Geographic Flexibility in Academia: A Cautionary Note

Having the flexibility to pursue an international career is increasingly common in many professions. Based on two qualitative studies of international academics, this paper focuses on academia. Commencing with a discussion about the different dimensions of flexibility in academia it focuses specifically on geographic flexibility, understood as the ability to pursue a career across international boundaries. Drawing on conceptions of an international community of scholars operating in a science context and specific national and institutional contexts the paper explores the experiences of international academics. It also considers the 'modes of engagement' they use to navigate the demands of those contexts. The findings suggest that while academia as a profession may be characterized by geographic flexibility a certain tension exists between academia and the national and institutional contexts within which academics must operate. It is noted that it is internationally mobile academics who are currently paying the price of those tensions and offers a cautionary note to those who are contemplating such a career move. It also suggests that academics can adopt certain 'modes of engagement' in order to maintain, transform or subvert those institutional challenges.     

Flexible Work Arrangements and Intentions of Unemployed Women in Cyprus: A Planned Behaviour Model

Drawing from the theory of planned behaviour, we use 18 focus groups with 113 unemployed women and 150 mail questionnaires to explore whether and how unemployed Cypriot women's subjective norms, attitudes, perceived behavioural control and job versus career aspirations influence their intentions to adopt employee‐ and employer‐driven flexible work arrangements. To analyse the information gathered, we used a combination of content analysis, an external panel of practitioners and academics, principal components analysis, and regressions. Results show that women's positive attitudes towards child‐caring and self‐enhancement and their subjective norms of organizational inflexibility were positively related mainly with intentions to adopt employee‐driven flexible work arrangements. Further, women who found childcare support and employer requirements limiting were more interested in telework; the latter were also more interested in temporary work. Finally, women's career aspirations were related with weekend work and telework, whilst their job aspirations were associated with temporary work. Results raise issues for employers and policy‐makers in Cyprus, and possibly other southern European countries facing similar challenges, in supporting women to become fully integrated in the labour market.     

Mehr als nur Überleben — Anerkennung und Selbstbehauptung

More than survive — acknoledgement and self-assertiveness. Coaching for feministic researchers The need for coaching for feminist women academics arises from the unfavourable conditions of their employment at Universities. This relates, in particular, to the conditions which are important for professional ?power“ such as the need for acknowledgement and the opportunity for assertiveness. Group coaching for women, in this case, serves to strengthen women’s belief in themselves which then becomes a resource and a basis for self-assertiveness. Solidarity and a long-term career perspective are indispensable.     

Should I stay or should I go?

In 2002, the German system of higher education went through a set of reforms that were—amongothers—intended to make the university career more attractive for young academics, in order not to lose them to alternative careers. Until today, however, there is no theoretical or empirical analysis on the determinants of young academics’ career decisions. In our paper, we analyse the decisions of young academics to leave the university career system on the basis of a self-selection model. Using an original data set on junior scientists in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, we render first empirical evidence on the determinants of young academics’ careers decisions, and find that these are influenced by monetary as well as non-monetary factors.     

Career paths for women physician executives

The career path leading toward being a physician executive is similar for men and women, but there are some issues that have unique elements for women. Thus, any person interested in developing a medical management career can follow the advice in the following pages, but it is especially useful for women or for those who are coaching women in career development and management.     

What it Means to Succeed: Personal Conceptions of Career Success Held by Male and Female Managers at Different Ages

This paper describes the findings of a qualitative study which analyses how managers define career success for themselves on their own terms. In exploring career success from the perspective of the individual, not the organization, the research attempts to fill an identifiable gap in the career literature. The paper examines the criteria which individuals use to describe what career success means to them, and expresses them by means of a series of orientational categories – Climbers, Experts, Influencers and Self-Realizers – which classify the different ways in which managers talk about career success. The variations in the way that the male and female, and older and younger, research participants describe what career success means to them are discussed and compared. The women managers and older managers who took part in the study appear less inclined to define career success in terms of hierarchical and financial progression: the paper considers the implications of this for individuals and for organizations.     

Achieving leadership and success: A 28-year follow-up of college women leaders

Using a life span perspective focusing on establishing early leader identity, we examine the relationship of achievement orientations, career aspirations, personal and organizational factors, and family choices of 101 women college leaders surveyed in 1985 to ascendance into senior leadership roles and occupational success 28 years later. College-age orientations toward leadership and competition best predicted later-life outcomes. Higher college-age leadership orientation differentiated between women subsequently achieving senior leadership positions and those who did not. Networking and family support positively related to career outcomes; women with and without children had similar outcomes. Women who took leaves beyond a standard maternity absence reported similar career satisfaction to those continuously employed but were less likely to reach senior leadership positions and paid a significant economic penalty in salary. College-age achievement orientations, including leadership orientation, significantly predicted adult achievement orientations, suggesting the college years as an important period for leadership development and intervention.     

