Metaphors and Career Dynamics

1. Metaphors and Career Dynamics

2. Objectives • Understand the etymological background of the term “career”. • Awareness of the three different career streams/approaches. • Understand the meaning of “metaphor” and to understand the possibilities but also risks of a metaphorical approach to career studies. • Be able to differentiate and explain a select number of metaphors. • To be able to think creatively and to generate new metaphors.

3. Etymological Explanation • The term ‘career’ originates from the latin term “carraria” meaning “a road” or “carriageway”.

4. Etymological Approach • At the same time the expressions “car” or “Carriage” are also connected to the latin stem. These are the vehicles used to make the trip on the road.

5. Defining “Career” • A career is “the evolving sequence of a person’s work experiences over time.” (Arthur, Hall, & Lawrence, 1989, Handbook of Career Theory, p.8)

6. Internal vs. External Career • The term “internal career” refers to the subjective experience of work life while the term “external career” refers to the intersubjective (objective) observable part of a career.

7. Perspectives • Three separate research literatures on the topic of careers. • Career development movement • Sociological view • Career Management view

8. Career Development • Views the career as a set of personal psychologically-based issues. • This movement tends to understand well the processes of career decision making such as initial educational and occupational choices made by high-school students and college graduates.

9. Sociological View • Strongly influenced by evidence of the way in which careers are determined by social structural variables such as social class, education and gender. • Less attention is payed to individual differences and individual action in pursuit of careers. • It recommends policy and legislative interventions designed to reduce inequalities

10. Career Management View • Emphasizes the role of employing organizations in career behaviour through the organizational contexts they provide for individuals to pursue their careers, and their management of human resources. • Underestimates both the limiting effects if the wider context and the extent of individuals’ responsibility for, and control over, their own careers. • In terms of practice, it favours direct intervention by management.

11. What is a Metaphor? • “A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a point is made about one thing by substituting something else that demonstrates a particular quality of the first in a dramatic way” (Inkson 2007, p. 13)

12. Metaphor and Epistomology • “Metaphors are being central to human discourse and understanding. Metaphors connect realms of human experience and imagination. They guide our perceptions and interpretations of reality and help us formulate our Visions and goals. In doing these things, metaphors facilitate and further our understanding of the world. (Cornellissen 2008, 8).

13. Deduced vs. Induced Metaphors • Metaphors can be imposed or projected onto an organizational reality or they can naturally surface within the talk and sensemaking of individuals and can be identified or elicited. Deductive metaphors are imposed on and applied to organizational situations and metaphors that are inductively derived from the in situ natural talk and discursive interactions of people within organizations.

14. Exactness of Correspondence Source: Bandl/Schmit (2010): From ‘GlassCeilings’ to ‘Firewalls’, in: Gender, Work and Organization 17 (5), p. 618

15. El-Sawad • Study asking people to tell something about their career. It turned out that all people used metaphors to express their perception of their career. • Distinction between old, established and new metaphors. • Most people used more than one Metaphor.

16. Discipline and Punishment • Many metaphors highlight the disciplinary aspect and possibility to punish people as their career can be hindered or fostered by others.

17. Discipline and Punishment • “Foucauldian analyses urge us to consider how management control is secured via disciplinary power, the exercise of which Foucault (1977) saw to be achieved through the use of various panoptical surveillance techniques which promote self-surveillance and self-managed self-discipline” (El-Sawad , p. 37)

18. Ancient Regime Punishment • Brutal torture and executions in public in order to repress the population. Punishment has the purpose to pay back and to terrify.

19. Modern Punishment • Professionals like parole officers, psychologists etc. have power over prisoners and leads to self-policing of the individual and the population. Punishment has the purpose to correct and to discipline.

20. Career as School-like-Surveillance • This metaphor highlights the role of people considered children or students by superiors and their behaviour is constantly being watched and evaluated. People are constantly examined and evaluated as good or bad performers. Only the good ones progress in their career.

21. Career as Horticultural Activities • Description of the career as being dependent on others nurturing it. It highlights issues like grow out own people, mentoring, foster or hinder growth, make selection into whom to invest limited resources.

22. Characteristics of the Horticultural Metaphor Source: Baruch, Y. (2004): Managing Careers, p. 163.

23. Career as a Battlefield • Career is seen as a battle including fighting, wearing armour, being drilled, regimented, tending wounds, digging in, waving flags of surrender, parachuting to safety, hierarchy, conformity, senior officers hold power to select for promotion

24. Career as Wild West • There are good and bad guys and not the just are the good ones but those who are successful and top-performers. But one has to watch the back, be careful about not shooting oneself in the foot.

