Career Exit Research Articles

Understanding the careers of freelancers on digital labor platforms: The case of IT work

AbstractOnline freelancing, an alternative form of work where independent workers offer services on digital labor platforms, gains increasing importance in IS research. While the general understanding of this form of work is growing, research lacks understanding careers on digital labor platforms. However, these differ from careers in offline labor markets due to volatility, global matching and platform mediation, the digital and temporary nature of work, and algorithmic management as particular platform working conditions. Therefore, to understand how working conditions on digital labor platforms influence the dynamic career paths of freelancers, we conduct an exploratory analysis using 35 interviews with freelancers and clients on digital labor platforms. We thus contribute to the body of knowledge on alternative forms of work on digital labor platforms by developing a long‐term freelancing career model and outlining the dynamics of advancement, decline, and exit within platform careers. We also illustrate mechanisms between career phases in terms of platform lock‐in effects, which arise from the career advancement dynamics and career exit dynamics.

Determinants of Career Exits and Career Breaks in Women's Professional Basketball

Although economists regularly use sports to study labor-market outcomes, nearly all sports-related studies focus on men. Instead, this paper looks at career breaks and career exits for women's basketball, with a focus on race/ethnicity and country of birth. Data are from the start of the Women's National Basketball Association in 1997 through the 2019 season. White players and foreign-born players have higher likelihoods of leaving the league, conditional on player demographics and productivity.

Effort-Reward Imbalance, Ability to Work and the Desire for Career Exits: a Cross-sectional Study of Nurses

Since the Sars-Cov-2 pandemic, the working conditions of professional caregivers have tougher. This has lead to an increased desire to leave the profession. Since thoughts of leaving are influenced by factors such as ability to work and the relationship between effort and reward, both should be recorded and examined in relation to the desire to leave the profession. In a standardized, online-based cross-sectional study, nurses from all areas were asked about their ability to work (Work Ability Index: WAI), the ratio of effort and reward (Effort-Reward-Imbalance: ERI-Ratio) as well as their desire to either leave the job or to change employers. A total of 2,689 questionnaires returned by nurses (average 41.3 years old, 75.1% female) were evaluated. The WAI indicates an average working ability (37.9 (6.7)). Nurses put in more effort than they get rewarded for (ERI ratio 1.7 (0.5)). 38.3% of the nurses considered leaving their job several times a month or more frequently, 30.6% to change their employers. Predicting factors were WAI (OR 0.881, 95%-CI 0.866; 0.897 and 0.923, 95%-CI 0.908; 0.938) and ERI ratio (OR 4.076, 95%-CI 3.224; 5.149 and 4.203, 95%-CI 3.312; 5.334). The ability to work and, in particular, the perception of professional effort and the reward received becomes apparent as having an influence on the idea of leaving the profession. The present results show that the ERI is of particular importance. Accordingly, it is important to find out which reward factors have a positive effect on remaining in the profession. The proportion of nurses with an academic degree is higher than expected which might have influenced the results.

Teacher Victimization and Turnover: Focusing on Different Types and Multiple Victimization

ABSTRACT A growing body of empirical research on teacher victimization indicates that it is widespread and yields negative consequences. However, limited research has investigated the relationship between teacher victimization and turnover. In this study, using longitudinal data from approximately 1,300 teachers in a metropolitan area in Texas, USA, we find that many different types of victimization – theft, physical assault, verbal abuse, nonphysical contact aggression, and in-person bullying – with varying levels of prevalence and frequency as well as multiple victimizations are significantly associated with teachers’ attrition through transfer and/or career exit. Moreover, about half of leavers in our sample reported school administrators’ indifference and ineffective intervention as an important reason for their career exit.

