Career Orientations Inventory Research Articles

Influence of career orientations and career guidance need on students’ employability attributes

This study explored the interplay between students’ career orientations and career guidance need in relation to their employability attributes of graduateness and personal employability qualities. Applying a cross-sectional design, 369 black South African students at a university of technology were sampled for the study. The students completed an adapted version of the Career Orientations Inventory and the Employer Employability Competency Expectations scale. Results following tests for significant mean differences and moderated regression analysis revealed that clarity on career orientation preferences is associated with a high need for career guidance. Career orientations predicted employability attributes more than the need for career guidance. Students with a high career orientation preference had significantly more positive perceptions of their graduateness and personal employability qualities than those with a low career orientation preference. Students with a low career orientation preference and weak desire for career guidance had a significantly weaker awareness of their employability attributes. Premised on the dispositional model of employability, the findings suggest the need for career guidance in employability learning and development to help students gain insight into their career orientation preferences and personal employability qualities.

Depressed Mood and Career Anchors in Russian Medical Students

Introduction. People in helping professions are more prone to emotional burnout and depression. Even at the university level, future physicians experience an increase in depressed mood. Despite the fact that this problem has been studied quite extensively, the role of socio-cognitive factors has not yet been studied enough. The purpose of this research is to fill this gap and explore the relationship between career anchors and the level of depressed mood among Russian medical students. Materials and Methods. The survey was conducted in 2020 and 2021. The sample of the survey included 864 students of the SSMU named after V. I. Razumovsky. Methods used in the survey: the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS), adapted by T. I. Balashova and the diagnosis of career anchors, using Schein’s Career Orientations Inventory (COI) in the adaptation of V. A. Chiker. Data analysis methods: Shapiro‒Wilk and Fligner‒Killeen tests, Wilcoxon‒Mann‒Whitney and Nemenyi tests, and biweightmidcorrelation analysis. The search for predictors of depressed mood was carried out using the method of generalized additive models. Results. Career anchors are predictors of depressed mood. Service orientation and professional competence reduce the severity of depressed mood, while the relationship is non-linear. The desire of students to integrate different areas of their lives and organize the activities of other people is negatively associated with depressed mood, but the relationship is linear. The severity of depressed mood is exacerbated by career anchoring on autonomy. Discussion and Conclusion. The results of the study contribute to the understanding of the complex relationship between depressiveness and socio-cognitive factors. The results of this study can be instrumental in the development of a set of measures reducing the risk of depression in medical professionals by studying at a university.

Internal career orientations guidance for emerging adults in a university of technology

Background: Schein’s career orientations inventory (COI) is known to help undergraduate emerging adults develop deeper insight into the master career values that drive study and career choices.Objectives: The study’s objective was to assess the inner career orientations of young emerging adults in a university of technology setting.Method: The study had a cross-sectional design and involved a random sample (N = 368) of black African university of technology students (mean age = 20.76 years) enrolled for further studies at the Faculty of Humanities. An exploratory factor analysis of the COI was applied.Results: Four inner career orientations emerged labelled as security and stability (highest mean score), specialised creativity and problem solving (second highest mean score), entrepreneurship (third highest mean score), and general managerial autonomy (lowest mean score).Conclusion: The findings of this study highlight the importance of uncovering the inner career orientations denoted by the career anchor factor structure of the COI for young emerging adults in a specific setting to ensure relevant and useful career guidance.Contribution: The study contributed to career guidance in the African context by providing new insights into the inner career orientations of black African emerging adults.

