Constructing a Career as a Determinant of Career Success in the Globalizing Society - on the Need for Pro-developmental and Proactive Behaviors of the Subject

Abstract

In light of the pace of development of the global world, the acceleration of social life, the hard to predict direction of social change, the question arises about the quality of the transformations in the world of work and the process of constructing careers understood as investing in the career “portfolio”. A contemporary study of career requires us to take into account the multi-contextual occurring changes in the world of work, which create new requirement for the employees. Career development is a life-long process of a comprehensive nature. In the process of constructing a career emphasis is put on the subjects’ work on themselves, their permanent participation in life projects and multi-layered processes as well as the acquisition of experience and the capacity for self-awareness. This view is a background for thinking about career as a “property” of an individual, along with their individual career choices. This peculiar shift of an individual’s orientation from external conditions to internal conditions prompts us to consider career in connection with an individual seen as a pro-development and proactive subject, who possesses an individual career and a sense of success in its construction. Success in a career is the result of integration of two processes: career planning and career directing and management. In this sense, it is understood as the subject’s achievement of the objectives of their career. The distinguishing feature of proactive and pro-development planning, directing and management of a career is the awareness of being a causative agent that performs actions in a desired direction and influences the surrounding reality, thereby initiating changes. There is no doubt that active coping in a reality subject to permanent change requires people to adapt to the constantly changing context of creation of individual careers, and the new way of thinking about career means entering a path of permanent constructing of a career in the world of “boundaryless” careers.