Theories organize data, compare events against reality and predict the future. Theories are conceptu

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• Theories organize data, compare events
  against reality and predict the future.
  Theories are conceptual modelsformal
  definition views theories as a cluster of
  relevant assumptions (based on empirical or
  rational information) that are systematically
  related to each otherthey contain reality and
  belief
• Kenneth Matheny
• The Function of Theory

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Shertzer and Stone (1980) identify four
functions of theories appropriate to our
discussion. They point out, first, that theory
summarizes and generalizes a body of information
second, that theory facilitates understanding and
explanation of complex phenomena third, that
theory serves as a predictive

• function by helping one to estimate what will
  happen under certain conditions and finally,
  that theory stimulates further research and fact
  finding. All these functions are necessary for
  the professional practitioner.

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• Unfortunately, many people have neither taken
  the time nor made the efforts to logically think
  through and plan their career development. An
  abundance of research (Fredrickson, 1982
  Isaacson, 1987 Zunker, 1986) indicates that the
  socioeconomic chance or accident theory is
  the single best descriptor of most peoples
  career development.

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Formal attributes of a good theory...
1. A good theory is clear Easily understood,
not self-contradicting and consistent with
facts. 2. A good theory is comprehensive
Explains the most data or behavior for the most
part. 3. A good theory is explicit Precise and
not vague statements that a reasonable person can
understand.

• 4. A good theory is parsimonious Explains as
  simply and clearly as possible.
• 5. A good theory generates research Tests its
  concepts in formal and public ways and makes
  those tests public.
• Joseph Schoelben

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General Classifications of Career Development
Theories

• 1. Trait and factor theory
• 2. Personality-based theories
• 3. Development theories
• 4. Social learning theory
• 5. Economic and sociological theories

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• Two major assumptions of trait and
• factor theory are (1) that individuals and
• job traits can be matched, and (2) that close
  matches are positively correlated with job
  success and satisfaction. These ideas are still
  part of our career development models today,
  e.g., see Nehaus, et. al text.

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• Early development of the trait and factor
  approach is attributed to Frank Parsons
  (1909)discover relationships between sets of
  data like attitudes, abilities, interests and
  requirements and conditions in various lines of
  work.

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• Trait and factor career development theory
  seeks to identify the pattern of worker traits
  and match that pattern against the known
  requirements of successful job performance. The
  crucial component of this approach is the joining
  of the concepts of individual differences and job
  analysis.

Issacson, 1999
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• D.G. Patterson and the Minnesota Employment
  Stabilization Research institute developed tests
  and job factorslater expanded by E.G.
  Williamsonfive assumptions basic to trait and
  factor theory
• 1. Vocational development is largely a cognitive
  process in which individuals use reasoning to
  arrive at decisions.
• 2. Occupational choice is a single event.
• 3. There is a single right goal for everyone
  making decisions about work.
• 4. A single type of person works in each job.
• 5. There is an occupational choice available to
  each individual

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• Roe (a clinical psychologist) studied artists
  and scientists to create basis of theoryKey
  propositions include
• 1. Genetic inheritance sets limits of career
  development, e.g., not everyone can be an NBA
  star.
• 2. Avenue and degree of development is affected
  by experiences such as cultural background and
  socioeconomic position, e.g., difficult for
  ghetto child to be a doctor.
• 3. Aptitudes, interests and other career related
  personal variables are determined by individual
  experiences which involuntarily focuses attention
  of direction, e.g., junior achievement creates
  budding business person.

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Contd

• 4. Needs (a la Maslow) that are not satisfied
  become key motivator (time between arousal and
  satisfaction).
• 5. Psychological energy and attention
  directedness as determined of career interests.
• 6. Parental attention is key environmental
  factor in career interests.
• 7. Parental relationship of emotional
  concentration, acceptance or avoidance
  predisposes individual job involvement.

