Career Success.pdf

Table of Contents Introduction

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Success Criterion Deficiency

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Multi-Dimensional Measurement

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Subjective Success Criteria Types Other-Referent and Self-Referent Criteria

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Career Success Factors Career Type and Contextual & Individual Factors Four Categories Predictors Person Organizational Fit Cultural Differences Family Support, Referent Choice, Career Stage, Life Events

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Method Participants Data Collection and Analysis Types of Subjective Success Criteria

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Discussion of Findings Implications Limitations

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Conclusion

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References

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Appendix A

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Introduction Career success has been defined as collective outcome as a result of one’s work experiences over time (Seibert, Crant & Kraimer, 1999). Career success is an interest not only to individuals, but to organizations too as individual personal success may ultimately contribute to the organizational success. How individual conceptualize their career success can be understand from individual level (e.g., sociodemographic status, personality traits, etc.) and organizational level (e.g., corporate culture, personorganizational-fit, industry sectors, etc.) and they are interdependence. It is not just financial rewards, occupational prestige and job satisfaction that individual are looking for, and life satisfaction does plays along. Modern Career is progressively becoming boundary less, hence a wider range of criteria has to be considered in different career context and in-depth interview may disclose further on the neglected aspect of career success.

Success Criterion Deficiency Many studies have identified that success criterion has been operationalized in a deficient manner and success criterion can be affected by a number of factors, not just objective criteria alone. Objective career success is characterized by objective achievements (E.g.: pay, promotions and occupational prestige) which have been acknowledged as the signs of career success (Nicholson, 2000). Organizational changes such as the effect of globalization on organizations has accountable to have moderated the importance of a few conventional objective indicators of career success like prospect for promotion and desirability of the job have been reduced (Reitman & Schneer, 2003). It is perplexing that pay and promotions keep on being connected as a basis of career success despite the fact that “the shortcomings of salary as a measure of man’s progress are well known” (Hilton & Dill, 1962). Contaminated (i.e., above one’s control such as labor market conditions) and deficient are the two key limitations on performance evaluation of pay and promotion (Campbell, Dunnette, Lawler, & Weick, 1970). Objective achievements are not all that individual look for from their career, but can be subjective outcomes like work-life balance (Finegold & Mohrman, 2001), a sense of meaning, purpose and input from their job (Hall, 2002). Subjective career success is characterized by one’s values,

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feelings, perceptions and preferences about their career. Job satisfaction cannot be used as a one and only substitute for it.

Multi-Dimensional Measurement Measure subjective success criteria along with objective achievements can be dealt with the deficiency of objective success criteria. And to improve the subjective career success measurement, social comparison cannot be neglected because an appropriate examination of career success goes to the heart of how the societies function (Frank & Cook, 1995). Knowing what employees want (e.g., work-life balance, appreciation), knowing who is (e.g., different industry sectors’ individual may conceptualize different career success meaning: teachers, business owner, actors), and knowing how to adopt more qualitative methods (e.g., in-depth interviews regarding the meaning of career success), these three elements are established by Parker and Arthur (2002) as a measurement for subjective career success. Both other-referent and self-referent criteria should be taken into consideration while assessing subjective career success in order to enhance the precision of the results obtained.

Subjective Success Criteria Types Other-Referent and Self-Referent Criteria There is considerable hypothetical and observational source to trust that other-referent and self-referent criteria are relative to each other and are drawn from objective and subjective domains when individuals access their career outcomes (Heslin, 2005). Other-referent success criteria refer to comparing the achievements and expectations of others. Whereas self-referent success criteria reflect personal aspirations and self-satisfaction which act according to individual standard much more greatly than material rewards (Hall, 2002). Self-referent criteria may likewise relate to objective criteria (e.g.: one’s career objective is to be a Vice President by the age of 36).

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Career Success Factors Career Type and Contextual & Individual Factors Both contextual factors (e.g.: winner-take-all markets and organizational culture), likewise individual factors (e.g.: work orientation and goal orientation) are appeared to be the possibly impact of criteria that are most significant to individuals when they assess their career success (Gunz and Heslin, 2005). Implicit Person Theory (IPT) which is about one’s ability and personality plays a major role in affecting one’s goal orientation. For example, performance goal pursuer is typically an entity theorist which generally has a low self-referent criteria in consideration for career success (Heslin, 2003). Career type (i.e., linear and non-linear) is an interaction variable between contextual and individual requirement which may influence the different types of subjective success criteria. For example, organization downsizing and outsourcings will have an impact on linear career success like employees’ corporate ladder advancement is diminished, and employee might even transform into a non-linear career if they experienced adversity or tragedy happened to them.

