Career anchors of social enterprise managers in the UK - an empirical analysis

Abstract

This paper examines the career anchors of third sector social enterprise managers and the relation of their dominant career anchors with the job environment. Understanding managerial career anchors provides organisations with a valuable framework to help them offer managers opportunities that are congruent with their career needs. A mixed method research design was employed. A survey and semi-structured interviews were conducted with forty social enterprise managers working in the UK. The research found that autonomy career anchor was ranked significantly higher than any other career anchor, which suggests that social enterprise managers have a higher need for a job environment that allows them flexibility and freedom to set their own work pace. The findings make an important contribution to new knowledge and provides an empirical support for the use of Schein's (1978, 1990) career anchor model as a tool to measure social enterprise managerial career anchors. Suggestions are made on how managerial career anchor data could be used by organisations to determine appropriate career management strategies and retention practices. The paper concludes with implications for theory and practice.