Career theory from an international perspective.

The Career Theory in an International Perspective group highlighted 7 approaches: action theory, self-construction model, transition model, dynamics of entering the workforce, narrative in career guidance, dilemma approach, and interactive identity construction. Three main characteristics appear to be common to these different contributions: (a) emphasis on contexts and cultural diversities, (b) self-construction or development emphasis, and (c) a constructivist perspective. Such conceptualizations are quite distinct from the methods and tools most often used by career and school counselors in their daily activities. A proliferation of models was noted. The need for new models, methods, and materials probably originates (a) in the diversity of societal questions emerging in the field of career development and self-construction and (b) in some differing points of view regarding goals of personal and career development interventions.

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Career theory provides a foundation for personal and career development interventions. These interventions aim to help people find answers to personal and career development questions that stem from the societal context in which they live. For example, in Western societies during the transition from a predominantly rural society to a predominantly industrial society around 1900, a key focus was helping young people find suitable apprenticeships. The definitions that societies give to these career questions lead to two consequences: On the one hand, these questions differ from one culture to another. On the other hand, in industrialized societies, the questions evolve along with the contexts in which they are expressed.

The questions that society submits to individuals regarding their fundamental life choices are likely to differ significantly in "individualist" and "collectivist" societies. An example of these differing points of view was summed up by Hofstede (1991) in this way:

    Individualism pertains to societies in which the ties between
    individuals are loose: everyone is expected to look after himself or
    herself and his or her immediate family. Collectivism as its
    opposite pertains to societies in which people from birth onward are
    integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, which throughout
    people's lifetime continue to protect them in exchange for
    unquestioning loyalty. (p. 51)

Hofstede (1991) pointed out that today's industrialized societies are, as a whole, individualist ones. In these societies, two major factors played an important role in the evolution of career counseling questions during the 20th century--transformations of work organization and employment distribution and the development of schooling and school systems (Guichard, 2003). It seems that there is a link between forms of work organization and career development questions. According to Touraine (1955) and Dubar (1998), three major forms of work organizations successively emerged during the 20th century. Concurrently, three major career counseling questions were expressed. The career guidance question, induced by the "occupational work system" that dominated at the beginning of the 20th century, was, "How can individuals be helped to find an occupation that fits them best?" The "Taylorist" work organization, which began to develop in the 1920s, led to another question, "How to help individuals find a job setting that fits them best?" The "technical work system," which developed as a consequence of automation, led to a third question, "How can individuals be helped to capitalize on their diverse experiences and define occupational and personal plans?" Most recently, the globalizations of economies and work prompted a growing instability in people's occupational and personal life. This led to a new question, "How can individuals be helped to cope with the multiple transitions they face during the course of their life?"

Schooling, which increased considerably during the 20th century in all wealthy societies, became more differentiated in those societies because of a need to enroll a growing number of socially heterogeneous pupils. Because of this development, a new question was submitted to each student and family, "Which kind of education or training should I choose, considering my school results and interests; explicit and implicit rules for allocating students in the different tracks, schools, subject matters, training, and so on; and my personal and family expectations regarding my future social and occupational positions?" This question led to a more specific counseling question, "How can students be helped to make such a decision?"

These five societal questions may be combined into a broader question, representing the current view of the societal issues relating to personal and career development interventions. It may be phrased thus, "How can we help individuals direct their lives, in relation to the contexts in which they are embedded?" This synthetic question encompasses all previous questions. It addresses issues that relate to the "choice" of a career, the integration of a work situation, the development of competencies, and the coping with transitions occurring in the person's personal and professional life.

Career theories can be considered as reconstruction of these different questions within the framework of certain scientific models, meaning that in each case, the initial societal question is "re-elaborated" or "formalized." "Formalization" should be understood here in the sense of a conceptual reconstruction according to the state of the art in the field of social and human sciences. That is precisely what early career theorists and practitioners did with the question, "How can we help individuals find the occupation that suits them best?" They reconstructed it in the form of the following scientific one: "How can we best match individuals and occupations?" Their answer was in terms of capacities, interests, and values.