Exploring teachers’ career self-management. Considering the roles of organizational career management,occupational self-efficacy,and learning goal orientation.

The current study examines how organizational career management – i.e. activities undertaken by schools in order to plan and manage teachers’ careers – relates to teachers’ career self-management – i.e. teachers steering their careers by means of searching for opportunities, networking, or seeking supervisory support. Moreover, it examines the mediating roles of occupational self-efficacy and learning goal orientation in this relationship. Mediation analysis in SPSS, using the PROCESS macro of survey data from 220 Dutch secondary school teachers, showed that positive relationships between organizational career management and career self-management were mediated by occupational self-efficacy and learning goal orientation.     

Kommunikationsthemen im Coaching

Communication is present in any human interaction. Although it is not always focused as a specific goal the enhancement, development and maintenance of conversation skills is an essential task in coaching processes. Especially for academics communication topics are of considerable importance. An overview specifying career stage and typical communication issues is introduced for professors and young academics. Two detailed case studies shed light on the concrete work on conversation skills in academic coachings.     

Pot Noodles,Placements and Peer Regard: Creative Career Trajectories and Communities of Practice in the British Advertising Industry

The increasingly unpredictable, individualized and short‐term nature of the labour market is evident in the careers of advertising creatives. We explore the career trajectories of 48 creative professionals in the British advertising industry, using theories of situated learning and communities of practice to illustrate how the collective remains important to individuals' career prospects. Creatives learn their craft by becoming immersed in the multiple, inter‐related communities that constitute the advertising world during the demanding ‘pre‐peripheral’ and ‘peripheral’ stages of their career. Learning through immersion continues throughout the journey from the periphery to the centre, since creatives participate in a competitive, tight‐knit creative community, actively engaged in social networking and constantly monitoring each others' creative output. Creatives' legitimacy (and power) is earned by winning peer regard for their work. The nature of the learning required changes as each stage of the creative trajectory brings different motivations and pressures, but the processes of learning, the mutual shaping of individual and community, and the identity work involved are evident throughout creative career trajectories.     

The Sublime Object of Desire (for Knowledge): Sexuality at Work in Business and Management Schools in England

This paper explores why and how sexuality intertwines with gender in the organizational context of academic institutions. Drawing on insights from the work of psychoanalyst post‐structuralist feminists Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous and Julia Kristeva, we explore the institutionalized abjection of the real and imagined (woman's) body as the root cause of her relative exclusion from knowledge (creation) and her subordinate position in it. The project is analytical as well as political: it both unravels and opposes the ways gender is superimposed on sexuality and how we as academics might collude, legitimize and perpetuate and gendered sexualized (and therefore exclusionary) ways of organizing in/of society. The findings of an empirical study of a sample of women academics in management and business schools in England are discussed in the light of the proposed theory.     

How displaying empathic concern may differentially predict career derailment potential for women and men leaders in Australia

Past research notes the importance of emotions in the workplace. Much less is known about the role that empathic concern, an affect-laden construct, plays in predicting a leader's career advancement using measures of one's upward mobility, such as career derailment potential. Data provided by practicing managers in Australia show that leaders who displayed behaviors that convey empathic concern receive lower ratings of career derailment potential. We also found that gender was a statistically significant moderator of these relationships. With boss rating of derailment potential as the outcome, the negative relationship between empathic concern and derailment potential was statistically significant for women only. With peer ratings of derailment potential as the outcome, the negative relationship between empathic concern and derailment potential was stronger for women than men. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

What Influences Business Academics’ Use of the Association of Business Schools (ABS) List? Evidence From a Survey of UK Academics

The development of the Association of Business Schools (ABS) list in 2007 and its rapid adoption by UK business schools has had a profound effect on the nature of business and management academics’ ways of working. Using a large‐scale survey of UK business academics, we assess the extent to which individuals use the Academic Journal Guide (AJG/ABS) list in their day‐to‐day professional activities. In particular, we explore how their perceptions of the list, the academic influence of their research, academic rank and organizational context drive the varied use. Building on prior research on the importance of univalent attitudes in predicting behaviour, we find those who have either strong positive or negative views of the list are more extensive users than those who are ambivalent. We also find that the extent of use of the AJG/ABS list is greatest among those academics who have lower academic influence, in the middle or junior ranks within business schools and in middle and low‐status universities. We explore the implications of these findings for the value of journal rankings and for the management of business schools.     