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• Roe bases her theory of career choice on
  Maslows hierarchy of needsthe theory suggests
  lower level needs are so strong that higher order
  ones will not impact career development until
  lower level ones are met
• Maslow lists eight basic needs, arranged in
  order from lowest to highest as follows
• 1. Physiological needs
• 2. Safety needs
• 3. Need for belongingness and love

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Contd

• 4. Need for importance, respect, self-esteem, and
  independence
• 5. Need for self-actualization
• 6. Need for information
• 7. Need for understanding
• 8. Need for beauty

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Roes Circular Model
I Service, II Business Contact, III
Organization, IV Technology V Outdoor, VI
Science, VII General Culture, and VIII Arts
and Entertainment
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Supers Life Span Approach

• A broad based segmented theory of related
  proportions.
• Within each person are traits or abilities so
  pronounced that often these are used to
  caricature the individual. The uniqueness of the
  person is apparent in the individualized
  combination of strengths and weaknesses.
• The range of abilities, personality
  characteristics, and other traits is so wide that
  every person has within his or her makeup the
  requisites for success in many occupations. The
  lack of a certain skill, or its presence in
  minute quantities, excludes the person from an
  occupation only if that skill is important in
  meeting the demands of that occupation.

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Vocational Development

• Crystallization. A stage that occurs between
  the ages of fourteen and eighteen, during which
  people develop overall self-concepts and
  occupational self-concepts that determine the
  general direction of their future careers.
• Specification. A stage that occurs between the
  ages of eighteen and twenty-one, during which
  peoples broad occupational goals are more
  narrowly focused toward their eventual life work.

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Vocational Development (Contd)

• Implementation. A stage that occurs between the
  ages of twenty-one and twenty-four, during which
  workers take steps to learn and enter a trade.
• Stabilization. A stage that occurs between the
  ages of twenty-five and thirty-five, during which
  workers attempt to demonstrate mastery of their
  trades.
• Consolidation. A stage that occurs between the
  age of thirty-five and retirement, during which
  workers seek the professional recognition and
  security commensurate with their ability and
  seniority.

Super, 1964
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Supers Life Span Approach (Contd)

• For each ability or trait required in the
  performance of a particular occupation, one might
  expect to find a modal quantity that best fits
  the nature of the work. On either side of this
  amount, however, is a band or range of this
  characteristic that will meet satisfactorily the
  demands of the work.
• As individuals exercise certain skills or
  proficiencies, they may increase or expand them
  to a higher level. As these higher-level skills
  develop, workers may be drawn to occupational
  outlets that provide opportunities to use them.
  As the individuals self-concept changes, they
  may also find that the once satisfactory job is
  no longer so.

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Supers Life Span Approach (Contd)

• Either of these changes may result in the
  worker seeking a new work situation or attempting
  to adjust the position held in some way so it
  will again be comfortable and satisfying.
• Super identifies career maturity as a group of
  physical, psychological, and social
  characteristics that represent the individuals
  readiness and ability to deal with the
  development problems and challenges that face
  him.
• Individuals can be helped to move toward a
  satisfying vocational choice in two ways 1) by
  helping them to develop abilities and interests
  and 2) by helping them to acquire an
  understanding of their strengths and weaknesses
  so they can make satisfying choices.

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• Super and Thompson (1979)
  identified six factors in vocational
  maturity (1) awareness of the need to plan
  ahead, (2) decision-making skills, (3) knowledge
  and use of informational resources, (4) general
  career information, (5) general world of work
  information, and (6) detailed information about
  occupations of preference.

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• Crites (1981) suggest that there are at least
  three major outcomes of career development -
  making a choice, acquiring decision making
  skills, and enhancing general adjustment.
  Knowledge gained from theories can be helpful in
  dealing with each of these outcomes.
• Decision making theory can be helpful in
  promoting a persons general adjustment.
  Tiedeman and OHaras model examines the
  processes that lead up to choice as well as what
  happens once a person is on the job. Tiedeman
  and OHara use such terms as induction,
  reformation, and integration to describe the
  phases a worker may go through as he/she deals
  with job adjustment and advancement. Similarly,
  the concept of life career roles and role
  conflict can be useful to help explain and remedy
  life and job adjustment problems and issues.