ESport Superstars

We analyze the careers of Esports professional players. The Esport industry has been able to monetize growing spectator demand to offer tournament prize money amounting to US$113 million in 2017. A few hundred players, out of tens of thousands, earn enough to remain professional gamers exclusively. We examine three aspects of professional Esport player careers. First, a “superstar” effect leads to increases in the top prizes drawing amateurs into the professional ranks. Next, while age and experience affect player performance, player ability remains difficult to assess. Finally, career exits reflect a quick resolution regarding the uncertainty in player ability.

Hidden in Plain Sight? Does Stricter Employment Protection Legislation Lead to an Increased Risk of Hidden Unemployment in Later Life?

This article examines the influence of national employment protection legislation (EPL) on the likelihood of older workers in Europe being forced into retirement. Data are drawn from 4 waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) covering the period from 2004 to 2013. The sample is restricted to those who were aged between 50 and 80 and exited from paid work during the study period (N = 3,446). EPL was measured using the OECD indicators of employment protection concerning regulations for individual dismissals. Exits from work were defined as forced or unforced based on the respondent’s description of the reason for leaving work. Our cross-national study shows considerable variety in the prevalence of forced career exit across 13 European countries. Furthermore, the results show that career exit through retirement is less likely to have been forced as compared to career exit through non-retirement routes. However, the results also show that with every unit increase in the EPL index, the probability of forced career exit through retirement becomes more likely. Apparently in countries with high levels of employment protection, retirement is a more attractive route to lay off older workers than in countries with low EPL. By forcing older adults to leave their jobs through retirement, these employers are shedding workers who would have preferred to continue their working lives.

Access to Bridge Employment: Who Finds and Who Does Not Find Work After Retirement?

Empirical studies on the determinants of bridge employment have often neglected the fact that some retirees may be unsuccessful in finding a bridge job. We present an integrative framework that emphasizes socioeconomic factors, health status, social context, and psychological factors to explain why some people fully retired after career exit, some participated in bridge jobs, while others unsuccessfully searched for one. Using Dutch panel data for 1,221 retirees, we estimated a multinomial logit model to explain participation in, and unsuccessful searches for, bridge employment. About 1 in 4 retirees participated in bridge employment after retirement, while 7% searched unsuccessfully for such work. Particularly those who experienced involuntary career exit were found to have a higher probability of being unsuccessful at finding bridge employment. The current study provides evidence for the impact of the social context on postretirement work and suggests a cumulative disadvantage in the work domain in later life.

Early career teacher attrition: new thoughts on an intractable problem

Early career exit from teaching has reached epidemic proportions and appears intractable. Previous attempts to find solutions are yet to make much of an inroad. The aim of the research was to discover what nine beginning teachers required to remain in the classroom, by adopting a phenomenological approach. The authors identified participants’ common experiences through semi-structured interviews and unprompted written narratives. Data were examined for trustworthiness by reference to the literature. Key words from the narratives were synonyms, or broadly synonymous with, optimism, arrested development or disillusionment. The process of leaving involved entry, characterised by optimism; early experiences, characterised by arrested development; pre-exit, characterised by disillusionment; and exit.

Factors Affecting the Work Attitudes of Indian Re-entry Women in the IT Sector

India has witnessed increased participation of women in all sectors of the labour market. However, the career path of Indian women is not a continuous one. Despite the overflowing career prospects, women continue to quit their jobs. Some re-enter after taking a break, while others are forever lost to the labour markets. Those women, who re-enter the workforce find difficulty in gaining back their career momentum because of the demands they face at work and home. Organizations are increasingly valuing these re-entry women's talent and are therefore taking initiatives to bring them back to workforce and retain them by providing several workplace support systems such as flexible timings and work-from-home options. Consequently, a number of studies have empirically examined the relationships between such organizational supports and job attitudes of employees. But, there are very few studies that have analysed the moderating role of perceived work and family demands in these relationships particularly for re-entry women. Although there are a few studies on re-entry women in other socio-cultural contexts, hardly any study is found in the Indian context. Barely anything is known about the main reasons for career exit and career re-entry and the factors, challenges, barriers, and opportunities at the individual, family, and organizational levels for women who decide to join back employment after a career break. Further, lack of qualitative research prevents the emergence of new ideas regarding re-entry women. Studies on examining the jobrelated attitudes of re-entry women are also limited. The current study aims at examining the effect of organizational factors like policy support, diversity climate, work-family culture, and organizational justice on the attitudes of re-entry women like career satisfaction, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and career commitment. Responses were collected from the re-entry women in Indian IT organizations through a survey questionnaire. Findings indicate that the career outcomes and attitudes of Indian re-entry women are directly related to organizational factors. Organizations are therefore suggested to provide the right kind of support to these women by revising their policies and making the workplace environment and culture more supportive and inclusive for women returners.