These differing questions guide the positioning of each contribution presented as part of Group 1's focus, Career Theory in an International Perspective, in relation to the other presentations. These contributions differ from each other along two major dimensions. The first dimension is the opposition between the approaches that consider the diversity of cultures and the approaches that are embedded in the culture of today's industrialized countries. The second distinction concerns the target of a given theory: Is it focused on occupational activity or does it consider personal construction in all its aspects? As will be seen, during the symposium the primary emphasis was placed on this last view.

Articulating Universal and Local Considerations

During the symposium, Richard Young (2004) and Jean Guichard (2004; the first author of this article) each presented general models for understanding the intertwining of universal and particular phenomena and processes that determine a career.

Cultural Sensitivity, Action Theory, and the Heuristics of Theory

Young's (2004) analysis stemmed from the observation that many counselors face localized, culturally specific issues pertinent to their clients' career development. If career theories and the interventions that flow from these theories are to be meaningful and used by counselors, they must reflect the complexity and specificity of their culture. This issue of whether career theories should be more culturally sensitive arises in the context of increased cultural contacts between peoples, the rise of multiculturalism within national groups, the growth of globalization as an economic and political force, and dissatisfaction with approaches to career development that do not explicitly address culture. There are several ways that cultural diversity makes certain aspects of career theory problematic--particularly the ethnocentric view and the "time-boundedness" of the career construct, epistemological paradigms that reduce culture to a variable to be controlled, the discourse of globalization that may have the effect of harmonizing theories across cultures, and career theory's highly individualistic orientation.

The attempt to make career theory more culturally sensitive hinges on distinguishing between grand theories that take a universalist perspective and the particular theories or local narratives that are more culturally responsive. The challenge is to find what is common across cultures in such a way that localized, particular theories have meaning beyond their immediate setting. Understanding theory as a heuristic that both counselors and laypeople use in their everyday lives enables us to connect culture and career in a new light, one that illuminates more culturally sensitive conceptions of career.

The contextual explanation of career from the perspective of action theory is based on the notion that, regardless of culture, people's actions are goal directed. The construction and coalescing of actions over the long term are termed career, which, in turn, provides an important link to culture. Culture represents ongoing, intergenerational, shared, and joint processes that reflect actions, projects, and careers.

Using this broad conceptual approach, action theory proposes the following six steps to more culturally sensitive career theories, theories that will, by their nature, be localized and particular. The first two steps orient individuals to these processes: understanding culture as a fluid and dynamic process of actions (and careers) and establishing links between career and culture by seeing that culture and career are complex, higher order constructs, both incorporating action. At the specific level, one begins with the narrative and folk explanations that are unique to the culture and show how meaning is constructed over medium and longer periods of time. To bring this process beyond just narrative, a further step is to observe naively in local communities to uncover the specific behavior, intentionality, and meaning of career-related actions. Furthermore, recognizing ongoing processes reveals the projects and careers that are constructed from observed actions and in which larger and larger social networks participate. Finally, subjecting naive observations and reports of ongoing processes to systematic analysis shifts the basis for these theories to sophisticated and detailed descriptions of action and projects consistent with conceptualizations and evidence.

Self-Construction

In his self-construction model, Guichard (2004) also articulated some universal human characteristics and phenomena that are proper to given societal contexts. The analysis combines three fundamental proposals. The first proposal is a sociological one that stresses the history of individuality, that is, of individuals conceived as autonomous beings endowed with an inner sense. Individuals construct themselves in a specific way, in relation to specific modes of relating to themselves that prevail at a given moment, in a given society (Foucault, 1982, 1988). Each society is characterized by an identity offer of various social categories (e.g., gender, religion, occupation, typology, characterology); each individual can recognize herself or himself and/or recognize others as belonging to one or more of these categories (Dubar, 1998). This identity offer is more or less diversified, depending on the dictates of the individual's society. In industrialized societies and a global economy, this identity offer is diverse and evolving. Each individual is engaged in a continuous self-reflecting activity. Individuals construct themselves according to several different self-relating modes in relation to the contexts in which they interact. Psychologists speak of a plurality of "self-concepts" and sociologists of a "plural (wo)man."

