Career Communities

Abstract

Careers link the inner, subjective, world of self with the outer, objective, world of institutions and society. As society increasingly reflects turbulence and fragmentation, people may still seek the sense of community that the old career arrangements were expected to provide. Taking inspiration from "new science" ideas of self-organising, and "intelligent career" ideas of individual learning, this thesis posits a new concept of "career communities". These are presented as an alternative organising structure through which the inter-dependence of career experiences and the environment in which they unfold is recognised. The thesis is focused around three questions. The first question relates to the application of intelligent career theory at a group level of analysis. Its exploration links three intelligent career "ways of knowing' to recent conceptions of communal learning. The second question concerns enhancing our understanding of career growth through career communities, and the learning and social opportunities these communities provide. The third question - in keeping with the tenets of new science - asks how career communities function as attractors in the way careers self-organise into collective work arrangements. The methodology adopted in this research advances an explicit theoretical connection between the (individual) subjective and (communal) inter-subjective worlds. The approach begins with an application of the 'intelligent career card sort' (ICCS) which elicits data on an individuals' subjective career according to three interdependent "ways of knowing". The results for the career community under consideration are then aggregated to provide input data for the elicitation of inter-subjective meaning through focus group discussions. This data is then analysed by reference to a typology of ten "pure types" of career community developed as part of this thesis. The thesis comprises four empirical studies. A preliminary pilot study of management consultants was conducted to ascertain the appropriateness of the methodology. Study#1 involved all workers in a non-for-profit organisation focused on rehabilitation of victims of sexual abuse. This group was expected to hold a strong ideological attachment to the work they performed. Study#2 involved Leased Executives, selected to represent the growing proportion of people experiencing contingency employment, and also because of their apparently high sense of professionalism in their work. Study#3 involved a group of Pacific Island professionals, predominantly from the public sector. This group was selected because they represent an ethnic minority whose cultural traditions are inherently collective rather than individual in orientation. The results communicate the inter-subjective meanings elicited at the group level of analysis. The patterns, which emerged from the interplay among the three ways of knowing, were analysed according to the typology of career communities previously developed. Each empirical study showed that in reality a hybrid of career community types was evident rather than any pure type. A comparison across the groups illustrates the principal differences among the groups in the career issues that they faced. The results provide support for the concept of career communities as an alternative organising principle behind people's careers, and one that extends beyond any single employment setting.