Four Categories Predictors Based on Ng et al. (2005) meta-analysis study, there are four predictors sets of career success have been categorized as: human capital (e.g. education, experiences), organizational sponsorship (e.g. support, learning and development opportunity), socio-demographic status (e.g. gender, marital status, age) and individual differences (e.g. ability, personality traits). Their findings has proposed that organizational sponsorship and individual differences are more relevant to subjective career success, as they influence individual’s psychological well-being. Individual’s cognitive ability, openness to experience, proactivity, conscientiousness, extroversion and locus of control are positively correlated with career success. Whereas, human capital and socio-demographic status are more relevant to objective career success. Arnania-Kepuladze (2010) revealed that women tend to take interpersonal relations, family, surroundings, and lifestyle into consideration for their career success assessment. On the other hand, desire for power, status, personal achievement, self-assertion and independence-oriented are the traits that can be found in men. Therefore, men and women are tend to construct a different meaning of career success. 3

Person Organizational Fit Bretz and Judge (1994) study has shown that Person Organizational Fit (POF) was a substantial predictor of both objective and subjective achievements. POF should influence not only on satisfaction and tenure with the organization, but also measure of pay and job level attained in career success. Individual who fit into the organizational environment would display higher job involvement, greater commitment and higher job satisfaction level which result low turnover, more practical adaptive manner and eventually contribute to the organizational success. This “fit” will lead to organization’s sponsorship decisions and provide indications to employees that they are appreciated. Having an appealing corporate culture, career development opportunity, supervisor support, strong value system, positive social network and high autonomy organization might attract and retain the employees which in turn influence their "fit" level, their perception and meaning of career success.

Cultural Differences With the growth of globalization, today’s social space of career has gone worldwide, and therefore culture does play a part to stimulus and shape one’s career objective. Briscoe, Hall, & Mayrhofer (2011) has defined culture “consists of language, ideas, beliefs, customs, taboos, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, work of art, rituals and symbol”. Individuals from different beliefs, languages, institutions, etc. will have diverse life experiences. The cultural diversity can be explained based on Hofstede’s (2001) five cultural dimensions (i.e., power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term orientation). Organizational values and individual’s career preferences are shape by these cultural dimensions. For example, a leader who perceived high power distance, may not give empowerment to the employees, therefore low level of autonomy may result in low job satisfaction. Employee who is an individualist might lose connections with other colleagues, as they focus on personal goals, social recognition and career advancement. On the other hand, collectivist employee demonstrate higher commitment, with group responsibility and may expect support from others in the organization. There is a need for the organization to identify and understand the cultural differences in order to prepare a set of practices to facilitate the career development among employees.

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Family Support, Referent Choice, Career Stage, Life Events Family relationship may provide the basis for subjective career success and it can either be leading the individual to be motivated and self-efficacy of their work or demoralize them. Who they use as a referent choice especially on subjective aspect also need to be examined. When individuals at different career stage, their career success meaning tends to evolve too. Life events such as marriage, illness, bankruptcy, etc. can cause an individual either become more resilience or less resilience, whether individual can face down reality, search for meaning and continually improvise. All these factors are playing a role on how individuals conceptualize their career success.

Method Participants This semi-structured interview, conducted in University of Kent was part of the primary qualitative evidence gathered on how students in the university conceptualize their career success. Five students consist of three males and two females from different countries have been selected.

Data Collection and Analysis The objective was to discover and understand the career success meaning from the participants with different backgrounds. The Interview session was tape-recorded after obtaining consent from the participants. Demographic characteristics of participants were gathered and as shown in Table 1.

