Career: From Stability to Agility

Differentiating Key Terms

The concept of career has always been a subject of deep reflection for analyzing professions and occupations. Its roots in the social sciences have made this concept a central point of interest, with its varied usage not known to many other concepts.

This multiple and varied use of the concept of career gives the impression from afar, or at first glance, that it is clear and assimilable, but it becomes too opaque and blurred as one approaches it very closely.

This ambiguity is due to the amalgamation that users make by using other concepts that appear interchangeable with the concept of career, but they are independent. A brief clarification must be given on this subject, trying to answer the following question: What is the difference between, on the one hand, work, employment, activity, task, occupation, profession, and on the other hand, the concept of career?

The term "work" generally refers to the domain of life in which people provide work to obtain a service or a good.
The term "employment": from the moment when institutions define certain tasks with a specific productive role and assign them in a relatively stable and identified way to individuals recruited to carry them out, one can then speak of a specific post or employment.
The term "activity" is defined as the execution of a series of actions and "the representations that accompany it and guide it". From the moment individuals individually or collectively carry out a work product, there is work activity in response to prescriptions.
The term "task" corresponds to the set of prescribed goals and procedures, the required performance, and quality standards, but also to the physical environment of the work. A task corresponds to objectives, means, and conditions of realization. As Leplat points out, the prescribed task describes in a "canonical" way the way to carry out the work and depends on the representation that its designer has of it.
The term "occupation": An occupation appears and develops from a position; according to Latreille, three parameters must be met: the existence of specific training, recognition of the occupation by others, and the grouping of the people concerned. The occupation would therefore be created when people in the same field come together to negotiate the definition of roles, tasks, know-how, access to the labor market, and claim a specific identity, which they recognize among themselves or seek to have recognized.
The term "profession": It must be socially necessary, its members must follow a code of ethics, and the group must ensure its enforcement... This code sets the relationships of the members of the profession with each other and with the rest of society... in the professional field, communication takes place through a specific, hermetic language for the outside world.

The Concept of Career

The theory of career has sought to respond, in the 1970s and 1980s, to the question of the conditions of congruence or adjustment between, on the one hand, the social characteristics of individuals and their expectations, and on the other hand, the organizational constraints of employers.

The notion of career is not a static concept, fixed in time and space, but rather a dynamic one. It has never ceased to be composed, decomposed, and recomposed through its history to adapt to the different spatial and temporal contexts where it is used. A sine qua non condition for its raison d'être.

One of the classic definitions of the concept of "career" was formulated since (1937) by Hughes, who described the concept of "career" as a "moving perspective of time".

The influential definition of Arthur, Hall, and Lawrence (1989) of careers as "the sequence of work-related experiences of a person over time" (p. 8) or "the sequence of work-related positions occupied throughout a person's life" (London and Stumpf, 1982, p. 4).

This definition also corresponds to the notion of career stage, developed by Super in 1957, according to which he conceives of a career as a regular evolution over time, from the beginning to the end of professional life.

Thus, the "time" dimension is central to the traditional conception of a career. It underpins metaphors such as "history" and "chronology" and bureaucratic modes of organizing professional life.

Sears (1982) defined career as: "The totality and/or sequence of work roles and experiences, paid or unpaid, of an individual throughout their life, from school to retirement" (p. 137). By making the issue of remuneration optional, the career has become a necessity for self-realization. The career is not just a job or an occupation to earn a living (Bhuyan, 2002).

Definitions referring to progression over time without taking into account the changes that may occur. They are considered restrictive definitions that reflect the generally adopted common use of the word "career" with its connotations of ballistic, upward, logical, regular, and predictable progression involving the three forms of time: Past, present, and future.

The concept of career has had social connotations referring to "structured professions to which their severe recruitment, their internal discipline, their old tradition, and undoubtedly their social importance, confer a material security and prestige unmatched by the common".

The economic uncertainties and management changes since the 1980s have blurred the visibility of organizations to project themselves into the future.

The traditional notion of a career "no longer seems able to explain the adjustment of individual trajectories to the new demands of the economic organization of work".

This has led to an update of roles. Companies have become unable to continue honoring their former commitments, and they have withdrawn from this mission, and employees have proceeded to develop their versatility to remain employable.

Consequently, the notion of "career" has dissociated itself from all its previous attributes to adopt other meanings that are more suited to a turbulent future than a stable one. The concept of career is being questioned. In 1996, Hall titled: "The career is dead, long live the career" to announce the birth of the career concept in a new status.

Many organizations now speak not of advancement and/or progression opportunities but of opportunities to improve marketing and employability. A situation where professional advancement is no longer vertical but rather multidirectional, and the career is "a sequence of movements in different directions".

Consequently, the employee has changed status. They have become responsible for their evolution instead of being taken care of by the organization as was the case in the old career status. Now, the focus is on the individual, not the organization. The individual is called upon to recognize themselves to chart their own evolutionary itinerary. So, instead of a contract considered built under favorable, flourishing, and stable economic conditions where job security is rewarded by loyalty and commitment to the company, a new mode of employment contract has been contracted, where the form of parental control that the organization exercised over the employee evaporates to clear the way for individual initiatives where "an individual's mobility is considered a valid indicator of their career progression/development".

This change in the situation of employees is not without consequences. The transfer from a situation of employment stability to another precarious and unpredictable situation requiring individual mobilization is not within the reach of all those concerned.

Traditional definitions of career no longer seem adapted to contemporary career systems. The "time" dimension constituting the essence of the concept of "career" has been surpassed, and other dimensions have been introduced.

The traditional career would today be supplanted by a boundaryless or nomadic career.

The concept of "career" has gone beyond the economic dimension to cover other fields of interest. For example, from a political point of view, a career can also be considered a sequence of efforts to maximize personal interest, through successive attempts to acquire power, status, or influence.

In sociology, the concept of "career" is perceived as a tool to maintain social order.

In psychology, the career is conceived as a vocation, a self-realization, or referring to the organization of the individual's life.

Key Takeaways

The concept of career has evolved from a traditional, linear progression to more diverse and non-linear forms, such as the boundaryless or nomadic career.
The "time" dimension, central to the traditional conception of career, has been surpassed, and other dimensions have been introduced.
The employee has shifted from being taken care of by the organization to being responsible for their own career development and evolution.
The concept of career has expanded beyond the economic dimension to cover various fields of interest, including politics, sociology, and psychology.

Career: From Stability to Agility

Differentiating Key Terms

The Concept of Career

Key Takeaways

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