CAREER ANCHORS AND WORK CENTRALITY: A CROSS CULTURAL STUDY

This study explores the relationship between career anchors and work centrality and how this relationship changes across national cultures. Importance and Key Contribution A person’s career anchor is his/her self-concept... [ view full abstract ]

This study explores the relationship between career anchors and work centrality and how this relationship changes across national cultures.

Importance and Key Contribution
A person’s career anchor is his/her self-concept consisting of self-perceived talents and abilities, basic values, and, most important, the evolved sense of motives and needs as they pertain to the career (Schein, 1990). Career anchors are deep motivating factors helping in career decision making consistent with self-identities. It influences career choices, influences decisions to leave, determines an individual’s view of the future, and shapes employee reactions to work experiences (Bigliardi et al., 2005).

Importance of past experiences in the development of Career Anchors means the origin and crystallization of career anchors could be affected by the culture in which one has grown up. Studies on career anchors in different cultures have shown different levels of importance for different career anchors (Derr, 1987). For instance, Premarajan (2001) uncovered a culturally unique career anchor called Duty in his study among managers in India. Thus, it is very important to study the Career Anchors of people from different geographies and cultures to understand its prevalence across cultures.

Work centrality, which is defined as individual beliefs regarding the value of work (Kostek, 2012) or as the degree of importance work plays in one’s life (Paullay, Alliger, & Stone-Romero, 1994), has emerged as a construct to address the question how much importance human beings place on work in their lives and why.

This study, therefore, explores the concept of career anchors and work centrality across cultures and their relationship using data from 6 countries.

Theoretical Base
The idea of what a career is depends on the culture in which it is embedded. In different countries different notions exist about how one should pursue careers, how much emphasis one should give to career versus family concerns, and what makes careers legitimate (Schein, 1986). Moreover, there is growing evidence that organizational cultures also influence careers in specifying what is expected of career occupants (Schwartz and Davis, 1981; Pettigrew, 1979). Values have been identified as a critical variable in the career development process (e.g., Fouad, 1995; Super & Sverko, 1995). The values system contains all the values held by individuals, including their cultural values and work values. Cultural values include values regarding human nature, person-nature relationship, time orientation, social relationship, etc., (Kluckhorn & Strodtbeck, 1961).

Values develop so that individuals can meet their needs in socially acceptable way and thus they are shaped by the cultural context of the individual (Rokeach, 1973; Brown, 2002). It has also been suggested that cultural values, particularly social relationships values, play an important role in the career development process (Hartung et al., 1998). Most studies of careers are mono-cultural and do not account for either a symbolic or a cross-cultural point of view. Since values form an important component of career anchors, cross-cultural exploration and validation of career anchor theory is critical.
Studies on career anchors Is yet to achieve a level of critical mass. Though it is well known and widely used both by individuals and organizations, it has been subject to limited empirical investigations (Arnold, 1997; Yarnall, 1998). Feldman and Bolino (1996) asked for empirical validation of career anchor classification due to the inconsistency of results. For instance it is still not clear whether all the possible career anchors have been identified. One of the earlier attempts to validate the career anchor model was made by DeLong (1982). DeLong investigated three additional career variables such as Identity, Service, and Variety. The study validated Schein’s conclusions by identifying the five anchors and, additionally, distinguishing these three career orientations. With his later work, Schein identified three additional anchors making it a total of 8 anchors (Schein, 1996). These are General managerial Competence, Technical/Functional Competence, Security/Stability, Autonomy, Entrepreneurial Creativity, Life Style, Service/Dedication to cause, and Pure Challenge. Career anchors evolve as one gains occupational and life experience. Thus, they are affected by the environment, experiences and the culture one belongs too. Since they evolve based on past experiences, Career Anchors of people should definitely be affected by the culture one belongs to. For instance, Derr & Laurent (1987) in their study found that the British and Swedes are significantly more getting-ahead oriented than are the French. The French and Germans, on the other hand, had a significantly higher getting-balanced orientation than the British.

Thus, it is very important to study the Career Anchors of people from different geographies and cultures.
Besides the 8 anchors identified by Schein (1985) there are other career anchors identified as well. For instance Suutari and Taka (2004) uncovered another career anchor called Internationalism. Premarajan (2001) identified a career anchor that he called ‘Duty’ which is defined as the tendency to derive satisfaction by making career decisions that create satisfaction among the significant elders in the family.