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Table 1 Participant Code P1

Age

Gender Male

Marital Status Single

24

P2

Nationality

Current Education MSc in International Banking Finance

Portuguese

27

Female

Single

Thai

MSc in Finance and Management

P3

24

Male

Single

Ecuadorian

P4

25

Male

Single

Pakistani

P5

30

Female

Single

Singaporean

MSc in Finance and Management MSc in Applied Actuarial Science MSc in Finance and Management

Previous Job Designation Corporate Finance Trainee (9 months working experience) Assistance Finance Analyst (3 years working experience) N/A Risk Analyst (3 years working experience) Payroll Executive (7 years working experience)

Types of Subjective Success Criteria Participants were asked to response to the following questions as it will add to the understanding of how they view career success: -

Share some background (i.e.: family, work).

-

What does career success mean to you?

-

What would it take for you to consider yourself as being successful?

The analysis of participants’ responses are grouped into self-referent and other-referent criteria that drawn from both objective and subjective domains as shown in Table 2.

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Table 2 (Please refer to Appendix A for participants’ career success definitions) Objective Domain Subjective Domain Self-Referent Domain

a) Objective/Self-Referent b) Subjective/Self-Referent Emphasis on pay rather than title My goals are work life balance, learning (P5) path is important, must be satisfied with my job (P1) Like to challenge myself, don’t mind to invest on courses to develop myself further – learning goals (P2, P5) Work-life balance still important (P4) A sense of achievements, help the needy, make a difference (P5)

Other-Referent

c) Objective/Other-Referent

Domain

Pay is important, progression (P1)

look

d) Subjective/Other-Referent for

Would like to see myself in progress (P2) Pay, title and upward advancement are important (P3) I see work as a way to get the money I need to live my life (P4)

Discussion of Findings Pay, work life balance and learning path are the three most mentioned career success related elements among participants. Other factors such as education is also a factor that influencing their career success. Partly due to their home countries’ company entry requirements which is emphasizing more on the qualifications. Personal history like family educational background also seemed as an internal influencing. The national cultural differences doesn’t seem to be influencing one another in a basic need to succeed. P3 is an entity theorist which adopted only other-referent criteria for his career success assessment and only one participant mentioned about the sense of achievements and making a difference, this could be due to the age factor and experiences.

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Implications Objective/other-referent and subjective/self-referent domains are found in this study to explain significant in overall career success. Those in early career stage seems to value objective achievements, organizational learning and development more rather than about making a difference. Employer should not consider one-size-fits-all approach but accommodate accordingly to early and mid/late career stage employees, have to think about the POF factor as it eventually beneficial to the organization.

Limitations This qualitative study was based on a small sample, all are students, not much working experience, and thus it is rather hard to evaluate a substantial results with other possible career success variables.

Conclusion Apart from the limitations, this findings has highlight the importance of human capital, organizational sponsorship, socio-demographic and individual differences variables in understanding career success. Other factors also need to be examine in order to be more completely understand the complicated phenomenon of career success. And it can be conclude that most individuals do assess their career success relative to both self-referent and other-referent criteria.

