Mary Mallon

Challenges for the boundaryless career odyssey

The boundaryless career, which challenges the assumptions of the traditional hierarchical career, has proved to be a remarkably popular and influential concept. However, we argue that it remains theoretically and empirically undeveloped, which limits its explanatory potential. We draw on some New Zealand empirical research highlighting the issue of who gets studied. Focusing on womens career experience, local ethnic groups and collective cultures we argue that these experiences represent a challenge to boundaryless career theory. Some of the theoretical assumptions on which boundaryless careers have been built are also interrogated: freedom from boundaries, individual volition and minimal influences from societal structures. We conclude that the boundaryless career story/odyssey is in danger of becoming a narrow career theory applicable only to the minority, if there is no engagement with theoretical and empirical critiques.

Time for a Change? Women's Accounts of the Move from Organizational Careers to Self‐Employment

This paper is based on a study of women’s transition from careers within organizations into self-employment. It focuses on three key issues: the ways in which women accounted for their career transition, their decisions to opt for self-employment, and the extent to which, in telling their stories, respondents engaged with emerging career discourses. First, this paper considers recent debates within the literature on women’s exit from organizations, and emerging discourses of career and self-employment, focusing on the position of women within these changing discourses. Research findings are then presented, examining three central themes: entrepreneurial orientation, dissatisfaction with the organization and balance of personal and professional life. The concluding section considers how women made sense of the web of factors involved in their career transition and reflects on whether indeed it is ‘time for a change’.

My brilliant career ? Using stories as a methodological tool in careers research

Abstract Within organizational research, stories are increasingly recognized as a powerful research tool. In this article we argue that stories can likewise be a valuable research instrument in analyzing “career.” In particular, they illuminate the ways in which individuals make sense of their careers as they unfold through time and space, attending to both the holistic nature of career as well as to specific career transitions. Further, stories as discursive constructs provide insights into individual sense-making. Through such insights, the story-based researcher can build a rich, complex, multifaceted, and integrated picture from the perspective of situated individuals.

Constructing Scientific Careers: Change, Continuity and Context

This paper examines the ways in which public sector research scientists make sense of and seek to develop their careers within their current organizational, policy, social and cultural contexts. It argues that to access such understandings, both structure and agency and the relationship between them need to be considered. Using empirical evidence from research in the United Kingdom and New Zealand, this paper further develops Barleys (1989) structuration model of career. It highlights the diverse (and frequently intersecting) institutional contexts in which research scientists seek to develop their careers, and their characteristic modes of engagement with such contexts, and utilizes the concept of career scripts to illustrate the dynamic interaction between these dimensions.

The odyssey of career and the opportunity for international comparison

The concept of career is where human resource management (HRM) processes and practices, and received social opinions about work, meet the aspirations and well-being of individuals at work. The effects are not all one way, though, as evolution in individual and collective career patterns can eventually challenge and reshape HRM practices. Thus the power of the concept of career is precisely the recursive link that it provides. To study careers orients attention not only to the external features of working lives – positions, promotions and organizational and occupational career structures – but also to how people perceive these features, as well as to the dialectical relationships between people and their environments. This allows for a wide-ranging examination of the intersection of individuals, organizations and social structures over time and space. Thus, the concept career provides a useful vehicle for exploring social processes and social change (Collin and Watts, 1996; Herriott, 1992; Arthur et al., 1989). There has been renewed interest in careers recently (e.g. Arthur and Rousseau, 1996; Peiperl et al., 2000; Collin and Young, 2000; Inkson et al., 2002), stemming from the widespread debate about the career implications of those organizational and social changes which threaten traditional assumptions about work. The comfortable notion that careers travel predictable routes up organizational or occupational hierarchies appears no longer to hold. In response to the debate, a discernible body of literature has emerged addressing what has been described as a shift from ‘organizational careers’ to so-called ‘boundaryless careers’ involving less predictable career trajectories (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996). Images of careers as protean (Hall et al., 1996), boundaryless (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996), capitalist (Inkson and Arthur, 2002), portfolio (Handy, 1994) and free agent (Hecksher, 1995) have been proposed. Much of this literature invites a sharper focus on the individual and the personal ‘odyssey’ involved in career journeys that are more idiosyncratic in their engagement with the changing world of work over time. Most new approaches to careers converge in exploring ‘independence from, rather than dependence on, traditional organizational career arrangements’ (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996: 6). Emerging ideas about careers as less predictable, less organizationally dependent and more boundaryless have acted as a powerful counterforce to earlier views of careers which have acted as limits to the legitimacy of a wide variety of career stories Int. J. of Human Resource Management 14:5 August 2003 705–712

