TYPES AND THEORIES OF CAREER

INTRODUCTION

Theories of career are many and assist in the excavation of crucial underlining traits,
factors and needs that are fulfilled by career both for the individual, policymakers, educators and society in general.

TYPES OF CAREER

Career opportunities exist in the formal and informal segments of the labour market. Opportunity is
determined by several factors, and depending on whether one enters as employee,
entrepreneur or apprentice.

1.   
Entering as employee – An employee works for other people on the basis of a contract of employment which stipulates relevant
conditions of work such as hours of work, resumption time, pay, allowances and
benefits, risks associated with job and mode of determination of contract.
Formal organizations often keep a record of description of job and human
requirement for all job positions. Opportunity for work presupposes some level
of training which will put the individual into different layer of the
organisation or ministry he hopes to work for.

2.   
As entrepreneur – The entrepreneur participates
in the labour market as employer by labour. He owns the means of production,
capital, land, equipment, raw materials, and seeks people (employee) to help
translate his business objectives. He paid only money and other in-kind rewards
to attract, motivate and retrain good workers. His main motive for doing
business is profit. Entrepreneur operates as sole proprietors or engages in
several types of ownership structure; partnership, limited, private or public
liability concerns.

3.    
As apprenticeship – Apprenticeship occurs mostly
in the informal sector. The apprentice is on a short term training course which
will result in his own venture or a period as journey man.

Typically, in Nigeria, the
labour market admits many entrants (nationals and foreigners) as employer,
employee, or apprentice. Entry preparation exists in the form of school
certificates (junior and senior), ordinary and higher diplomas, NCE, B. A or B.
Sc degrees, and post graduate degrees such as post graduate diploma (PGD), M.A
/ M.Sc, M. Phil and PhD degrees. Entry also depend on areas of specialty such
as business management, sciences, banking and finance, human resource
management, engineering, law and so forth. At lower levels where semi and
unskilled labour is required, specialty is not so important. Various skills:
manual, technical, or managerial are traded in the labour market and these
gives job openings in relevant ministries and Organisations.

THEORIES OF CAREER

The traditional concern of
human resources managers has been to match individual abilities to specific
jobs. Another concern is more global in nature: that is, individual –
organization fit. A career however is not just matching skills with a job. It
is a complex alignment to personality, values, interests, aptitudes and
competencies with the requirements of work and conditions of the work
environment. 

Several theories have been proposed to assist our understanding
and provide explanatory framework for career choice of people within the
context of several variables bothering on the personality, social support
systems, parental/family situation, the labour market context and other
indicative factors. Theories help us to make senses out of our experiences by
providing explanatory framework for tracing and explaining relationship among
seemingly disparate variables.

THEORIES OF CAREER DEVELOPMENT

Of the several career theories
here listed John Holland’s and Super’s career theory will be discussed in some
detail. These theories are attempts at alignment of experiences with empirical
studies.

1.   
John Holland’s career typology

2.   
Driver’s career concept

3.   
Super’s self-expression theory.

4.   
Roe’s theory

5.    
Lent, Brown and Hackett’s Social Cognitive
theory

6.    
Ginzberg’s theory

7.    
Krumboltz Gottfredson’s social learning theory

Holland’s Personality-Job theory.

John Holland’s (1973) theory is
grounded in what he called modal personal orientation or a developmental
process established through heredity and the individual’s life history of
reacting to the environmental demands. More simply put individuals are
attracted to a particular occupation that meets their personal needs and
provides them satisfaction. Holland’s theory, derived from a study of the
American population, rests on four main assumptions:

1.   
In our culture, persons can be categorized as
one of the following: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising,
or conventional.

2.    
There are six modal environments: realistic,
investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional.

3.    
People search for environments that will let
them exercise their skills and abilities, express their attitudes and values,
and take on agreeable problems and roles.

4.    
Behaviour is determined by an interaction
between personality and environment.

Also called Holland’s theory
of occupational choice, the theory derived from development, by Holland, of
vocational preference inventory questionnaire that contains 160 occupational
titles. Respondents indicate like or dislike for these titles and their
responses were used to form six personality profiles. A hexagonal diagram
showing that the closer two fields or orientations are in the hexagon, the more
compatible they are. Adjacent categories are quite similar, while diagonally
opposite orientations are dissimilar.

