researchers, specifically, illustrate that boundaryless career is the best approach that helps people to succeed in their career and by so doing they ignore the possible disadvantage of physical mobility.

Gunz et al. (2000) argues that careers have not become boundaryless by any complete means.

However, in contrast, the nature of career boundaries is becoming significantly more complex with multiple facets. They add that what has been occurring within the previous two decades has been raising permeability of organisational boundaries, resulting in dissimilar kinds of boundaries which become significant. They argue that pure boundarylessness is possibly better viewed as a unique case; a limiting condition which works perfectly under certain unique circumstances might not importantly work for others. They assert that boundaries of some sorts are inevitable; for instance, they are necessary if social actors are to create a sense of the world and their place in it. They argue that:

"The trouble with the boundaryless hypothesis is that it is still just that: a hypothesis."

(Gunz et al., 2000, p. 27).

However, even if it can be established that organisational boundaries are evaporating, it does not mean that all boundaries are vanishing. Current arguments also turned the spotlight on the permeability of organisation boundaries, which fails to tackle the complexity of contemporary career (Rodrigues and Guest, 2010). Those authors argue that the postulation of collapse of the traditional career model is not supported by evidence and visible organisation boundaries are necessary and important to a career. Such a belief contradicts the notion that states that the 'boundaryless career' is one of the most important factors for a contemporary career. They added that boundaries are more important and complex at the present than in the past (Pringle and Mallon, 2003). Inkson et al. (2012) suggests limits to the value of the boundaryless careers concept. These are: 1) the employment of 'boundaryless career' as a label; 2) unclear and multiple definitions of boundaryless career; 3) overemphasis on personal agency in boundaryless career writing; 4) the normalisation of boundaryless careers; and 5) the deficiency of empirical support for the claimed prevalence of boundaryless careers. They also argue that although boundaryless careers studies have a great impact on pushing career studies towards the direction of innovation, they have been unsuccessful in defining their concept, have overvalued agency and undervalued the institutional effects, have ignored and derided organisational careers, and have assumed the prevalence of boundaryless careers where the evidence says something different. They add that they have been unsuccessful in theorising career boundaries sufficiently.

They suggest that career studies must take into consideration the sociology and social anthropology of work, which have much to supply in respect of facilitating the appreciation of the creation and crossing of career boundaries.

The protean career (Hall, 1976; 1996) is another notion of a contemporary career. The person-driven protean career concept constructed by Hall implies that individuals have control and freedom to select the career they desire. The individual endeavours to apply 'self-control and free choice' (Hall, 2002) relating to their own career but there is a much tighter connection between work, learning and career development than was considered 25 years ago. Hall comments, also, on the fact that individuals have reduced their attachment to a specific organisation or job with well-constructed associations to networks of different types, outside of work. The term Protean draws on the mythology of the Greek god Proteus, who could change his shape at will. In recent years, it has been applied to a career orientation that reveals the degree to which an individual espouses frequent changes to his or her career (Briscoe and Hall, 2006) and it is called Protean because it changes shape to accommodate the individual's personal and work circumstances (Mirvis and Hall 1996). Hall (1976, p. 201), defines the protean career as follows:

"The protean career is a process which the person, not the organisation, is managing. It consists of all the person's varied experiences in education, training, work in several organisations, changes in occupational field and so on. The protean career is not what happens to the person in any one organisation. The person's own personal career choices and search for self-fulfilment are the unifying or integrative elements in his or her life.

The criterion of success is internal (psychological success), not external. In short, the protean career is shaped more by the individual than by the organisation and may be redirected from time to time to meet the needs of that person."

The protean is a self-directed orientation to the career that represents independence from external influences; thus the term has dominated the career literature since 1976 (Hall, 1976). A protean career orientation is a must for the current generation of graduates (Sargent and Domberger, 2007). In a protean career orientation, individuals are self-directed and motivated internally by their own values as they experience education, training, employment, leisure and family life

(Hall, 2002; 2004). It is generated through subjective perception about which career offers direction toward more genuine definitions of self and success (Hall, 2002; Hall and Chandler, 2005). As a result, the organisational responsibility is to provide suitable opportunities for people to learn new skills and to form networks appropriate to their current jobs and that could help them find new jobs or achieve personal growth (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996; Hall and Moss, 1998). Hall (1996, p. 8) has this to say of the protean career in the twenty-first century:

"The career is dead - long live the career! Such is the mixed message regarding careers that we are carrying into the next millennium. The business environment is highly turbulent and complex, resulting in terribly ambiguous and contradictory career signals.

Individuals, perhaps in self-defence, are becoming correspondingly ambivalent about their desires and plans for career development. The traditional psychological contract in which an employee entered a firm, worked hard, performed well, was loyal and committed, and thus received ever-greater rewards and job security, has been replaced by a new contract based on continuous learning and identity change, guided by the search for what Herb Shepard called the 'path with a heart'".

He concludes that the protean career is alive whereas the organisation career is dead. According to Hall (1996), a contemporary career contract is the primary factor for careers in the new millennium and he summarises the protean career in Table 2.1 below:

The Protean Career of the 21^st Century

 The Goal: Psychological success

 The Career is managed by the person, not the organisation

 The Career is a lifelong series of identity changes and continuous learning

 "Career age" counts, not chronological age

 The organisation provides o Work challenges o Relationships

 Development is not necessarily:

o formal training o retraining o upward mobility

 Profile for Success:

o From know-how...to learn-how

o From job security……….to employability

o From organisational careers………to protean careers o From the work Self………to the whole Self

Table 2.1 Protean careers of the 21st century (Hall, 1996, pp. 8-16)

There are two points of view, one supports Hall's contention regarding career death and vice versa. Baruch (2006) states that; the two impressions about depicting career as traditional (for example, organisational career) and new (i.e. individual career) are unrealistic. For instance the first contention portrays past organisations as rigid hierarchical structures and operating within stable environments and thus careers are predictable, secure and linear. Conversely to the first contention is the one which assumes that the current organisations system is in a mode of challenge, all dynamic, total fluidity and therefore unpredictable, vulnerable and multidirectional. He argues that authors in both depictions are extremely exaggerated. He adds that although many organisations shift from traditional to new, many organisations still perform within a stable environment and adopt a traditional career system organised by the organisation.

Gutteridge, Leibowitz, and Shore (1993) argue that the focus of career has shifted to the organisation which was, in the past, the major responsibility of individuals (Arthur et al., 1989).

More recently in this aspect for example Lips-Wiersma and Hall (2007) argue that organisational career development (i.e. career management organised by employer) is not dead. They point out that, during the organisational change, individuals take responsibility for career development and, at the same time, the organisation becomes more active in employees' career development.

Those authors raise question like "Is the organisational career dead?" (Lips-Wiersma and Hall 2007, p. 771) and state that recent writing supports the idea that career field has moved beyond organisations to flexible and individual approaches like protean, boundaryless and corporate

careers (Arthur et al., 1999; Baruch and Peiperl, 2000; Hall et al., 2002). In this aspect Baruch and Peiperl (2000, p. 347) state that:

"The bulk of research in the careers area has moved beyond organisations to focus on more flexible, individual models."

Being responsible means to achieve personal goals that are valuable to the individuals rather than

Being responsible means to achieve personal goals that are valuable to the individuals rather than