Work centrality, defined as individual beliefs regarding the value of work (Kostek, 2012) or as the degree of importance work plays in one’s life (Paullay, Alliger, & Stone-Romero, 1994), has emerged as a construct to address the question of how much importance human beings place on work in our lives as well as the why of it. In previous research, however, the importance of work has rarely been contrasted with the importance of other life domains and never across sufficient cultural groups to enable cultural moderation of processes around work centrality (Lu et al, 2016). Prior studies in the area of work centrality tend to focus scholarly attention on the antecedents of work centrality on broad individual characteristics or nation-level institutions, ignoring an individual’s generalized work orientations (Lu et al, 2016). It would be interesting to explore how career anchor of an individual is related to work centrality.

Research Questions and Method
The key research questions the study is trying to answer are as follows:
1. How career anchors vary across cultures?
2. Are there culture specific career anchors?
3. How does work centrality vary across cultures?
4. How does one’s career anchor influence centrality of work?

This study is part of a large scale project undertaken by an international team of career researchers (known as ICAR) who have joined together to conduct longitudinal research on the careers of students graduating from business programs. At present the team includes academics from Belgium, France, India, Ireland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The current study includes data from six universities (in Belgium, France, India, Ireland, the UK and the US).

To date, approximately 1500 graduating students have completed the survey instrument in the six universities. Additional data are being collected from students graduating at the end of the 2015-16 academic year. An online survey was sent to students towards the end of their course of study in the six universities. It included a wide range of measures such as career anchors, the big five personality measures, relative work centrality and protean career attitudes. The key variables for this particular study were Career Anchor, which was measured using a 24 item scale modified version of Schein (1993). Items to measure a new career anchor named Duty was added to the questionnaire based on Premarajan (2001) The importance of work centrality and other areas of life was measured by the item: ‘Distribute a total of 100 points to signify the relative importance of the following areas in your life: leisure time, community, work, religion, and family.’
Suitable statistical tools will be used to analyze the data.

References
Arnold, J. 1997. Managing Careers into the 21st Century. Paul Chapman Publishing. London.
Bigliardi, B., Petroni, A., & Dormio, A.I. (2005). Organizational socialization, career aspirations and turnover intentions among design engineers. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 26 (6), 424-441.
Brown, D. (2002). The role of work and cultural values in Occupational Choice, Satisfaction, and Success. Journal of Counseling & Development, Winter 2002, Volume 80.
Derr, C.B., & Laurent, A. (1987). The Internal and External Careers: A theoretical and cross-cultural perspective. INSEAD Working Paper No. 87/24
Derr, C.B. (1987) "Managing High Potentials In Europe: Some Cross-Cultural Findings." European Management Journal, Vol. 5, Spring
DeLong, T.J. (1982b) Reexamining the Career Anchor Model, Personnel, 59(3), 50-61.
Feldman, D.C., & Bolino, M.C., (1996) Career within careers: Reconceptualzing the nature of career anchors and their consequences. Human Resource Management Review, Vol. 6 (2) 89-112
Fouad, N.A. (1995) Career nejavopr pf Jos[amocs: Assessment and interventions. In F.T.L. Leong (Ed), Career development and vocational behavior of racial and ethnic minorities. Mahwah, NJ:Erlbaum
Hartung, P.J., Vandivers, B.J., Leong, F.T.L., Pope, M., Niles, S.G., & Farrow, B (1998) Appraising cultural identity in career development assessment and counseling. The career development quarterly, 46, 276-293.
Kluckhorn, F.R., & Strodtbeck, F.L. (1961). Values in values orientations. Evanston, IL: Row Paterson
Kostek, J. A. (2012). Work centrality: A meta-analysis of the nomological network (Master’s thesis). Bowling Green State University, OH. (Paullay, Alliger, & Stone-Romero, 1994),

Remainder of references available on request from first author.

Career Anchor Work Centrality Cross-cultural study Duty as a career anchor [ view full abstract ]

Career Anchor
Work Centrality
Cross-cultural study
Duty as a career anchor