Going “portfolio”: making sense of changing careers

The demise of the traditional career is widely heralded as is its replacement by more fluid and individual career choices. This paper reports on an exploratory investigation of the transition of ex‐NHS managers from managerial careers to portfolio careers. Drawing inductively on interviews with 25 managers, the paper indicates that individuals draw on a number of permeating themes to make sense of their career given the transition they have made: the “real career”; “no going back”; “values and integrity”; “development”; and “consolidation”. The paper argues that more such research is needed to explore the diverse sense making schemes drawn on by individuals experiencing career change.

Exploring career transitions: accounting for structure and agency

Purpose – To apply and develop Stephen Barleys model of career structuration to offer insights into the transition into portfolio working.Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative case study methodology is used. Interviews were conducted with managers who had left the National Health Service to develop portfolio careers.Findings – The adoption of the Barley model of career structuration as a sensitising device has made it possible to show how individuals have drawn from existing scripts embedded in institutional forms but have also contributed to developing new career scripts, such as portfolio working. Their enactment of career scripts is a dynamic process whereby they impact back on those scripts in both intentional and unintentional ways. Thus the transformative capacity of individual career actions is asserted but, critically, alongside awareness of constraints as bound up in structures which have salience for individuals and for collectives.Research limitations/implications – This is a study based...

Redefining the Boundaries? Making Sense of Career in Contemporary New Zealand

This paper outlines the results from an exploratory research project into individual perceptions of career in the changing world of work. The aim was to understand how individuals were making sense of and enacting their career. Three organisations, which had all undergone significant change, were used to identify participants whose stories were generated either through qualitative surveys and interviews. From data analysis using the NUD•ist software program, six themes were generated illustrating patterns of ideas running through the data. These themes were then used to address the research aims of investigating current interpretations of career in New Zealand. Overall, it was found that contemporary workplace changes have impacted on career meaning and subjective interpretations of career have been externalised. These conclusions have practical implications for career practitioners, human resources managers and individuals in their own career planning.

What do women want

This paper outlines a study designed to investigate the development needs of women managers in a large local authority in the North of England. The study arose as a result of a proposal to design a new development programme for women within the organisation. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used and the results focus on the data from 102 questionnaires and 17 in‐depth interviews. The results highlight the factors that women managers perceive to be supportive or inhibitory to their development and provide some suggestions as to the perceived development needs of this particular group of women. It is argued that, in preparing any developmental initiative, the views of potential participants should be taken into account. Additionally, the role of discriminatory attitudes and practices in preventing the success of development opportunities for women is highlighted.

Career and learning: the ins and the outs of it

Purpose – Seeks to explore how individuals talk about learning when asked about career.Design/methodology/approach – Brings together three qualitative research studies, based in the UK and New Zealand on how individuals make sense of career; one focused on people in organizational employment and two on “portfolio” workers operating as freelance workers on a variety of contracts with organizations. The debate on the changing nature of careers and the imperative to life‐long learning resonates in the studies and the extent of change that has occurred is questioned.Findings – The findings of the studies suggest that there is less learning activity (in terms of education, training or self‐development activities) being undertaken by these participants than may be expected. While participants generally believe that they should take charge of their own learning and career development, they are less sure what actions to take. Signals from the organization are still an important prompt for learning for those in em...