Model of talent management for registered nurses in Malawian public hospitals

Orientation: There exists a lack of research on a model illustrating the relationship between talent management and job satisfaction, innovative work behaviour, work engagement and career orientation, and it explains the significance of the present study. Research purpose: This research aims to investigate the relationship between talent management and job satisfaction, innovative work behaviour, work engagement and career orientation amongst registered nurses in public hospitals of Malawi. Motivation of the study: The development of a structured model will contribute to new knowledge in human resources management because no relationship of this kind exists. The model illustrates the interactive relationship between talent management, job satisfaction, innovative work behaviour, work engagement and career orientation. Research approach/design and method: A quantitative research (cross-sectional) was conducted in public hospitals of Malawi by administering the adapted Human Capital Index Questionnaire, Minnesota Job Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ), the Innovative Work Behaviour Scale (IBS), the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) and the Career Orientation Inventory (COI). The Spearman’s rank correlation ( r ) was used to determine the connection between the study variables. Main findings: The results demonstrated a strong positive relationship between talent management and job satisfaction ( r = 0.501, p < 0.001) but a weaker relationship with innovative behaviour ( r = 0.408, p < 0.001), dimensions of work engagement (vigour, dedication and absorption) and career orientation ( r = 0.488, p < 0.001). Furthermore, the results showed that job satisfaction was strongly positively associated with innovative behaviour ( r = 0.567, p < 0.001), career orientation ( r = 0.599, p < 0.001) and work engagement. There was a constructive relationship between innovative work behaviour, work engagement ( r = 0.631, p < 0.001) and career orientation ( r = 0.633, p < 0.001). Career orientation was strongly associated with work engagement ( r = 0.696, p < 0.001). Practical/managerial implications: Talent management impacts skill demands placed on the workforce for the kind of hired staff and how they are trained, assessed and rewarded. It also stimulates employees’ job satisfaction, innovative work behaviour, work engagement and career orientation. This study highlights the need for hospital management to give proper attention to the effective implementation of talent management practices and strives to resolve the challenges of implementing those practices. Contribution/value-add: This study offers the opportunity for health sector leaders to reflect on how they manage talent in hospitals, giving them the best practices of implementing talent management practices. Furthermore, there exists a lack of research illustrating the relationship between talent management and job satisfaction, innovative work behaviour, work engagement and career orientation. This explains the significance of this study.

The Influential Factors of Career Orientation of Employees

Orientation: Employees have different angles when it comes to making decisions about their career paths. Some prefer to work on their own, while others would prefer co-workers. Burnout persists in organizations despite talent management policies and practices. Therefore, leaders and managers must evaluate their talent management practices in order to identify and eliminate factors that may contribute to burnout and, in contrast, lead to a success in career orientation. Research Purpose: The objective of this article was to assess factors affecting career orientation. The Career Orientation Inventory and a biographical questionnaire were used to assess the career orientation of respondents. Research design, approach and methodology: A descriptive measure was utilized with a stratified random sample (N = 205). The reliability of the measure was confirmed using the Cronbach's Alpha coefficient. An exploratory factor analysis was used to determine the underlying factor structure of the variables. Descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation, skewness and kurtosis were employed to analyze data. Main findings: The results showed that some of the departmental employees are comfortable with their current working conditions. It was indicated that most professionals have realized that they possess their own goals and ambitions with regard to their careers. Practical/managerial implications: Career orientation of employees is crucial to the survival of the organization, and organizational leaders must as such work towards strengthening the talent review process to ensure that the desired talented workforce is sought, developed, rewarded and retained. Contribution/value added: The findings increase the body of knowledge in the issues of career orientation of departmental professional employees and what their inclinations are towards career progression.

Nursing career anchors and professional exercise: is there alignment?

to identify the types of career anchors of university hospital nurses and alignment with current work, from the perspective of workers' health. a descriptive and quantitative study, developed in a university hospital with 135 nurses, from December 2018 to February 2019. The Career Orientations Inventory was used as an instrument and an instrument to assess the alignment of career anchors to the current job. it was identified that the most frequent anchors were: Security/Stability, Service/Dedication to a Cause, and Lifestyle. Among nurses, 63.7% were not aligned with their career anchor. the alignment factor is not prevalent among nurses, demonstrating that most seek to meet their professional motivations, but do not find it in their current work, which can lead to physical exhaustion and psychological distress.

Rethinking the Career Anchors Inventory framework with insights from a finance transformation field study

It is claimed that the re-engineering and automation of routine work should free accountants to adopt broader, so-called ‘value-adding’ roles as partners to business decision-makers. The ‘new world of work’, involving new process-based methods, single instance ERP systems and the wholesale relocation of professional work to lower cost areas, brings opportunities for accountants in systems design and adding value to the business. For many others, the new reality may be a more competitive and less secure working environment, with a mid-level career bottleneck reflecting a polarisation between the upper and lower layers of the finance function.Based upon Schein's theory of career anchors and using exploratory sequential mixed methods, we consider the impact on the career perceptions of individual accountants as accounting expertise, traditionally embodied in people, is codified and embedded within end-to-end business processes in the context of a finance shared service centre. Key findings include new perceptions of careers with greater emphasis on the acquisition of general managerial competence and leadership skills, with the importance of cultivating a sense of ‘global connectedness' to maintain individual employability. Suggestions are made to update Schein's Career Orientation Inventory to better reflect the reality of accounting in the ‘new world of work'.