Time for a Change? Women's Accounts of the Move from Organizational Careers to Self‐Employment

This paper is based on a study of women's transition from careers within organizations into self-employment. It focuses on three key issues: the ways in which women accounted for their career transition, their decisions to opt for self-employment, and the extent to which, in telling their stories, respondents engaged with emerging career discourses. First, this paper considers recent debates within the literature on women's exit from organizations, and emerging discourses of career and self-employment, focusing on the position of women within these changing discourses. Research findings are then presented, examining three central themes: entrepreneurial orientation, dissatisfaction with the organization and balance of personal and professional life. The concluding section considers how women made sense of the web of factors involved in their career transition and reflects on whether indeed it is 'time for a change'.     

Generation Y graduates and career transition: Perspectives by gender

The aim of this paper is to explore, by gender, UK Generation Y graduates’ views on their career transition after graduation from under-graduate business programmes. Following a literature review, the empirical work takes the form of an on-line questionnaire with business school graduates from a post-1992 Scottish University in five recent academic sessions. Gendered nuances are found in several aspects of the respondents’ views on their career transition, including statistically significant differences in: more women continuing their student job after graduation; women being more accepting of starting after graduation in a non-graduate level job; and more women than men encountering gender discrimination in the workplace. The identified nuances and differences appear to be setting the genders on diverging career tracks as early as the transition from university, in that they seem to signal more career progress, even advantage, among the men than the women.     

The effect of career exploration on subsequent training performance

In recent models of training effectiveness, it has been proposed that career exploration predicts training outcome variables such as training performance. Implementing the Career Exploration Survey developed by Stumpf and colleagues (1983), the present study explored the impact of sixteen dimensions of career exploration on subsequent training performance. A total of 145 call centre agents participated in the present study. Results demonstrated that four dimensions of career exploration predicted subsequent training performance. More specifically, trainees who (a) scored high on focused career exploration, (b) were more satisfied with information, (c) reported a higher internal search instrumentality, and (d) reported a lower external search instrumentality achieved higher training performance scores. Implications for theory, practice and future research are discussed.     

Emotional intelligence,its measurement and implications for the workplace

The concept of emotional intelligence (EI) has attracted a huge amount of interest from both academics and practitioners and has become linked to a whole range of outcomes, including career success, life satisfaction and health. Yet the concept itself and the way in which it is measured continue to fuel considerable debate. This paper takes a critical review of the methodologies and robustness of the validation and application studies that have used EI measures. In addition, the links between EI and other related theoretical perspectives such as emotional labour are considered.     

Key Issues in the Senior Female International Career Move: A Qualitative Study in a European Context

Research investigating the position of women in management has, largely, been confined within national boundaries. Over the last 15 years, empirical studies of women in international management have been undertaken, predominantly in North America. Overall, however, in this research field, many questions remain unanswered or have been only partially addressed. The particular focus of this study is on the senior female international managerial career move in Europe – a relatively unexplored area. Fifty senior female expatriate managers were interviewed, representing a wide range of industry and service sectors. The aims of the study were to develop an understanding of the senior female international career move in a European context in order to more fully understand both the covert and overt barriers that may limit women's international career opportunities. The results of the study show that the senior international career move has largely been developed along a linear male model of career progression, a development which, taken together with gender disparity both in organizations and family responsibilities, frequently prevents women employees from reaching senior managerial positions. The findings suggest that organizations which adopt a proactive approach to female expatriate managers should have a competitive advantage in the international environment.     

Key Issues in Women’s Representation in Bureaucracy: Lessons from South Asia

This paper discusses the position of women in the civil services in South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh). The majority of women are in lower level positions. It is rare to find women in higher and mid-level positions and in professional and administrative occupations. Despite constitutional guarantees and other governmental initiatives to remove gender discrimination from the civil services of these countries, women continue to fight against a variety of odds to attain career success. The objective of this paper is to make a comparative analysis of the factors accounting for the successful advancement of women in top positions in the civil services of these three countries, and to analyse factors that may impede women from making more progress. A cultural approach has been adopted in this study, emphasizing that the social contexts within which institutions operate shape the manner in which institutions behave and act. Based on extensive field work, the study maps female civil servants’ opinions on a number of factors that impede their career prospects in the civil service. In the conclusion, some policy recommendations are made as a way to address the issue.     

The development of a Mentor Program to foster career management

Because of dramatic changes in the employment environment and the increased frequency with which employees change jobs and careers, career management has become increasingly important. This article introduces and evaluates an academic Mentor Program that was developed in response to these changes. The Mentor Program provides students with many benefits including career counseling, practical work experience, employment opportunities, and networking.