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Stages of a Mans Life (Daniel Levinson)

• Studied manufacturing and communications
  companies
• hourly wage, executive, academic, novelist
• Season conceptimplies cycle, stable but not
  static, moves through four primary seasons
• Childhood and Adolescence
• Early Adulthood
• Middle Adulthood
• Late Adulthood

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Levinsons Seasons (contd)

• Pre-Adulthood
• Childhood, Adolescence and Transition
• Differentiate from Parents
• From center of universe to personality
• Transition requires choosing a career, completing
  education, choosing a mate and becoming and
  independent adult
• Early Adulthood
• Peak of capacity, e.g., strength, health, sex,
  intelligence
• Major decisions, e.g., marriage, children,
  career, projects
• Middle Adulthood
• Middle aged characteristics, e.g., baldness,
  paunches, reduced physical capacity
• Freer to express feminine side
• Acceptance of morality
• Relaxing of attitudes to work, status

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Levinsons Seasons (contd)

• Late Adulthood
• Continuing physical (and often mental) decline
• More likely to experience severe illness (death
  of near ones)
• Possible retirement, slowing down
• Coming to peace with ones self
• Late, late Adulthood
• Feelings of aging, death, dying
• More focused on self (closed circle)
• Think about meaning of life

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Passages (Gail Sheehy)

• Predictable Crises of Adult Life interviewed 115
  men and women
• Passages
• Late Teens, e.g., sever home ties, become
  independent, conflict in wanting to see
  world/prepare for it
• The (Trying) Twenties, e.g., careers,
  relationships, settling down
• Early Thirties, e.g., (Catch-30) dealing with
  shoulds, changing lifestyles (divorce) 30
  somethings, true settling down, parenting,
  strong focus on career
• Late 30s to mid-40s, e.g., (The Deadline Decade)
  no longer beautiful/handsome, re-establish goals,
  move from do to want
• Mid 40s to 50s (Renewal or Resignation, e.g.,
  letting go of parental resentment, warmth and
  mellowing or resign self to job, marriage,
  relationships

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Bolles Paradigm

• In What Color Is Your Parachute?, Bolles writes
  about the importance of knowing your mission,
  what is your purpose in life. He addresses how
  various life roles fit into the bigger life/work
  picture. He says that we need to challenge all
  assumptions, paying careful attention on two
  levels the human level and the spiritual level.
  He speaks to the fulfillment of our psychological
  needs as well as the importance of addressing
  spiritual issues. In essence, there is both the
  trait and factor approach and the developmental
  schema in his process.

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Social Learning Theory (Krumboltz)

• 1. Genetic endowment and special abilities,
  e.g., intelligence, artistic ability, physical
  coordination, gender, race, physical appearance.
• 2. Environmental conditions and events
  (synthetic or natural, e.g., wars, natural
  resources, training opportunities, social
  policies, labor laws, educational systems.
• 3. Learning experiences (instrumental and
  associative), e.g., classroom learning, computer
  learning, modeling, parental conditioning.
• 4. Task approach skills (skills in coping with
  new problems or tasks), e.g., values, work
  habits, cognitive processes, symbolic rehearsing,
  attending.

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• Krumboltz sees individuals encountering new
  learning experiences, followed by rewards or
  punishments that shape the uniqueness of the
  individual. This leads to
• self-observation generalizations (self statement
  that evaluates ones actual or vicarious
  performance in a work task)
• task-approach skills (like work habits, mental
  sets, thought processes)
• actions (implementations of behaviors such
  as applying for a job, tackling a new
  work requirement)

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• In summary, an individual is born into the
  world with certain genetic characteristics
  race, gender, physique, and special abilities or
  disabilities. As time passes, the individual
  encounters environmental, economic, social, and
  cultural events and conditions. The individual
  learns from these encounters, building
  self-observations and task approach skills that
  are applied to new events and encounters. The
  successes and failures that accrue in these
  encounters influence the individual in choosing
  courses of action in subsequent learning
  experiences, increasing the likelihood of making
  choices similar to previous ones that led to
  success and of avoiding choices similar to those
  that led to failure.

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Brain Function...
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Schlossbergs Models of Adult Career Development

• Schlossberg (1985) has identified four major
  models of adult development. Each of these
  models has a different perspective on
  developmental stages. Cultural Perspective
  This theory accepts the basic assumption that
  given a particular environment, individual life
  stories will be predictable and similar.
  According to this perspective, it is the
  structure of the work system and the resulting
  environment that are largely responsible for the
  behaviors people engage in, both at the work
  place and in their personal lives. According to
  this theory, for example most school teachers
  behave in similar ways, both in the classroom and
  in their homes.

