Career Anchor Profiles: an Exploratory Study of Business School Participants in France

The current business environment has become clearly more international, marked by boundaryless careers, mergers and acquisitions, restructurings, and layoffs. With the ever-growing disappearance of the longterm employment contract, employees are considered as being responsible to manage their own development. The concept of career anchor was first introduced by Schein (1978) to describe the association of self-perceived attitudes, values, needs and talents that individuals develop over time. The present study uses the Career Orientation Inventory (COI) developed by DeLong (1982a, 1982b) to measure career anchors within a population of students and alumni from a French business school in the south of France. It explores how career anchors are related to age, gender, work experience, and education and addresses the associations between various career anchors. Career anchor profiles yield characteristics which can be linked to various career stages. In addition, the findings support career anchor associations previously proposed by Feldman and Bolino (1996). The study contributes to the ongoing research on career anchors and their measurement within a French context. ha ls hs -0 06 81 27 5, v er si on 1 21 M ar 2 01 2 Manuscrit auteur, publié dans "Conférence AOM-ISEOR 2009, France (2009)" AOM-ISEOR Conference, Lyon, June 2009 2 I. RESEARCH QUESTION Today’s workforce is characterized by more women, minorities, and multi-nationalities. Entrants are also more technically savvy than their former counterparts and appear to seek meaning in their work and advancement. If not satisfied, they are inclined to change jobs and/or companies more readily than previous generations (Hall, 1996; Arthur and Rousseau, 1996). Many organisations have to determine the best manner in which to train and develop younger, more mobile workers (Kniveton, 2004), but also manage an aging workforce. According to Schein (1985), the knowledge of one’s career anchor is critically important because of its influence in career choices and its effect on shaping individual goals in life. He demonstrated additional evidence that the emergence of a career anchor may also influence the selection of specific occupations and work settings. The ability to place the career anchor in alignment with an individual’s work ultimately becomes a definition of his/her career success. With this foundation, numerous authors have sought to test and measure the various career anchors within different populations. The present study is inspired by recent work of Roger (2006) and Wils et al. (2008) and addresses the influence of age, gender, work experience, and education level on career anchors measured within a population of students and alumni from a French business school. The study explores the distribution of career anchors, career anchor associations and the influence of the aforementioned variables, as well as their link with career stages. II. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND Many studies were published on career anchors related to different job types, industries, countries and work environments. Keenan and Newton (1986) for example studied final year engineering students in over 20 different departments at six British universities, investigating the effects of engineering education and career orientation. Marshall and Bonner (2003) measured career anchors within a heterogeneous sample of 423 graduate students in five different countries. Crook and Crepeau (1997) researched and measured career anchors of IS professionals and students, while Petroni (1997) focused on career paths of design engineers. Jarlstrom (2000) studied the career anchors and personality aspects of Finnish business students. Tan and Quek (2001) studied career anchors of educators in Singapore. Other studies on the influence of gender in different professions, such as accounting, engineering, and education, focused on how career anchors might be differentiated (Bailyn, 1987; Cox et. al., 1991; Schneer and Reitman, 1994; Lynn et. al., 1996), while still others attempted to establish relationships between age and career anchor choice (Allen and Katz, 1992; Biddle and ha ls hs -0 06 81 27 5, v er si on 1 21 M ar 2 01 2 AOM-ISEOR Conference, Lyon, June 2009 3 Roberts, 1994). After identifying 5 dimensions in his first study in 1978, Schein (1985) defined eight career anchors described in Table 1, and DeLong (1982) confirmed the presence of these eight anchors. Table 1. Description of Schein’s (1985) eight career anchors. Schein initially considered that each person had a dominant career anchor, but later results showed that combinations of anchors could be found in a person’s profile. Feldman and Bolino (1996) suggested that multiple anchors could be organized in a model, as some anchors would be close to each other while other would be contradictory (see Figure 1). Figure 1. Proximity and opposition of career anchors proposed by Feldman and Bolino (1996). The harmonious balance of personal, family, and work positions Life style The opportunity to achieve the almost impossible Pure challenge The ability to achieve something of benefit or value to others Service/dedication to a cause The challenge to create an enterprise of your own, built on personal endeavors Entrepreneurial creativity The opportunity for financial or job security Security/stability The enduring freedom to control your own activities Autonomy/independence The opportunity to manage the contribution of others from across an organisation to achieve results General management competence The ability to apply and continually develop your skill in that particular discipline Technical-functional expertise What you would never give up Career Anchor ha ls hs -0 06 81 27 5, v er si on 1 21 M ar 2 01 2 AOM-ISEOR Conference, Lyon, June 2009 4 In a second-order factor analysis of 6 career anchors, Roger (2006) finds 3 dimensions explaining 64 % of the variance. The first one includes Service, lifestyle and job security, the second groups management and autonomy, and the third is made of the technical anchor. Wils et al. (2008) suggest that career anchors could be grouped along 4 dimensions based on Schwartz’s (1992) value structure model: Continuity (security, lifestyle and stability), Change (challenge, entrepreneurial, autonomy), Self-enhancement (management, identity) and Self-transcendence (technical/functional, service). Their results tend to confirm this typology.