Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- PART I CURRENT APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF CAREERS
- PART II NEW IDEAS FOR THE STUDY OF CAREERS
- Introduction to Part II
- 11 People as sculptors versus sculpture: the roles of personality and personal control in organizations
- 12 Work, stress, and careers: a preventive approach to maintaining organizational health
- 13 Re-visioning career concepts: a feminist invitation
- 14 Reciprocity at work: the separate, yet inseparable possibilities for individual and organizational development
- 15 Career improvisation in self-designing organizations
- 16 Organization career systems and employee misperceptions
- 17 Blue-collar careers: meaning and choice in a world of constraints
- 18 A political perspective on careers: interests, networks, and environments
- 19 Rites of passage in work careers
- 20 Pin stripes, power ties, and personal relationships: the economics of career strategy
- 21 Rhetoric in bureaucratic careers: managing the meaning of management success
- 22 The internal and external career: a theoretical and cross-cultural perspective
- PART III FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAREER THEORY
- Name index
- Subject index
22 - The internal and external career: a theoretical and cross-cultural perspective
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- PART I CURRENT APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF CAREERS
- PART II NEW IDEAS FOR THE STUDY OF CAREERS
- Introduction to Part II
- 11 People as sculptors versus sculpture: the roles of personality and personal control in organizations
- 12 Work, stress, and careers: a preventive approach to maintaining organizational health
- 13 Re-visioning career concepts: a feminist invitation
- 14 Reciprocity at work: the separate, yet inseparable possibilities for individual and organizational development
- 15 Career improvisation in self-designing organizations
- 16 Organization career systems and employee misperceptions
- 17 Blue-collar careers: meaning and choice in a world of constraints
- 18 A political perspective on careers: interests, networks, and environments
- 19 Rites of passage in work careers
- 20 Pin stripes, power ties, and personal relationships: the economics of career strategy
- 21 Rhetoric in bureaucratic careers: managing the meaning of management success
- 22 The internal and external career: a theoretical and cross-cultural perspective
- PART III FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAREER THEORY
- Name index
- Subject index
Summary
INTRODUCTION
While psychologists say that “people make careers,” sociologists claim that “careers make people” and the career literature shows a dearth of cross-referencing between these two frames of reference (Van Maanen, 1977:8).
Indeed, theory and research on careers have developed along two dominant, independent and sometimes conflicting streams of thought over the last fifty years. As discussed by Gysbers (1984), these may be characterized as (1) primarily psychological in nature (e.g., self-development within a career, career motivation, career orientation) and (2) primarily sociological in nature (e.g., career paths and occupational streams, career stages within organizations, the nature of various occupations in society).
It has also been observed that traditional epistemologies that place stock in observable, structural, and measurable social facts are increasingly set in contrast to cognitive (often phenomenological) views that, focusing on language, sense making and symbolic processes, proceed from a premise that reality is largely socially constructed (Berger and Luckmann, 1966; Pfeffer, 1981:1–52). Examining the social reality of careers may in fact provide an opportunity to achieve some degree of integration between these contrasting perspectives.
As articulated in this volume by Barley (Chapter 3) on the Chicago School of Sociology, careers link individuals to the social structure by fusing the objective and the subjective, the observable facts and the individuals' interpretation of their experience. The dialectical nature of career dynamics calls for an epistemological framework that can address this ontological duality in a comprehensive manner. It is suggested here that the concept of culture may actually provide such a framework.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Handbook of Career Theory , pp. 454 - 472Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989
- 67
- Cited by