Married professional women's career exit: integrating identity and social networks

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to address the idea of “opting out” for married professional women by presenting a conceptual investigation into the impact that a woman's identity and social networks have in shaping her decisions surrounding career exit. A model is developed and intended to help researchers in this area move beyond existing frameworks when attempting to explain and predict women's career exit.Design/methodology/approachResearch from the identity, social networks, turnover, and careers literatures was analyzed and integrated to put forth a new theoretical lens, represented by the conceptual model developed in this paper, that helps to explain married professional women's career exit.FindingsDevelopment of the model reveals a complex, reciprocal relationship between a woman's identity and her social network and depicts how these factors act in concert to shape women's decisions regarding career exit or “opting out.” This model also highlights the importance of structural constraints shaping a woman's social network, moderators impacting the relationship between a woman's identity and career exit behaviors, and outcomes of career exit.Originality/valueAlthough identity is a fundamental element of career development and relationships with others serve as an origin of self and source of self‐understanding, the integration of these perspectives has been conspicuously absent from research on women's career exit. Examining the convergence of identity and social networks and the reciprocal relationship these constructs have on career phenomena advances our knowledge of why married professional women choose to “opt out” or exit their careers.

Toward Building a Sustainable Retirement System for Private Colleges and Universities in Japan

As retiring personnel of Japan's private higher educational institutions (HEIs) take a large portion of the accumulated retirement funds at their career exit today, their younger colleagues are left with a bleak future with a quickly depleting reserve for their own retirement allowances. The fact that many insolvent organizations are on the verge of losing their ground with employer-sponsored defined-benefit retirement programmes indicates that the current system can no longer assure sustainable benefits to Japan's future retirees. The purpose of this paper is to correctly understand the status quo and clarify the challenges many Japanese private institutions of higher education are facing today. This paper also examines the financial health of Japan's private colleges and universities and further considers possible alternatives towards building a sustainable retirement system for the community of private HEIs.

From One-and-Done to Seasoned Veterans: A Demographic Analysis of Individual Career Length in Major League Soccer

Although there is a modest amount of literature analyzing the career prospects of athletes in United States (U.S.) based football, basketball, and baseball leagues, little is known about the career prospects of professional soccer players in the U.S. In our analysis of Major League Soccer players, using a sample of approximately 1,100 players and 3,435 player-year observations, we identify the time-varying and time-constant variables that affect player career duration. Initial career expectancy was 2.4 years, more than a quarter of all players exit the league after one year, and the risks of career exit never fall below 12%. In addition, relative to U.S.-born players, foreign-born players face a disproportionately high exit rate.

Do Business School Professors Make Good Executive Managers?

