Career Construction Theory

Career construction theory provides a way of thinking about how individuals choose and use work. The theory presents a model for comprehending vocational behavior across the life-cycle as well as methods and materials that career counselors use to help clients make vocational choices and maintain successful and satisfying work lives. It seeks to be comprehensive in its purview by taking three perspectives on vocational behavior: the differential, developmental, and dynamic. From the perspective of individual differences psychology, it examines the content of vocational personality types and what different people prefer to do. From the perspective of developmental psychology, it examines the process of psychosocial adaptation and how individuals cope with vocational development tasks, occupational transitions, and work traumas. From the perspective of narrative psychology, it examines the dynamics by which life themes impose meaning on vocational behavior and why individuals fit work into their lives in distinct ways. In coordination, the three perspectives enable counselors and researchers to survey how individuals construct their careers by using life themes to integrate the self-organization of personality and the self-extension of career adaptability into a self-defining whole that animates work, directs occupational choice, and shapes vocational adjustment. RATIONALE Career construction theory is one of many career theories that seek to explain occupational choice and work adjustment, each interrogating a different aspect of vocational behavior. Career theories that have risen to prominence have done so because they effectively address important questions. For example, the model of person-environment fit emerged early in the 20 th century to address the question of how to match workers to work. The model of vocational development emerged in the middle of the 20 th century to address the question of how to advance a career in one organization or profession. These theories of vocational personality types and vocational development tasks remain useful today when considering how to match workers to work and develop a career in an organization. However, the global economy of the 21 st century poses new questions about career, especially the question of how individuals can