Career orientation and its impact factors of general practitioners in Shanghai, China: a cross-sectional study

ObjectivesTo understand the career orientation and impact factors of general practitioners (GPs) in Shanghai.DesignA cross-sectional study was carried out from August 2014 to December 2015 using the Career Orientations Inventory...

Engineering careers to enhance organizational commitment among employees in the IT industry

Organizations are facing tremendous pressure to enhance employee commitment and retain them in the organization. Among various factors that affect Organizational commitment, career anchors are seen as the prominent factor. It is then seen pertinent to identify the dominant and supporting career anchor that affects their commitment in organization which would help design relevant interventions to support the same. The objective of the study is to explore the relation between career anchors (as measured by Career Orientation Inventory) and Organizational commitment (as measured by Organizational Commitment Questionnaire). A survey was conducted among 100 employees working at information technology companies in India with variations in age, hierarchical levels and gender. Results of the study can be used to design appropriate work place interventions to enhance career orientation of employees and thereby increase their commitment towards the organization.

Academic Capital and the Career Orientations of High School Students

In this study, we explore how career orientations of Russian high schoolers are related to the quality of their academic capital. We introduce and validate the concept of the academic capital of high school students. We describe why we chose Schein’s Career Orientations Inventory as a screening instrument, which allows us to determine whether the individual is aware of their vector of future career advancement, and we propose how the instrument can be modified to be used among the cohort of high school students that form the subject of our study. During the course of the study, we tested three hypotheses of the interrelationship between the academic capital of high school students and their career orientations.

Career orientation of senior secondary school students

The main purpose of this study is to portray career orientation of Senior High School (SMA) and Vocational High School (SMK) students and the role that school counselors should play in providing vocational guidance. This study used a survey method involving 278 students from both SMA and SMK di Jakarta. Career Orientation Inventory (COI) and Counselor Role in Career Guidance Inventory were used as an instrument of data collection. Descriptive statistics and t-test were conducted to analyze the data. The findings of the study reveal that majority of SMA and SMK students wanted to further their study to university and only small number of them wanted to find out jobs or run their own business. The findings also show that school counselors play a very important role in providing vocational guidance services for senior secondary students. Therefore, in order for students to have a bright career in future, school counselors should improve the quality of vocational guidance services and plan comprehensive vocational guidance programs.

Basic Values, Career Orientations, and Career Anchors: Empirical Investigation of Relationships.

In today's dynamic and uncertain career context, values play an important role for career choice and lifelong career self-management. Values are desirable goals that are sought by individuals to satisfy their needs and are important for understanding career orientations in terms of protean and boundaryless career orientations and career anchors. However, how career orientations or career anchors fit into a well-established and supported model and into the structure of basic human values remains an important and under-investigated question. The aim of this study was to use Schwartz's model of structural values to empirically explore the relationships and structural correspondences among basic values, career orientations, and career anchors. A heterogeneous sample of 238 employees from French-speaking Switzerland (Mage = 35.60, SD = 13.03) completed the Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ5X), the Protean and Boundaryless Career Attitudes Scales (PCAS, BCAS), and the Career Orientation Inventory (COI) via an anonymous and confidential survey questionnaire. The results showed that it was possible to meaningfully position both career orientations and career anchors in Schwartz's values structure. The protean and boundaryless career orientations were positively related to Schwartz's basic values that emphasized openness to change and career anchors meaningfully followed the motivational continuum of these basic values. Overall, the overlap among the basic values, career orientations, and career anchors appeared relatively important, suggesting that these basic values, orientations, and anchors should be considered simultaneously to understand and address the factors and processes underlying individuals' career choices and paths.

FACTOR ANALYSIS EVALUATION OF SCHEIN’S CAREER ORIENTATIONS INVENTORY IN COLOMBIA

The Career Orientation Inventory model proposed by Edgar Schein is one of the most discussed methods for identifying individuals’ career orientations. However, there are several gaps related to its implementation for developing countries using factor analysis and digital open access data. We conducted exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis for a sample of 116 employees of a contact center in Colombia to test whether there were significant differences among career anchors (CAs) and gender, educational attainment, or age. The results show: a different number of factors from those proposed by Schein; variances in security/stability and managerial competence CAs concerning gender and educational attainment; and lifestyle is not the dominating CA in women.

