Search Results

This chapter considers the pathways to becoming an artistic social entrepreneur. Previous research on social entrepreneurs has emphasized the impact of one's stock of human, social, and cultural capital on one's mobilization of requisite resources for launching and sustaining a social enterprise. Less sociological attention has been given to the influence of career-biographical factors, such as family, religion, education, and pivotal career turning points that may inspire and compel one to become a social entrepreneur and to envision and shape one's social enterprise, let alone an artistic social enterprise. The profiles of four artistic social entrepreneurs in this chapter illustrate how their strategic and risk orientations and career pathways shape the social enterprises they envision and influence their assumption and enactment of their roles as artist activists.

Career pathways has become a popular career and technical education strategy, especially among the nation’s community colleges. This chapter discusses how community colleges have built career pathways programs during the past two decades, with the support of the federal government and foundations, and the evidence on how well they work to improve educational and employment outcomes. Early evidence shows that community college career pathways help individuals succeed in completing an initial step in their education and the workforce. However, more needs to be known about what works for their students, how community colleges can scale their current efforts, and supporting advancement along a career pathway. Policymakers and community college leadership should consider how successful programs can be sustained and scaled and better support advancement to middle- to higher skill jobs.

Today’s world of work is rapidly changing. The on-demand economy is on the rise, the number of temporary contracts is increasing, major industries are being disrupted by the latest wave of digital innovation, and increasingly more jobs are being replaced by machines. As a result of these labor market developments, people’s careers have become more dynamic and more uncertain. With regard to fostering career progress in this dynamic career landscape, however, existing perspectives still draw heavily on linear frameworks that involve the development of a clear set of career goals and plans. Such approaches to career progress are at odds with the reality of today’s world of work. That is, contemporary careers rarely unfold as intended or imagined: No matter how much people analyze their aspirations and opportunities while planning their careers, unexpected developments can bring unforeseen changes. Drawing on the career pathways framework, this chapter proposes a proactive approach to career pathways and discusses the key factors that can contribute to career progress in today’s dynamic work context. This framework also encapsulates the dialogical dynamics between one’s “internal” and “external” career management. Such a framework can be helpful for workers to successfully steer their careers in today’s world of work.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the objectives and major themes for this volume about career pathways. It begins with a discussion of the current world of work and the forces that are likely to shape the worklife of tomorrow. It also describes how the accelerating pace of change makes career choice and career movement less predictable and jobs less secure. The chapter introduces the notion of career pathways as an organizing structure that can support increasingly frequent career transitions. It also describes the relatively independent research and practice streams operating within the education and work domains, and it lays the groundwork for a more holistic approach to career pathways. Finally, the chapter provides a brief overview of the other chapters in the volume.

This chapter describes four major themes that characterize the chapters in this book, addresses the need for career-related research and evaluation of career pathways initiatives, and discusses the importance of a focus on careers and career pathways in light of the increasing pace of change in skill requirements and in-demand jobs and occupations. The themes include (1) the role of career pathways in career transitions; (2) the changing nature of careers and how to craft and navigate meaningful, fulfilling careers in light of these changes; (3) the relevance of career pathways and career paths to organizations and industries; and (4) the use of data to understand workforce characteristics, careers, and career paths and to evaluate the outcomes of career pathways initiatives. Some of the most salient points from the book that are relevant to each of these themes are discussed in this chapter.

During the past several years, career pathway systems have expanded to prepare adults for the workforce. Although career pathways are not new, numerous states, the federal government, and philanthropic foundations continue to advance the idea to offer more postsecondary education and workforce training opportunities for adults. Coordinated policies, programs, and services involving adult basic education, community colleges, and workforce development are viewed as vital to creating highly functioning career pathways systems. This chapter describes three core functions of career pathways systems—pathway entry, integrated training, and career progression—and advances the notion that evaluations should be aligned to these functions to inform future policy and practice. Recognizing the value that these functions play independently and collectively in implementation and evaluation is key to supporting continuing efforts to scale career pathways systems nationwide.

