Career Arrangements Research Articles

Outlining and discussing various psychological perspectives on career meta-capacities

No abstract available.

WORKING FOR EUROPE? SOCIALIZATION IN THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION AND AGENCIES OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

The trend towards flexible career arrangements has not left EU institutions untouched, as is manifest in the growing reliance on temporary and part‐time officials. How does the increasing career hybridity within and across EU institutions affect European socialization, i.e. the extent to which officials embody the spirit of ‘working for Europe’ and adopt supranational norms? We conceptualize European socialization as a mutually reinforcing process shaped by the interaction of officials with the institutions of which they are members. We argue that a focus on career arrangements provides a good starting point as these arrangements shape individuals' interaction with the organization. Consequently, they generate diverging socialization processes which lead to different socialization products. Our empirical insights are based on a study of different types of career arrangements within the European Commission bureaucracy and specialized and independent EU agencies through structured and semi‐structured interviews and surveys with officials.

How do physicians and their partners coordinate their careers and private lives?

Over the past few years, there has been increasing interest in the question of how couples coordinate their careers and private lives. The aim of this study was to investigate the career arrangements of physicians and their partners according to gender and parenthood status, and to compare dual-physician couples with other types of couples. Data pertaining to 414 physicians (214 females, 51.7%; 200 males, 48.3%) from a cohort of medical school graduates participating in the SwissMedCareer Study was analysed according to socio-demographic variables, employment status and career prioritisation of the physicians and their partners. Differences in terms of gender, parenthood status and type of couple were investigated with Chi-square tests. The most prevalent career arrangement for a male physician with young children was that of full-time employment for the physician himself with a partner not in employment or working less than 50%-time. By contrast, the most common arrangement for a female physician with young children was that of 50-69% part-time employment with a partner working full-time. For couples without children, the most common arrangement was full-time employment for both partners. Dual-physician couples differed significantly from other types of couples in terms of how they rated career priority, with male physicians with physician partners more likely than male physicians with partners holding another academic degree or with non-academic partners to regard both careers as equally important (p ≤0.001). Female physicians with physician partners were more likely to consider their partners' careers as of prime importance than those with academic or non-academic partners (p ≤0.001). The priority given by couples to the man's career reflects traditional gender-role attitudes in male and female physicians. Starting a family slows down the career progress of female physicians but not of male physicians. Providing more childcare facilities in hospitals and flexible working hours to meet the needs of physician parents with young children could encourage a higher work participation of physician-mothers and might constitute an effective strategy for combating the shortage of physicians in Switzerland.

University-industry collaboration: careers and knowledge governance in hybrid organisational space

In many high-technology fields, large firms have become increasingly keen to engage with the open knowledge networks of university scientists in order to keep at the cutting edge of scientific development. This paper examines how close collaborative relationships between firms and universities have succeeded by constructing network career models between the two sets of organisations. It focuses on a growing category of research scientists referred to as 'linked scientists'. These people engage in the practices of both science and business, and develop knowledge networks and career patterns that straddle the two sectors. The analysis highlights the emergence of a hybrid organisational space structured around the linked mobility of people. The notion of an 'overlapping internal labour market' gives insight into our understanding of the interdependent relationship between flexible projects and more enduring career arrangements that support knowledge governance across organisational boundaries.

Careers and temporal flexibility in the new economy: an Anglo‐Dutch comparison of the organisation of consultancy work

Knowledge workers are widely considered to represent the vanguards of a new employment era, characterised by a greater degree of balance in the relationship between the employer and the knowledge worker. This fundamental shift in power relations is expected to lead to the emergence of a new group of so‐called ‘free’ or empowered portfolio workers, who share boundaryless career arrangements and internationally ‘universal’ forms of flexibility. However, such propositions have been made without extensive comparative research. This paper therefore examines the organisation of knowledge worker careers and the nature of the temporal flexibility available to knowledge workers through an Anglo‐Dutch case‐study of a multinational consultancy firm. The data collected by this study provides little evidence to support the notion of free/boundaryless career models and demonstrates that national context has a significant impact on the construction of consultancy careers and the availability, level and form of flexibility offered to consultants.

Expatriation and careers: perspectives of expatriates and spouses

The relationship between foreign assignment and career development has been stated to be unclear, and further research has been called for with regard to career challenges and career management programmes of expatriates. Furthermore, today an extensive proportion of marriages are dual‐career partnerships with both partners employed, and thus a need to take this into account has been stressed in expatriate literature. The present study covers these issues based on the experiences of about 300 Finnish expatriates. Career arrangements after repatriation was a very prominent concern among expatriates. On the other hand, the results also indicate that career‐related support practices were not very common in this sample, but there was clear inconsistency between perceived necessity and actual use of these programmes. Dual‐career couples’ career considerations played a central role as in the case of expatriates. However, dual‐career support was not commonly available although it was again seen as necessary.