For public causes or personal interests? Examining public service motives in the Chinese context

The western concept and scale of public service motivation (PSM) have recently been generalized to China. We analyze the western‐centric PSM scale in the Chinese cultural, historical, and sociopolitical contexts. We find that PSM scale developed in the United States has limited applicability and generalizability in China. Instead, we adopt the career orientation inventory as an alternative to measure Chinese PSM with a sample of 403 government employees in relation to their job and career satisfactions and job involvement. We found that lifestyle, security and stability, technical/functional competence and service dedication to a cause were dominating motives for Chinese civil servants studied. The results not only partially explained the recent puzzling ‘civil servant fever’ phenomenon taking place in China, but also demonstrated that not all western developed scales could be directly adopted to the Chinese contexts. We offer important implications and future directions for research on PSM in the Chinese context.

Investigation of career anchor of the graduates of GP vocational training program

Objective To understand the status quo of work satisfaction of the graduates of GP vocational training program by Zhongshan hospital Fudan university, to provide bases for making best GP career development strategy by health authorities. Methods Using short form of the career orientation inventory to conduct career investigation of the 152 graduates of GP vocational training program by Zhongshan hospital, Fudan university.152 questionnaires were issued and the effective response rate was 100%. Results The top of GPs' career anchor is job security orientation(106, 69.7%), followed by technical competence(28, 18.4%), service(8, 5.3%), managerial(5, 3.3%), autonomy(3, 1.9%), lifestyle(1, 0.7%), entrepreneurship(1, 0.7%), pure challenge(0, 0)and geographic security orientation(0, 0). We found that for male GPs, they displayed higher score for entrepreneurship orientation than female GPs(t=2.775, P=0.006). Those older than 35 displayed higher score for geographic security orientation than those younger than 35(t=-2.154, P=0.033). GPs with at least 10 years' work experience displayed higher score for geographic security orientation than those with less than 10 years' work experience(t=-2.414, P=0.017). The distribution of all types of career orientations of GPs was the same no matter how different their degrees and professional titles were. Conclusions Job security orientation and technical competence are the major job orientations of GP vocational training program by Zhongshan hospital, some career anchor orientations are related to age, gender and duration of work experience. Effective career management should be conducted based on these characters of the graduates' career orientation. Key words: Inservice training; General practitioner; Career anchor

Subjective work experiences, career orientations, and psychological career resources of working adults

The primary objective of the present study was to assess whether career orientations and psychological career resources relate to individuals’ subjective work experiences. A quantitative survey was conducted on a random sample of 2 997 participants at predominantly managerial and supervisory level in the South African service industry. The measuring instruments consisted of a subjective work experiences scale, the Career Orientations Inventory and Psychological Career Resources Inventory. The results indicated career orientations and psychological career resources as significant predictors of the participants’ subjective work experiences. The results make an important contribution to existing literature on career well-being and subjective career success. Career guidance and counseling, and organisational career development support have become of crucial importance in the changing employment climate in order to maximise individuals’ chances of experiencing job and career satisfaction and success over the life course (Sinclair 2009). More recently, interest in the subjective aspects of career success and satisfaction has gained greater salience in contemporary career research. This can be ascribed to the more turbulent career context resulting in careers being less ordered and predictable (Arnold and Cohen 2008; Arthur, Khapova and Wilderom 2005; Coetzee and Bergh 2009; Hall and Chandler 2005 Kidd 2008; Sinclair 2009). Contemporary measures of people’s subjective experiences of their careers and working lives tend to focus on the career self-concept or identity, the internal career orientation and the core self-evaluations relating to people’s psychological career resources or career meta-competencies (Coetzee 2008, Coetzee and Schreuder 2009b; Fugate, Kinicki and Ashforth 2004; Kanye and Crous 2007; Kuijpers and Scheerens 2006; Sinclair 2009; Van Dam 2004; Van der Heijde and Van der Heijden 2006). People’s experiences of subjective career success have also been linked to people’s subjective experiences of their careers and working lives which also relate

A Psychometric Evaluation of Schein’s (1985) Career Orientations Inventory

Since its introduction, Schein’s Career Orientations Inventory (COI) has been widely used to assess and advise individuals who are making both initial and specialty career choices. Employed by both practitioners and researchers, the COI was designed to identify the person’s “career anchors,” also known as their career identities. Individuals are expected to have the highest job satisfaction and performance when their job specialization matches their career anchors. However, little published research has evaluated the psychometric properties of the COI. To address this gap, we conducted an exploratory factor analysis, calculated the subscale reliabilities, and correlated the career anchors with Holland’s career interests to examine its convergent and discriminant validities. In this article, we report on the psychometric properties of the COI based on our sample of 165 midcareer college graduates and make several suggestions on the use and interpretation of the COI.

