THE SELF-DIRECTED CAREER IN AN ERA OF ECONOMIC INSTABILITY: OPPORTUNITIES AND LIMITATIONS IN CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON

Year 2012, Volume: 7 Issue: 2, 1 - 8, 01.12.2012

Peter Kuchinke - Un Yeong Park

Abstract

 This paper seeks to explore and provide critical commentary on the notion of the self-directed career
in light of empirical findings on the changing landscape of work and working Germany and Korea. Couched in
the broader discourse of employability, self-directed career behavior includes a range of affordances, including
increased autonomy in employment settings, job crafting, intra-preneurship, and the boundaryless or protean
career. While much research, particularly that situated in organizational behavior and industrial psychology,
assigns positive meaning to these new forms of work and working, a more critical reading of the literature
suggest that self-directed career may be the exception rather than the rule, may be reserved for an elite set of
occupations and roles in organizations, and may run counter to the expectations and needs of a majority of the
workforce. The paper concludes with a call for the careful evaluation of the costs and benefits of self-directed
career, and the need for HRD research and theory to address the implications of the changing nature of work in
scholarship and models for practice. 

Keywords

Career Research

THE SELF-DIRECTED CAREER IN AN ERA OF ECONOMIC INSTABILITY OPPORTUNITIES AND LIMITATIONS IN CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON

Abstract

 This paper seeks to explore and provide critical commentary on the notion of the self-directed career
in light of empirical findings on the changing landscape of work and working Germany and Korea. Couched in
the broader discourse of employability, self-directed career behavior includes a range of affordances, including
increased autonomy in employment settings, job crafting, intra-preneurship, and the boundaryless or protean
career. While much research, particularly that situated in organizational behavior and industrial psychology,
assigns positive meaning to these new forms of work and working, a more critical reading of the literature
suggest that self-directed career may be the exception rather than the rule, may be reserved for an elite set of
occupations and roles in organizations, and may run counter to the expectations and needs of a majority of the
workforce. The paper concludes with a call for the careful evaluation of the costs and benefits of self-directed
career, and the need for HRD research and theory to address the implications of the changing nature of work in
scholarship and models for practice. 

Keywords

Career Research, Protean career, Employability, Critical HRD, New Work

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• Running head: CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE