The New Careers: Individual Action and Economic Change

The New Careers argues that our traditional ideas about careers are rooted in the stable conditions of the industrial state, with a presumption of orderly growth in national economies, enduring public sector institutions and the wealth and employment of major corporations. However, with deregulation of economies, falling trade barriers and more flexible organisational structures, new models are needed to explain careers in the new economy of the late twentieth and early twenty‐first centuries.

The first chapters review traditional career theories, including trait factor theories which assume that work‐related human characteristics are stable over a lifetime. These are compared with the approach of developmental theorists who have sought to find age‐ or stage‐related patterns of development, such as exploration in early career years, advancement in middle years and maintenance in later years. The authors argue that, in practice, many careers do not fit traditional theories, nor indeed do they make objective sense. They suggest that a helpful way to update our thinking on careers is to use Karl Weick’s work on enactment. Weick puts forward the notion that the career is not defined by a series of occupational classifications, rules of professional practice or company‐based systems of human resource development. Whilst these are undoubtedly relevant, equally important is the individual’s own exertion of will in choice and activity.

The main text of the book concerns the “career stories” of 75 men and women, spanning occupational groups from top management to basic jobs such as garbage collector. The careers are described in detail and are analysed using a modified version of age‐based career stage theory, with a chapter on each of three phases, given the titles “Fresh energy”, “Informed direction” and “Seasoned engagement”. Throughout the examples, reference is made to the enactment process, or “people making sense of their careers as they go”.

In “Fresh energy: engaging with unfamiliar situations”, the focus is on younger people whose experiences commonly included discontinuities and periods of getting away when learning was accelerated in new settings. The authors emphasise what they term “self‐designed apprenticeships”, as people found their own learning agenda and were prepared to trade immediate earnings for learning of long‐term value. They also focus on defining moments of insight as the participants made retrospective sense of discontinuous and exploratory experience and established broad plans for the future. The point is made that similar restless enactment may be seen in older people, as they lose enthusiasm for established career tracks and channel energies in new directions.

The next chapter “Informed direction: pursuing career pathways” concentrates on advancement in an occupation or skill and establishment. Careers here are examined by reference to those in their middle years – mid‐30s to early‐50s. Particular attention is paid to the interplay between home and paid work. Not surprisingly, the authors found that family accommodations were a central part of women’s careers, with those aged over 40 tending to have given priority to their home life. Many women had, however, followed this early phase by increased assertiveness and work accomplishment in middle adulthood either by establishing their own businesses or by accelerating their careers. In contrast, for the men in the sample, family acted as a backdrop and only in a few cases was there evidence of career adjustments for family needs. Further comparisons are made between those men and women who chose to invest in an occupation and those investing in a company or other employing institution, the conclusion being that the latter is more risky in the new economy.

This theme continues in “Seasoned engagement: rounding out career experience”, where the key issue is the security, or lack of it, for single‐occupation, single‐industry employees. Several sad cases are presented, of people in their late 40s and early 50s who may never work again because their qualifications and experience are now irrelevant. On the other hand, several people with turbulent past careers have found themselves in “cruise” mode in their late 50s and 60s. As the authors put it, “those who live by specialisation may die by specialisation ... those who live by chance and opportunism tend to suffer more hard knocks along the way but may end up with greater resources for finding their way in a rapidly changing world”.

The final chapters of the book pull together the aggregate data. First the idea of career competencies is introduced. These may be thought of as knowing‐why, knowing‐how and knowing‐whom. Knowing‐why competencies provide the motivational energy on which an individual’s efforts are based. Knowing‐how competencies encompass the skills and understanding that people accumulate through their work and education. Knowing‐whom competencies are both the ability to relate to others and also the networks of people built up as a career progresses. The authors argue that career competencies accumulate into career capital. For example, knowing‐how qualifications obtained when young may enable a graduate to find a first job. This may provide further inspiration (knowing‐why), expertise (knowing‐how) or network connections (knowing‐whom) which a subsequent employer may value.

In the next section of the book, the authors argue that career competencies accumulate through reciprocal benefits exchanged between people and employing institutions. They distinguish between bounded benefits and boundaryless benefits. The former, which last only as long as the person lasts in the job, include money, work satisfaction and so on (for the individual) and work performance (for the employer). On the other hand, boundaryless benefits persist as experience received (for the individual) or, for example, as new procedures and customers retained by the employer. The authors suggest that boundaryless benefits from specific jobs enhance overall career competencies in the three areas of knowing‐why, knowing‐how and knowing‐whom. The penultimate chapter “Investing career capital in social institutions”, concentrates on showing how individual career investments not only build company institutions, but also shape occupations, industries and society in the areas of cultural capital, human capital and social capital. This again is illustrated by case studies with both individuals and employers as “winners” through accumulation and investment of career capital.

The last chapter draws together the preceding material, again emphasising that old theories do not support an understanding of boundaryless careers in which inter‐company mobility is more the rule than the exception and that they do not sufficiently highlight how people can enact their own careers and in the process contribute to, rather than simply respond to, the new economy.

Certainly, one limitation of the book, acknowledged by the authors, is that it was “pure” research, designed to establish what was happening to careers in the new employment environment, rather than applied research, designed to provide guidelines to action for individuals, human resource professionals, employers or industry associations. The authors do, though, offer a number of observations. For present and future “career actors” they suggest that personal survival and growth will increasingly depend on flexibility, versatility, improvisation and learning. For more experienced career actors they encourage the development of “career resilience” or “career adaptability”. For companies, they call into question the assumption that the company that retains its employees the longest also retains a competitive advantage. However, they also recognise a further limitation of the research, namely that the focus was on employees rather than companies or other institutions. Future research might attempt to further investigate the reciprocal exchange of learning suggested here.

This is not, therefore, a prescriptive text for managers. The book does, however, combine a sound review of existing theories of career with a fascinating insight into the lives and career moves of a wide variety of people and the roles they have played during a period of rapid political and economic change. It will be of interest to students and researchers in the fields of organisational theory, human resource management and labour economics.