Despite suggestions that business school professors do not understand what actually accounts for the performance of business organizations, the evidence is anecdotal at best. We review past work, develop expectations, and provide large-scale evidence for examining the validity of such suggestions. We accessed extensive data provided by Dun & Bradstreet and procured detailed information from 765 leading public and private North American businesses. Analysis of 215 closely matched pairs showed that companies with former business school professors as executives generated significantly greater revenues per employee than counterparts with non-former professors as executives. Companies with former professors in vice-president positions had the best performance in the sample, signifying the value of correspondence between academic expertise and functional business area. Companies with executives who had exited academic careers early performed better than companies with late career exit counterparts. The performance of companies with executives who were professors at top-ranked business schools was the same as other companies with executives who were professors at non-ranked business schools. We observed controls to mitigate effects from organization size, industry sector, and geographic location and executed several auxiliary analyses to assess the validity of principal findings. Finally, we interviewed a sub-sample of executive manager participants by telephone and collected qualitative data from them via surveys to further interpret the results and diminish alternative explanations. Our findings suggest that the fashionable idea that business school professors are unable to “walk the walk” is a popular myth.

Through the Years: A Longitudinal Study of Physical Education Teachers from a Research-Based Preparation Program

This study investigated factors that enhanced and constrained the career development of six teachers, who had graduated from the same university teacher education program, in their induction years (Woods & Earls, 1995) and again later in their career cycles. Three participants were physical education teachers (PETs), and three were former physical education teachers (FPETs). Fessler's (1985) Teacher Career Stage Model provided the theoretical framework. Data sources were: interviews with teachers and their teacher educators and direct observations of lessons. Results indicated that the PETs continued to have skill development as their primary teaching objective. The teachers maintained many of their teaching skills, and shifted between the career cycles of “competency building” and “enthusiastic and growing.” All three FPETs left their physical education positions during the career frustration stage and at the time of publication were in the career exit stage.

Exit, stage left why entrepreneurs end their entrepreneurial careers before retirement

This article examines the process of entrepreneurship from a different perspective. It considers evidence not only about practicing entrepreneurs but also about ex-entrepreneurs: individuals who have ended their entrepreneurial pursuits to work for someone else. Why entrepreneurs ended their entrepreneurial careers is understood by examining not only their expressed reasons for leaving, but also by observing how they exited, when they exited, and who exited compared to who remained. The study's findings are tentative. They are published now because they have important implications for potential entrepreneurs, for practicing entrepreneurs, and for those working with entrepreneurs either directly or indirectly (e.g., policymakers) who must make important decisions before more evidence is available .Overall, the findings indicate that a high-risk profile exists that distinguishes ex-entrepreneurs, particularly those with brief careers, from “more seasoned” entrepreneurs who have experienced longer lives as entrepreneurs. Perhaps the most important implication is that early-career start-ups may be better than previously thought. Preexisting profiles of the “ideal entrepreneurs” place them in their mid- to late thirties at the time of venture start up. But this start-up age (and older ages) were highly correlated in this study with very short, aborted careers compared to practicing entrepreneurs and ex-entrepreneurs who started earlier. A second implication is related to the first: those who started earlier were able to do a better job of anticipating their future entrepreneurial pursuits than were those who started later, mainly because they were sensitized to entrepreneurship as a career possibility at a much earlier age. Early planning for an entrepreneurial career is correlated with longer careers not just because they start earlier but because they last longer. A third implication is the need to scale down the scope (and risk) of the first venture. Such venture “downsizing” can lessen financial requirements while also giving new entrepreneurs the flexibility to start another, often better, venture after they get into business and learn about new opportunities, contacts, and skills that they could not foresee or develop before starting their first ventures. A fourth implication reinforces existing notions about the relative perils of the first few years of an entrepreneurial career. Survival rates increase considerably after the completion of the second year and the probability of a long career rises substantially after the sixth year of entrepreneurial life. A final implication is that the overall costs, risks, and dangers of entrepreneuring have been overstated. Career exit rates are much lower than venture exit rates. Relatively few ex-entrepreneurs apparently suffered truly catastrophic career exits, at least to the extent that they felt that their careers had been very unrewarding and that they had ruled out ever entrepreneuring again.

Researchers united

The employment conditions and prospects of full-time research staff have deteriorated considerably during the last few years as a result of the general financial situation. Because of the lack of career exits, in what was hitherto a transitional training structure, many senior research staff are taking up recurrent short-term contracts.