Personal Social Support and Non-Support in Career Aspirations towards Senior Management amongst Women in Middle Management: Multiple Dimensions and Implications on Measurement

Abstract

Women middle managers aspiring for senior management execute their career choices in a unique career context. They experience the influence of personal social support and non-support in executing their aspirations towards senior management. Yet, it is observed that measures available to capture personal social support and non-support of this cohort of careerist are not adequately comprehensive. It was felt that there is a considerable space to develop a measure on personal social support and non-support as a contextual factor that affects career choice of women in middle management aspiring for senior management. This paper aims to highlight possible multiple dimensions of personal social support and non-support that affect career aspirations towards senior management amongst women in middle management. Concurrently, it offers some recommendations to develop a measure to capture aforementioned phenomena. To fulfill above aims, a targeted literature review on main areas under discussion was carried out in leading scientific databases such as EBSCOhost, JSTOR, ProQuest, Science Direct, and SpingerLink with the use of key words: women, career choice, aspirations, management, leadership, social support, significant others , and measurement. It is believed that development of a measure to capture the influence of personal social support and non-support in career aspirations towards senior management amongst women in middle management might contribute to enhance the quality of research conducted in this area and intervention programmes taken up to support female senior management aspirants.