The second proposition, a cognitive one, states that because of their interactions and interlocutions in a given social context, individuals construct, in long-term memory, cognitive structures that allow them to organize their conception of others and construct themselves. These structures can be called identity frames. These identity frames are relative to all kinds of social categories: gender, religion, sexual preference, occupation, and so on. Cognitive frames are structured sets of attributes that have default values (Minsky, 1975). The default values of identity frames' attributes are social stereotypes (for example, a default value "masculine" given to the attribute "gender" of the identity frame "engineer"). These frames create in people's minds a system of (cognitive) identity frames. This system constitutes this individual's internalized representation of the identity offer of the society in which she or he interacts. As with any cognitive structure, these identity frames are substrata of representations, judgments, and actions. They are the grounding of others' perception and of self-construction in identity forms. An identity form constitutes a "view" of some other individual or a self-construction, according to the structure of one of these frames. Subjective identity forms are forms in which a given individual sees and constructs her- or himself. Self-construction, in a particular subjective identity form, leads to giving some particular default values to the attributes of the underlying frame: the individual "identizes" herself or himself (Tap, 1980).

The last proposition, a dynamic one, contends that human conduct cannot be reduced to a simple reproduction of internalized behaviors learned during previous experiences. The dynamism of the self-construction process originates in a tension between two fundamental types of reflexivity. Reflexive self-anticipation describes the primordial process of relating to oneself, what Lacan (1977) termed the mirror stage. Around 12 to 15 months, before mastering language, the child creates a primordial mode of relating to oneself, in which she or he anticipates herself or himself in a deceptive image (as the image in the mirror)--an autonomous and unified individual--when, in fact, the child still experiences herself or himself as dependent and multiple. Thus, in this primordial mode of relating to oneself, the "me" present is created as oriented according to an imaginary future "I." This primordial reflexivity is temporally oriented and creates the dynamism of the individual. It constitutes the foundation for future identifications (of self-construction in certain subjective identity forms). It is a "dual" relation to oneself, because it is not fundamentally mediated by others: It is instead an "I-me" reflexivity.

The "trinity reflexivity" of the "person dialogical interpretation" (I--you--s/he; Jacques, 1991, p. 52) constitutes another mode of relation to oneself. The trinity reflexivity implies the three positions of "I," "you" and "she/he" that is language mastery. "Person" is defined by this internal or external trinity dialogue that consists of an ongoing circulation between these three positions: (a) "I" who enunciates something to "you," (b) "you" who answers "I," and (c) "she or he," who is spoken of by the two dialoguing "yous." Fundamentally, self-consciousness is "trinity," grounded in a dialogue articulating these three positions. It is a process of "personalizing"--a process of self-construction as a person in a society of persons.

Help Clients Cope With the Problems They Face

Five contributions to the symposium were focused on intervention models to help clients cope with the problems they face. Each model refers to some specific societal contexts; nevertheless, they do not exclude possible adaptation for use in other cultures. These contributions were (a) the transition model by Nancy Schlossberg (2004); (b) the practical implications of research on dynamics of transitions in Switzerland by Jean-Pierre Dauwalder (2004); (c) the use of narrative in career guidance in the United Kingdom by Hazel Reid (2004); (d) the dilemma approach by Wouter Reynaert (2004); and (e) the Argentine personal, educational, and career development programs by Diana Aisenson, Gabriela Aisenson, Fabian Monedero, Silvia Batlle, and Leandro Legaspi (2004).

The Transition Model

The transition model (Schlossberg, 1981, 2004; Schlossberg, Waters, & Goodman, 1995) serves as a guide for practitioners, researchers, and clients as they try to understand the confusion and mystery surrounding most transitions. No transition is exactly like another. Nevertheless, transitions can be categorized according to three major types. "Anticipated transition" refers to major life events that are usually expected to be part of adult life, such as marrying, becoming a parent, starting a first job, or retiring. "Unanticipated transition" designates the often disruptive events that occur unexpectedly, such as major surgery, a serious car accident or illness, or a surprise promotion or factory closing. "Non-event transition" pertains to expected events that fail to occur, such as not marrying, being unable to afford to retire, or not being promoted.