Career Diamond of Holland

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p style=”margin-left: 40.8pt;”>Table 2.1: Holland’s Typology of Personality and Congruent occupations

Although each individual is
made up of six types, one type is usually dominant. Most personalities tend to
resemble up to three of the six personality factors. Holland’s model of
occupational choice, though had left out -3- dimensions of the “Big five”
personality traits such as conscientiousness, emotional stability and
agreeability, and treating only openness and extroversion, has laid foundation
for many career development activities in use today. 

The theory in the overall
emphasizes the point that effective career development involves finding a good
“fit” between the individual’s personality and the work environment. Several
researches have shown support for Hollander’s typology. The theories’ strongest
criticism is that it is gender biased. Females tend to score high only in the
three personality dimensions; artistic, social and convectional. 

Holland
attributes this to the fact that females talents are channelled in such a way
that certain occupations are female dominated and others male-dominated.
Holland’s typology takes cognitive problem solving approach to career planning
and this model has been very influential in vocational counselling. It has been
employed by popular assessment tools such as the Self Directed Search,
Vocational Preference Inventory and the Strong Interest Inventory. The approach
has also resulted in practical resources like the dictionary of Holland
occupational codes which applies Holland’s codes to major occupations.

Super’s Self-Expression
Theory

Donald
Super also made notable contribution to the development of career theory.
Following the work history of a number of men for a period of 25 years he noted
in his book Career pattern Study (1957) that career spans series of
developmental stages. His 14 basic assumptions about career are as follows:

1.     
People differ in their abilities and
personalities, needs, values, interests, traits and self-concepts.

2.     
People are qualified, by virtue of these
characteristics, for a number of occupations.

3.     
Each occupation requires a characteristic
pattern of abilities and personality traits, with tolerances for each
individual as well as some variety of individual in each occupation.

4.     
Vocational preferences and competencies, the
situations in which people live and work, and hence their self-concepts change,
with time and experience.

5.     
This process of change may be summed up in a
series of life stages (also called maxicycle) characterised as a sequence of
growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance, and disengagement which
consists of developmental tasks. The period between each of the stages are
marked by transitions (marked by minicycles) each time a career is punctuated
by illness, injury, redundancies social/technological changes or any other
socio-economic or personal events.

6.     
The nature of career patterns, that is,
occupational level attained and the sequence, frequency, and duration of trial
and stable jobs is determined by individual’s parental of career socioeconomic,
level, mental abilities, education, skills, personality characteristics (needs,
interest, values, and self-­concepts) and career maturity and
opportunities.

7.     
Success in coping with the demands of the
environment and of the organisation at any given life­career stage depends on
the readiness of the individual to cope with the demands.

8.     
Career maturity is a psychological construct
that denotes an individual’s degree of development along the continuum of
life-stages and substages of the growth through disengagement.

9.     
Development through the life-stages can be
guided by maturity of abilities, interests, and coping resources, reality
testing and development of self-concepts.

10.  
The process of career development is essentially
of developing and implementing occupational self.­concepts as a synthesis of
inherited aptitudes, physical makeup, opportunity to observe and play various
roles which meets approval of superiors and peers.

11.  
The process of synthesis of and compromise
between individual and social factors, self-concept and reality is that of role
playing and learning from feedback.

12.  
Work satisfactions and life satisfactions depend
on the extent to which an individual finds adequate outlets for abilities,
needs, values, interests, personality traits and self-concepts within the
context of work type and situation that allows for exploration and growth.

13.  
The degree of satisfaction people attain from
work is proportional to the degree to which they have been able to implement
self-concepts

14.  
Work and occupation provide a focus for
personality organisation for most men and women, though some may focus on
peripheral issues like leisure, homemaking, as much as tradition, stereotype,
sex role, ethnic, racial and modelling shapes individual preferences.

CONCLUSION

Of the seven career theories listed, two were explained in detail with the
encouragement for the students, using the avenue of the self-tutored
assignment, to form a comprehensive and critical note on the other five
theories. It is obvious that career theories, such as Super’s self-expression,
provide comprehensive insights into the factors, dynamics, and course of career
from growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance to disengagement.