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• Developmental Perspective
• From this perspective, adult behavior is
  explained in terms of ages and sequential
  stages of development. A list of stages
  might include
• Leaving the family (late adolescence to mid-20s)
• moving into the adult world (early to late 20s)
• settling down (early 30s to early 40s)
• becoming ones own person (ages 35-39)
• making a midlife transition (early 40s) and
• restabilizing and beginning middle adulthood
  (middle and late 40s).

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• Life Span Perspective Continuity and Change.
  This perspective considers the continuous
  aspects of the adult experience including
  changes over the life span, variations in how
  groups experience adulthood, and socioeconomic,
  racial and ethnic differences among individuals.
  From this perspective, the developmental span has
  no chronological age categories. Most
  importantly, the stages are not unidirectional,
  hierarchical, sequenced in time, cumulative or
  irreversible. The life course is fluid and is
  marked by many role transitions with varying
  timetables for entries and exits that are not
  always age-related or predictable.

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• Transitional Perspective nearly all cultures
  celebrate rites of passage marking birth,
  puberty, marriage, death and other major life
  events. This perspective on adult development
  sees these adult experiences as major
  transitions. For example, proponents of this
  perspective might believe that a young man should
  be well into his career development by the time
  he marries. This perspective points to cultural
  norms as the dictators of age and stage
  appropriate behavior, rather than emphasizing the
  biological ages and stages of the adult. This is
  a sociological perspective of transitions, or
  rites of passage.

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The Impact of Transitions

• Schlossberg defines transitions to include
  both anticipated and unanticipated changes.
  Anticipated transitions are those that have a
  likelihood of occurrence and can be rehearsed,
  such as an expected promotion or a scheduled
  retirement. Unanticipated transitions involve
  a crisis, such as being laid off, becoming
  disabled or getting divorced.
• It is necessary to look beyond the actual
  transition and focus on the impact of the
  event. Schlossberg then identifies factors that
  ease the assimilation of the transition by the
  individual.

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The Impact of Transitions (Contd)

• The reader is cautioned against the natural
  tendency to glorify or dramatize one stage of
  adult development over another. A case in point
  is the frequent emphasis on the midlife crisis.
  Crisis can occur at any time in ones life, and
  each person responds differently to the same
  stimulus. The setting and historical context of
  the transitions should always be considered, as
  well as the particular changes an individual
  experiences.

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Economic and/or sociological theories...

• tend to view the world of work and career
  development from a conglomerate view, seeing
  relationships in terms of large groups such as
  industries, societies, countries, etc. primary
  focus on the laws of supply and demandassuming
  skills, education, licensure, and other
  qualifying characteristics, employers will offer
  only enough pay to attract required number of
  workers and retain them for tasks required.

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Hollands theory of Vocational Choice...

• Holland assumes that a person expresses his/her
  personality through a career choice and how they
  react to their organizationhe assumes that each
  person holds a stereotyped view of
• various careers that creates a
  characteristic with personal environment in
  these must be a compatibility between
  view and organization.

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• Holland believes people can be generally
  classified into a limited set of career
  (personality) types and that work environments
  can be similarly classified. Types include
• 1. Realistic people/environments objective,
  concrete, physical manipulation, e.g.,
  agriculture, technical, engineering,
  skilled-trade.
• 2. Investigative people/environments deals
  with world through use of intelligence,
  manipulating, work via intelligence, words,
  symbols, e.g., science, scholarly, language
  skills.
• 3. Artistic people/environments focus on
  creating art forms and products, e.g., actor,
  writer, artist.

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Contd.

• 4. Social people/environments need social
  interactions, working with others, e.g.,
  education, therapeutic, community service.
• 5. Enterprising people/environments
  persuasive, verbal, extroverted, self-confident,
  e.g., sales, entrepreneurship, leadership.
• 6. Conventional people/environments
  stereotyped, correct, conservative, e.g.,
  clerical accounting, business, post-office.

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• Holland argues that people are attracted to
  (or modify their) work settings that have an
  atmosphere (press) similar to dominant features
  created by individuals who control the
  organization. Examples are realistic types in an
  auto shop, conventional types working in a bank
  and an enterprising type at a political party.

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• Individuals are rarely a pure prototype. Most
  people have a predominant characteristic
  supplemented by a lesser similarity to other
  groups. Generally, these are compatible or
  consistent.
• Hollands Hexagonal Relationship of Occupational
  Classes

Realistic
Investigative
Conventional
Artistic
Enterprising
Social