The transition model consists of three major propositions. The first proposition is that transitions change an individual's roles, relationships, routines, and assumptions. Everyone experiences transitions, whether they are events or non-events, anticipated or unanticipated. Transitions alter individuals' lives--their roles, their relationships, their routines, and their assumptions. It is not the transition itself that is critical, but how much it changes an individual's roles, relationships, routines, and assumptions. The bigger the change, the greater the potential impact and the longer it may take to incorporate the transition and move on in life.

The second proposition is that transitions take time and people's reactions to them change, for better or worse, while they are underway. At first, people are consumed by their new role--being a new graduate, a new widow, an unemployed worker, a recent retiree, and so on. Schlossberg (2004) noted that persons in transition are eventually able to move away from past roles and embrace new ones but may initially teeter between both while adjusting to their new situation. The process of leaving one set of roles, relationships, routines, and assumptions and establishing new ones takes time. For some, the process happens easily and quickly, for others it might take years.

The third proposition is that people differ in how they cope with what seems to be the same transition, often coping well with one transition but feeling ineffective dealing with the next one. How can this phenomenon be explained? How can individuals be helped to handle a given transition? To answer these questions, the transition model identifies the features common to all transition events and non-events, however dissimilar they appear. These features are the potential resources or deficits an individual brings to each transition. They can be described as the 4 S system for coping with transition:

* Situation: This refers to the person's situation at the time of transition. Are there other stresses? For example, if one person retires and his or her significant other becomes critically ill, coping with retirement may become difficult.

* Self: This refers to the person's inner strength for coping with transitions. Is the person optimistic, resilient, and able to deal with ambiguity? Clearly, what one brings of oneself influences how one copes.

* Supports: The support an individual receives or that is available at the time of transition is critical to his or her sense of well-being. If, for example, a new mother is single, with no support system, this situation can be extremely challenging, and the adaptation might be slowed.

* Strategies: There is no magic coping strategy. Rather, the person who uses many strategies flexibly will be better able to cope. For example, a person who handles transitions just by talking to others may be better served by using additional coping strategies, including exercising, gathering information, brainstorming, or joining a support group.

In summary, the transition model intends to clarify the transitions that people are experiencing by identifying (a) the degree to which their life has been altered, (b) where they are in the transition process, and (c) the resources they can apply in making it a success. The model provides a cognitive framework that counselors, coaches, and others can use in listening to clients, helping them assess their resources for dealing with change, and identifying ways to strengthen their resources.

Entering the Workforce: Research on Dynamics of Transitions in Switzerland

The research presented by Dauwalder (2004) constitutes an example of studies conducted under the auspices of the concept of transition. A longitudinal study was done with four waves of measurements over a 5-year period (1997-2002). Participants were 423 young people who were making the transition from apprenticeship to work in five domains (cooking, banking, nursing, sales, and electronics). On each occasion, they answered a questionnaire. In-depth studies assessing social interactions at work by way of a diary in one case and physiological indicators of stress in the other case were conducted with subsamples of participants. The groups differed significantly on the variable of job control. For example, those in the nursing group perceived a loss of control over time and quit jobs frequently. This is in contrast to participants in the banking group, who reported an increase in perceived job control. Groups differed in the extent to which they had a resigned attitude toward the job. Women reported a greater sense of well-being than did men. With regard to cultural differences, comparisons were made between French and German speakers. French-speaking youth scored higher on the self-esteem variable.

Dauwalder (2004) noted that this research provided four snapshots in time of the various groups with respect to single variables but did not tell the individual stories and might have obscured levels of complexity. He suggested that the key is to consider configurations of variables. In fact, among the 16 possible configurations of four dichotomized variables, only four variables served as "attractors" for nearly all of the observed transitions over time. Despite this, very few individuals kept exactly the same configurations over time. Understanding transitions might be facilitated by looking at the common rules behind those attractors. For example, in this study, trying to have no job change, combined with positive attitude toward the job, seems to be the rule governing most of the observed transitions. Formerly identified discriminating single variables, such as perceived job control or belonging to specific professional groups, however, proved to be of little help for understanding observed transitions. Dauwalder stressed the importance of future research involving configurations of interacting variables rather than research on single variables to better understand the complex dynamics behind vocational choices and transitions.