Underlying Factor Structure of Schein’s Career Anchor Model

More than 20 years after Edgar H. Schein introduced career anchor theory (1977), Daniel Feldman and Mark Bolino critiqued both the theory and the methods Schein used to describe career anchors. They propose that understanding the underlying factor structure of the Career Orientations Inventory (COI) will give insight into the relationships between multiple career anchors. These relationships describe which career anchors are complementary (i.e., having congruous characteristics) or mutually inconsistent (i.e., having oppositional characteristics) and enable a study of the degree to which those relationships have an impact upon career outcomes. This study examined how well each of the four models of career anchor relationships, found in the career anchor literature, describe mutually inconsistent relationships found within data from seven empirical career anchor studies. The mutually inconsistent career anchor pairs suggested by Feldman and Bolino were not found to have stronger negative correlations with one another than those proposed by the other three models. Also, the mutually inconsistent pairs proposed by Feldman and Bolino were not found to have on the whole a better fit from confirmatory factor analysis than those proposed by the other three models. Instead, Schein’s proposed model of mutual inconsistency was the best fit, albeit, a weak fit. Weaknesses were also found in the two-dimensional octagonal models proposed by Feldman and Bolino, by Chapman, and by Bristow. The data do not support a two-dimensional model. An additional finding was that the relationship between the anchors actually fits an orthogonal model better than either the complementary or mutually inconsistent representations proposed by each of the four models. Continued research opportunities are available for those interested in studying career anchor theory.

Motivational Behaviour of Tourism Employees in Relation to Career Orientations

The performance of employees in any organisation depends largely on their motivational behaviour. Reviews of related literature confirm the role of various factors in the motivational behaviour of employees including their career orientations.The present study “Motivational Behaviour of Tourism Employees in Relation to Career Orientations”, tries to ascertain the relationship between motivational behaviour and career orientations of tourism employees. The population of the study consisted of 323 employees of public sector, private sector and multinational companies working in Bangalore, India. Two tools namely: Motivational Analysis of Organisations- Behaviour (MAO-B) by Pareek (2003) and Career orientations Inventory by Schein (1990) were used to collect data. The findings show that only lifestyle anchor influence the motivational behaviour of employees in the public sector; whereas security/stability and lifestyle anchors influence the employees in private sector and pure challenge and lifestyle anchors influence the employees in multinational companies.

Archetypal values of science and engineering staff in relation to their career orientations

Orientation: Career decision-making in the 21st century is increasingly guided by the individuals’ deep-seated values and career orientations, as they are required to become proactive career agents in the pursuit of their career.Research purpose: The objective of the study was to explore the relationship between individuals’ archetypal values (measured by the Pearson–Marr Archetype Indicator) and career orientations (measured by the Career Orientations Inventory). The study also assessed the differences between race, gender, marital status, employment status and age groups regarding the archetypal values and career orientations of the individuals.Motivation for study: Career counsellors and industrial psychologists are increasingly required to explore new career guidance frameworks that are relevant and appropriate to the evolving nature of careers.Research design, approach and method: A quantitative survey was conducted. A non-probability sample of 207 voluntary participants employed within the science and engineering sector was obtained.Main findings: Correlational analyses revealed that the participants’ archetypal values related significantly to their career orientations. The various biographical groups differed significantly regarding their archetypal values and career orientations.Practical/managerial implications: The findings highlight the importance of understanding the deep-seated archetypal values that seem to explain the individuals’ career choices and decisions, and how these values differ regarding these choices and decisions.Contribution/value-add: The explanatory utility of the results may prove useful to enhance the individuals’ self-insight in their career choices and experiences. This study represents original research that contributes new knowledge to the field of career psychology and career counselling practices.