The use of traditional and non-traditional career theories to understand the young's relationship with new technologies.
| Autor | Veloso, Elza Fatima Rosa |
| Cargo | Report |
-
Introduction
The advancement of technologies has led to new thinking about the future of careers. The control that individuals could potentially have over the macroeconomic and institutional forces affecting their job is increasingly smaller. These forces include environmental changes as well as the acceleration of globalization and technological advances (Hall et al., 2018). Technology has been transforming the way people manage both their job and other spheres of life (Haeger and Lingham, 2014). At the same time, Trevisan (2014) states that "the machines of the Information Technology (IT) age increasingly occupy the space of humans" (p. 94).
The evident gap in the recent international literature, made explicit by Barley et al. (2017), makes it clear that we need to study the association between the theme of careers and technology. These authors explain that the nature of employment has been changing in the last four decades and will continue to change in the 21st century, but they were surprised by the lack of attention to this phenomenon in the studies. In the view of Barley et al. (2017), it is even difficult to know whether technologies change the nature of work, by creating more flexible jobs and organizations, or if, on the contrary, organizations transform and change the way people work. These authors suspect that both phenomena occur simultaneously.
Based on these observations, we see the importance of analyzing the pressure from new technologies on the careers of young university students from a career theory perspective; and so this was the goal of the study presented in this paper, which involved 123 students in their last year of an Administration course at a private university in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil. The relevance of the sample selected for this survey lies in the fact mentioned by Haeger and Lingham (2014) that various generations coexist in the work environment and youth are more experienced with technology, thereby affecting the older generations.
To achieve the goals of this study, we considered the perspective of Arthur et al. (1999), who suggest dividing career theories between traditional and non-traditional. According to these authors, while traditional theories focus on the connection between career and personal fulfillment by considering a career as "the series of jobs worked by a person throughout their life" (p. 3), non-traditional theories emphasize "self-organization of one's career," which now needs to adapt to the environment (p. 10).
Below, we present the theoretical framework underpinning our field research. In the same topic, we also present the hypotheses that guided our work. Our methods are explained in the subsequent item, followed by our results, our discussion thereof, and our conclusions.
-
Theoretical framework
To reflect on the topic of careers, it is important to note the statement from Hall (1986) that the scientific field dealing with this subject is both theoretical and practical. Arthur et al. (1999) emphasize that the perspective of time is valued in career theories, something that does not occur with other approaches toward work. Therefore, experiences and discoveries are important for these theories, and careers involve a series of steps that precede and influence them. For these authors, career theories are very important and can be divided into traditional theories and non-traditional theories. In Brazil, Veloso (2009, 2012) dealt with the evolution of career theories and addressed this division, which is dealt within detail below.
2.1 Traditional career theories
After the Second World War, according to Arthur et al. (1999), large companies' investments in career paths were focused on the need to obtain loyalty from their employees. At that time, human resource managers sought to allow companies to achieve their goals by cultivating a stable workforce. This is the environment of organizational careers, which are careers designed to reveal a single employment scenario (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996). The first career theories were created in this environment and were aimed toward Industrial Society.
Veloso (2009, 2012) highlights the fact that, according to Arthur et al. (1989), in the early 1970s, the conceptual bases for dealing with this subject were provided by vocational psychology and sociology. At this time, the major interest was in associating career cases with jobs in organizations.
Hall (1986) states that, until the 1980s, theoretical, research and practical work in the field of careers was focused on human resource planning. At that time, "nontraditional career movements," which involved lateral transfers, temporary contracts, transferring to non-management positions, and moving down the corporate hierarchy were all viewed as exceptions by organizations. This same author (Hall, 1996) explains that people were seldom concerned with pursuing their own professional paths and turned instead to common expectations focused on survival.
This traditional way of analyzing careers, according to Arthur et al. (1999), is represented by traditional theories, which do not consider the reciprocal effects between career episodes or between one's career and the environment--which, in this case, comprises the profit-making institutions with which an individual interacts. These authors present three approaches that are representative of this theoretical vision: developmental theories, the human resource management approach, and the vocational counseling approach.
With regard to developmental theories, Arthur et al. (1999) refer to Dalton and Thompson (1977) and explain that, in this approach, a career is made up of steps of ascension, and that this is one of the phases in the formation of a person's identity, the development of competencies, and the construction of relationships and leadership. In the human resources management approach, the use of individual talents is essential in the development of careers--career systems are planned out with several hierarchical levels, usually in paternalistic companies. At the same time, in the vocational counseling approach, the search for the "right person" for each job requires the use of vocational tests. These authors affirm that, in both the vocational guidance and the human resources management approaches, ideas about human potential are associated with inert subjects, whose development is influenced by corporate interests. They explain that one variation of the vocational counseling approach is Schein's (1978) career anchors, where prior professional experience allows the anchors guiding an individual's professional life to be identified.
Traditional theories are representative of organizational careers, which in turn reflect a time when, according to Arthur (2014), the ideal was to obtain a job a keep it for life. In addition to the reflections by Van Maanen (1977), who understands this type of career as those taken to evolve over time in the same organizational environment, Arthur highlights the definition by Schein (1978), who considered organizational careers as interactions between individuals and organizations over time, in a mutually profitable relationship. In Arthur's (2014) explanation, it is possible to understand the logic in the use of developmental theories and the human resources approach, highlighted by Arthur et al. (1999) in the study of careers, because when jobs were stable, organizations needed to plan their career system while considering the development of the people in the organizational environment.
Arthur (2014) explains that, in the context of organizational careers, career studies served as a natural extension of the field of organizational behavior, with lifelong jobs idealized across the board. In parallel, to explain traditional theories, Arthur et al. (1999) emphasizes the fact that the vocational counseling approach adopts factorial theories based on human typologies, which assume that a person's characteristics are stable throughout life. This allows people to be analyzed based on their initial professional experiences, and these analyses, in turn, highlight career anchors, which would determine their professional lives.
To elaborate on the concept of "career anchors," Schein (1990) conducted studies, beginning in the 1960s, in which he interviewed Master's students from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Further interviews were later held with the same participants after they completed the course. The purpose of the analyses was to understand the evolution of the careers and values present in professional activities.
Under the perspective of the anchors, a metaphor that elicits the notion of comfort and adjustment, individuals would return to professional practices that were consistent with their self-image when faced with occupations that were at odds with their goals and attitudes. In Schein's studies, an individual's professional inclination is so significant that it is not abandoned, even in a crisis situation. The anchors described by Schein (1996) are as follows.
Technical/functional competence (TFC). People with this anchor feel professionally fulfilled when facing technical challenges. They avoid managing others when it requires them to move away from their specialty.
General managerial competence (GMC). People with this anchor feel professionally fulfilled when they are responsible for results and identify their own work with the success of the organization.
Autonomy/independence (Al). People with this anchor are not very tolerant of rules established by other people or by the organization itself. These various forms of control are rejected and the professional seeks out roles that allow for flexibility.
Security/stability (SS). People with this anchor find the content of the work to be less important than their concern for guaranteed employment and the feeling of tranquility derived from professional stability.
Entrepreneurial creativity (EC). People...
Para continuar a ler
PEÇA SUA AVALIAÇÃOCOPYRIGHT GALE, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