Narrative and Career Guidance in the United Kingdom

Interpretative and narrative-based approaches to guidance in a postmodern world constituted the core of Reid's (2004) contribution to the symposium. Narrative-based approaches emphasize the need to explore meaning by allowing clients to construct a career narrative that resonates significantly with their values and interests for life, not just for a job. When trying to build a new identity, individuals can be overwhelmed by the problems they face and will find approaches that do not engage with the social interchange in their lives to be unrealistic.

Criticism of a humanistic, narrative approach can be made if the model views individuals as the sole author of their story. Gergen (1994) stressed that personal narrative is arrived at through interaction with others, including the helper. Therefore, the reality test of career/life narrative work with a young person needs to focus on both self-esteem and the esteem of others in order to recognize that actions occur in a social context and in an interactive world. Furthermore, this action orientation moves a narrative approach out of a retrospective past. Young and Valach (2000) noted, "Once we bring narrative into fields like action and culture, we begin to address the problem of the separation of narrative and reality. Narrative is more than persons spinning stories as they sit in their armchairs" (p. 186).

Narrative-based approaches can help place context in the foreground. Rather than use theory that is more concerned with general laws of behavior, they place the focus on the interaction between the adviser and young person and locate this within what is meaningful for the individual. People do not separate the rest of their lives from the career choices they make. Decisions in a changing world are influenced by and grounded in prior experience. Allowing individuals to tell their stories can help them construct and understand their concept of career and what is possible.

Narrative-based approaches pay due attention to the person's story by recognizing the importance of identity-related goals that help reveal personal preoccupations. Thus, the approaches are goal oriented, but they place goals in context, leading to realistic plans. Narrative approaches acknowledge individual traits and contextual influence and change, thereby challenging self-imposed (limiting) "horizons for action." By using testing and enactment steps, they can encourage a sense of achievement and agency. Finally, they avoid the "revolving door" syndrome, because clients are less likely to be offered quick-fix solutions. Narrative-based approaches appear to offer an insightful way of working with individuals when long-term benefits are really the goal.

The Dilemma Approach

Reynaert (2004) presented the dilemma approach, based on a constructivist view, as one of the theories in the field of career development in the Netherlands. In a world characterized by fading standards, norms, and values, society, organizations, and individuals need a new perspective on work and must construct their identity in interaction with others. The career dilemma approach postulates the existence of a fundamental dilemma that exists beneath the surface of indecision, questions about person-environment fit, lack of career information, poor communication in work situations, loss of meaning in work, and so on. Examples of dilemmas are involvement versus distance, external versus internal locus of control, safety versus risk, conflicting values (e.g., economic versus ethical), shame versus pride, and individual versus common interest. Such dilemmas are created in early childhood. They are connected with uncertainty in critical situations when individuals must show who they really are and what they really stand for. According to this analysis, a dilemma can block an individual's energy, thereby sapping vitality and strength.

In this model, during the "tuning phase" of a counseling intervention, individuals receive support to recognize their personal dilemma. Counselor and client choose an actual situation reflecting the client's greatest concern. Then, three key questions are examined: Who is involved in it (context)? What has the client done (behavior)? and How has she or he felt (emotions)? The key questions elicit information about clients' convictions--their values, strengths and weaknesses, and important rules of conduct. They also elicit an impression about a client's learning strategies. Sometimes, these strategies are one-sided, for example, clients repeat again and again a cognitive approach to problems, or they follow only their feelings. They do not have a great deal of imagination or are not people of action. Convictions and learning strategies determine the way clients cope with their dilemmas.

The second step of the dilemma approach involves the counselor choosing a theoretical model that fits the client's particular dilemma. This could be any available model: communication, transition, values, spiritual, and so on. It also could be a test or an assessment. The model is used to create a learning device, consisting of exercises aimed at stimulating clients to try different learning strategies, reflect on their convictions, see things from another perspective, experiment with different behavior, and so on. The fundamental goal is to make clients create a career that gives them vitality.