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References Arnania-Kepuladze, T. (2010) ‘Gender stereotypes and gender feature of job motivation: differences or similarity?’ Problems and Perspectives in Management, Vol 8, issue 2. Bretz, J., Robert D. and Judge, T.A. (1994) ‘Person–Organization fit and the theory of work adjustment: Implications for satisfaction, tenure, and career success’, Journal of Vocational Behavior, 44(1), pp. 32–54. Briscoe, J.P., Hall, D.T. and Mayrhofer, W. (2011) Careers around the world: Individual and contextual perspectives. New York: Routledge. Campbell, J. P., Dunnette, M. D., Lawler, E. E., & Weick, K. E. (1970). Managerial behavior, performance and effectiveness. New York: McGraw-Hill. Finegold, D., & Mohrman, S. A. (2001). What do employees really want? The perception vs. the reality. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland. Frank, R. H., & Cook, P. J. (1995). The winner-take-all society: How more and more Americans compete for fewer and bigger prizes, encouraging economic waste, income inequality, and an impoverished cultural life. New York: Free Press. Gunz, H.P. and Heslin, P.A. (2005) ‘Reconceptualizing career success’, Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26, 105–111. Hall, D. T. (2002). Careers in and out of organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Heslin, P.A. (2003) ‘Self- and other-referent criteria of career success’, Journal of Career Assessment, 11(3), pp. 262–286. Heslin, P.A. (2005) ‘Conceptualizing and evaluating career success’, Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26(2), pp. 113–136. Hilton, T. L., & Dill,W. R. (1962). Salary growth as a criterion of career progress. Journal of Applied Psychology, 46, 153–158. Hofstede, G. (2001) ‘Culture’s recent consequences: Using dimension scores in theory and research’, International Journal of Cross Cultural Management, 1(1), pp. 11–17. Ng, T.W.H., Eby, L.T., Sorensen, K.L. and Feldman, D.C. (2005) ‘Predictors of objective and subjective career success: A meta-analysis’, Personnel Psychology, 58(2), pp. 367–408. Nicholson, N. (2000). Motivation–selection–connection: an evolutionary model of career development. In M. Peiperl, M. Arthur, R. Goffee, & T. Morris (Eds.), Career frontiers: New concepts of working life (pp. 54–75). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Parker, P. and Arthur, M.B. (2002) ‘Bringing "New Science” Into careers research. Management, 5, 105-125. http://www.cairn.info/revue-management-2002-1-page-105.htm Reitman, F., & Schneer, J. A. (2003). The promised path: a longitudinal study of managerial careers. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 18, 60–75. Seibert, S.E., Crant, J.M. and Kraimer, M.L. (1999) ‘Proactive personality and career success’, Journal of Applied Psychology, 84(3), pp. 416–427. 9

Appendix A P1 Pay is important, but do not preferred a stagnant/routine job. My goal is to learn as much as I can and then progress. And preferred work-life balance, so that have time for gym, hang out with friends. Not work till midnight like others (my friends) although can earn more. Might compare the pay with peers (colleagues, same position level). Education and ongoing learning are important to shape my career success. It can make me go further although it is not always the case. It is part of the success, but it is not a main thing, the important one is must be happy with the job. But my career success might change after I have gained certain working experience. My grandma was a judge, mother is a teacher, father is an engineer, and siblings obtained master degree qualifications too. P2 Future is important for me. My bachelor degree was major in English, and now I am doing Finance Management because I want to move myself into a career in finance. Would like to take up more challenging job, learn new things, pay is not the main factors for me as long as it meet my minimum requirement. Would like to see the progression, where I can be in the next level. I don’t mind to spend money to learn new things, acquire new knowledge, and spend more time on the things I think it is worth it. I don’t compare it with my friends who is achieving more, but will use it as a motivation, to push myself to do more. Most of my friends and even my sister has obtained the master degree qualifications. Thailand culture also valued people that who have higher qualification, and the university that we are graduated from. And mostly people in Thailand will have master degree provided they have time and fund to do so. P3 I am looking for higher pay, title and upward advancement in the company. I don’t mind to work extra hours in the first few years to get what I want. Suffer now, enjoy later. Learning curve is also important, and it really depends on the company I am getting in. And I am looking at starting up my business in financial sector too, now just need to finish the study, get the working experience and see what I can take away from the experience. P4 Looking at the whole remuneration package (pay, learning and development) that the company can offer. I will not preferred to work extra hours for long term, I want life. I see work as a way to get the money I need to live my life, I love travelling. I am fairly flexible, depends on the option I end up getting. Not necessary must be in the top 5 company. If working for an amazing company, I am willing to let go something like my personal life for some time, but definitely not for long term. I do believed that productivity will drop if getting too much long hours of work. Most people have master degree qualification in my home country. Corporations do look at your qualifications, although bachelor degree still can allow you to get a job, but master degree in any field is more valued by the corporation. P5 I will look for higher pay. Title is not really matter for me as long as I can earn more and get a sense of achievement from my job. I want to have my own spare time to do the things I like. Can be yoga, gym, and attend some classes to gain some knowledge or skills. And this knowledge doesn’t need to be related to my job, I would preferred it to be my personal development kind of thing. I’d love to see myself to be involve more in voluntary activity, I would like to help the needy, make a difference to the less fortunate society. And if I have the chance, I would like to run my own business, and money is what I am aiming for, after that, I can do what I want and love to do (travelling, volunteering, practice martial art, etc.)

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Available from: https://geert-hofstede.com/portugal.html [Accessed 09 November 2016]

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