25. Career as Sheep-Dipping • “Sheep-dipping involves washing away dirt and infectious material from animals. All sheep are put through the sheep wash since if one remained infected there would be a strong risk of it infecting all the others” (El-Sawad , p. 34.) The metaphor highlights medical quarantine, and ensuring fit and conformity.

26. Career as a Journey • Reference is made to: career ladders, fast paths, nice paths, flying, driving and steering, paths, tracks, roads, and avenues, crossroads and turning points, maps and charts, meeting dead ends and getting lost, change gear.” (El-Sawad , p. 27 p.)

27. Career as a Competition • References include winners, losers, cheats, injuries, fair or unfair promotion, fears other may outperform, pressure to progress quickly, career rat race.

28. Career as Life Imprisonment • This refers to the perception of being trapped in an organization or a position and serving a sentence as a (voluntary/involuntary) prisoner. People start to intertwine their personal identity with their life job or/and organization they are working for. Often they express little desire to escape.

29. Career as a Nautical Maneuver • It is about controlling, mapping the progress and charting territory, not rocking the boat, risk of drowning, treading water, being channeled by others etc. “ To stay on course directions must be followed and rules obeyed”. (El-Sawad , p. 34.)

30. Problems with Metaphors • 1. Errors of commission (when irrelevant material is forced onto the object being described)2. Errors of omission (when key aspects of the object are left out of account) • 3. Errors of inappropriateness (when the correspondences are trivial or non existing) • 4. Errors of redundancy (when a metaphor adds nothing to existing metaphors)

31. Conclusion • Each metaphor provided a different lens to view the same phenomenon. Each appear valid , and there is some overlap between them. • In order to understand what careers we need to facilitate various metaphors.

32. References • Cornelissen et al. (2008): Metaphor in Organizational Research, in: Organization Studies 29 (1):7-22. • Bandl/Schmit (2010): From ‘GlassCeilings’ to ‘Firewalls’, in: Gender, Work and Organization 17 (5), p. 618

33. Psychological Contracts

34. Objectives • Be able to understand the concept of the psychological contract and distinguish it from other types. • To be able to distinguish types of contracts governing exchange relationships and types of psychological contracts • Understand contract violation and reactions • Perceive careers as ongoing contract making processes

35. Tacit Contract • Individual psychological contract as interpreted by a third person who is trying to understand the terms of the exchange relationship.

36. Normative Contract • Terms of exchange relationships which develop when a particular group of people believe they have (as a group) particular terms concerning their exchange with another group or an individual.

37. Social Contract • General belief about the acceptable terms of exchange relationships in a society as third parties perceive it.

38. Psychological Contract • Terms of an exchange relationship between an individual and another individual (or a collective, i.e. an organization) as seen from the perspective of the involved partners.

39. Psychological Contract • “Psychological Contracts are beliefs, based upon promises expressed or implied, regarding an exchange agreement between an individual and, in organizations, the employing firm and its agents”. • Rousseau, 2004, p. 120.

40. Psychological Contract • Psychological contracts require perceived (assumed) mutual recognition, negotiation and agreement about the resources the parties do exchange and the exchange must be voluntary.

41. Types of Psychological Contracts Rousseau (1995): Psychological Contracts in Organizations, p. 9, modified.

42. Transactional Contract • Collaboration/exchange involve a clear project within a specified time frame while performance terms (expectancies) are clear and explicit.

43. Transitional Contract • This collaboration/exchange relationship does not have a specific time frame or performance requirements specified by the exchange partners.

44. Balanced Contract • The time frame for the duration of the relationship is understood to be long-term but there are clear performance expectations which must be met and clear task behaviour. Poor performance will not be tolerated even though exchange partners go personally along quite well.

45. Relational Contract • The time frame for the exchange is open-ended and the performance standards are implict. Important part of this contract is the aspect that there is more than just a task oriented exchange but both partners show concerns about their well-being beyond and above task oriented exchange. Poor performance is tolerated (at least for a while) if personal relationships are fine.

46. Balanced vs. Unbalanced Exchanges Coyle-Shapiro et al (2008): Human Resource Management, p. 47

47. Economic Exchange • There is a balance between the understanding between the employee and the employer but the exchange relationship is a transactional (economic) type.

48. Mutual Exchange • There is a balance between the understanding between the employee and the employer and the exchange relationship is of a relational type.

49. Under-Investment • The exchange relationship is characterized by the employee adopting a relational social exchange view while the employer adopts a transactional exchange view.

50. Over-Investment • Employees are taking a transactional point of view of the exchange relationship while the employer sees the exchange relationship governed by a relational contract.