In most cases, the discovery of a fundamental dilemma appears to enhance clients' freedom to choose and to energize them. They better understand their fears, anger, or loss of energy. It seems that such an approach gives them a new vocabulary for deconstructing old coping routines and constructing new ways of developing their careers.

Argentine Personal, Educational, and Career Development Programs

Aisenson and her colleagues (2004) based their approach to personal, educational, and career development programs on the postulate that if the objectives of such interventions are founded on theoretical bases, these theoretical foundations should be based on research that provides them with meaning and puts them in context according to the population involved.

Theoretical models must be built in such a way that will enable counselors to address the issue of transitions and take into account the complexity of the different kinds of effective inclusions (i.e., entry into higher education, the labor market, or both) of young people as they build their life paths. Since 1986, the Vocational and Occupational Guidance Department of the University of Buenos Aires has been conducting research, providing community services, and training counselors. One core idea of its approach is that institutions mediating between youth and society can, in inconsistent situations, provide support and help young people overcome crises of meaning and values by guiding their actions and sustaining their identities (Aisenson, 2002; Berger & Luckman, 1966). This Argentine approach to personal and career development includes the issue of subjectivity (identity, self) in its multiple interactions with the social contexts. Psychological processes that are linked to social processes in the contexts in which individuals interact are analyzed. This research and model provided by the Argentine panel members contribute significantly to understanding the career contexts of young people in their society; the significant problems they face; and the role of "career work" in identifying, analyzing, and addressing these problems.

Conclusion: What About the Issue of "Choosing a Vocation"?

Three main characteristics appear to be common to all the contributions made during this symposium: (a) the emphasis placed on contexts and cultural diversities, (b) the emphasis on self-construction or development more than on occupational choice or occupational career development,

and (c) constructivist approaches to these questions. Such conceptualizations are quite distinct from the methods and tools (e.g., computer software, tests, information resources, questionnaires, guides, career education brochures) that are most often used by career or school counselors in their daily activities. This conclusion was made by Robert Reardon, who noted, first, that occupations continue to exist, jobs continue to be described and posted, and people continue to work in organizations (including staffing services companies) and, second, that most vendors in the exhibits during the conference were selling systems based on person-environment matching models.

Capitalizing on Holland's (1997) observation that individuals engage in career planning and problem solving with the use of a personal career theory (PCT), Reardon noted that people may seek help when their PCT is no longer effective and they need assistance from an expert in the field. Therefore, the longstanding person-environment theories have a natural, heuristic value, because it can come down to a matching process for most people. This is very likely the reason that Holland's Self-Directed Search (SDS; 1994) has been translated into approximately 25 languages and is very likely the most widely used interest inventory in the world. The SDS is, however, not simply a person-environment matching device; it makes use of a client's occupational aspirations, seeks to identify multiple options for further exploration by clients, and uses raw scores in a simulation that can easily be understood and discussed by clients. In this sense, it is also reflects a constructivist view of career development.

Holland's (1997) theory of vocational personalities was not the only theory not discussed during the symposium. Some examples of models that are based on solid theoretical references and many empirical studies but that were not the focus of presentations included the person-environment-correspondence theory (Dawis & Lofquist, 1984), the cognitive information-processing approach to career problem solving and decision making (Peterson, Sampson, Lenz, & Reardon, 2002), the theory of circumscription and compromise (Gottfredson, 2002), the analysis of the psychological processes in the evolution of occupational attitudes and preferences (Huteau, 1982), the inventory of activities systems (Curie & Hajjar, 1987), and many others. Such a proliferation of models in the field of career development and self-construction (as opposed to the "matching model" that was dominant for more than half a century) can probably be partly explained, as seen in the introduction, by the diversity of societal questions that have progressively emerged in the field of vocational, educational, and personal counseling during the 20th century.

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Jean Guichard, Institut National d'Etude du Travail et d'Orientation Professionnelle, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers; Janet Lenz, Career Center, Florida State University. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Janet Lenz, Career Center, A4106 UC, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-2490 (e-mail: [e-mail]).