Interest in how researchers and practitioners approach the management of talent has grown in recent years. Effective management of the talent life cycle begins with implementation of a talent management architecture—that is, the combination of systems, processes, and practices developed and implemented by an organization to ensure that the management of talent is carried out effectively. This chapter explores today’s career development environment and describes a career pathways framework as a viable “architecture” and philosophy for effectively managing talent. The chapter provides a brief overview of current perspectives on talent management, describes a career pathways system in greater detail, and discusses how building and implementing such a system as part of a broader human resource management function can pay dividends for an organization’s talent life cycle.

In addition to providing financial means, work offers an opportunity for individuals to experience meaning and purpose. Meaningful work, defined in this chapter as work that is worthwhile and personally significant, is linked to job satisfaction, work motivation, and psychological well-being. Several vocational psychology theories of career development, along with research on work as a calling and the protean career orientation, have addressed factors that likely influence meaning and purpose in work, either directly or indirectly. This chapter examines the opportunities for career pathways programs and professionals for promoting purpose and meaning in work over the course of a career. Specific strategies related to career choice, choice implementation, career engagement and maintenance/management, as well as retirement, bridge employment, and encore careers are addressed. Future directions for research and practice are also discussed.

Work arrangements are evolving rapidly throughout the world. Coupled with rapid changes in jobs and the movement to a global labor market, this is creating new career pathways. This chapter examines changes in work arrangements and how these changes are impacting career pathways. Major forces driving transformations in work arrangements and career pathways are addressed, and differences by country, global geographic region, and occupational area in the prevalence of alternative and independent work arrangements are described. Positive and negative aspects of changes in work arrangements are delineated, and the shifting focus of individual careers is discussed. The chapter also explores how individuals and organizations can shape career pathways in the new work environment. The implications of these changes for future research and practice are discussed.

Today, individuals work later in life than ever before in an ever-changing world of work. Thus, late career workers now have different needs, experiences, and preferences, and their transitions into retirement are much more varied (and far less linear) than those for workers in previous decades. This chapter provides evidence-based recommendations on supportive career pathways systems for late career workers. It begins with an overview of research-based theories and constructs about work-related aging, followed by human resource management policies and practices to support career pathways systems for older workers. It then provides practical guidance on how career pathways systems can promote successful work engagement throughout the life span and directions for future research to advance the field of aging and career pathways.

With the rise of the internet and the related explosion in the amount of data that are available, the field of data science has expanded rapidly, and analytic techniques designed for use in “big data” contexts have become popular. These include techniques for analyzing both structured and unstructured data. This chapter explores the application of these techniques to the development and evaluation of career pathways. For example, data scientists can analyze online job listings and resumes to examine changes in skill requirements and careers over time and to examine job progressions across an enormous number of people. Similarly, analysts can evaluate whether information on career pathways accurately captures realistic job progressions. Within organizations, the increasing amount of data make it possible to pinpoint the specific skills, behaviors, and attributes that maximize performance in specific roles. The chapter concludes with ideas for the future application of big data to career pathways.

This chapter examines undergraduate engineering students’ career plans, and the environments and experiences that influence their intentions to enter the engineering profession. We augment survey data collected from over 2,000 engineering students with data from three national sources. Our results indicate, first, that a substantial majority of engineering students are not committed to an exclusively engineering career. Second, students with engineering focused plans have distinctive profiles compared with their peers; namely, they are more likely to major in civil/environmental engineering, report higher intrinsic motivation to study engineering, have higher levels of involvement in their coursework, and have lower levels of professional/interpersonal confidence. Third, one’s expected engineering salary modestly differentiates engineering focused students from non-engineering focused ones. Finally, institutional characteristics are associated with students’ engineering career plans, and socioeconomic background may influence plans through the types of institutions at which higher and lower SES students differentially enroll. Implications for educational research and practice are discussed.

Although there is vast diversity in apprenticeship concepts and practices in Europe, the United States, and other regions of the world, all apprenticeships are designed to support both the professional growth of workforce participants and business growth. Apprenticeships offer an efficient path to gaining valuable credentials and qualifications and thus are an important component of many career pathways. This chapter focuses on apprenticeships as a promising form of acquiring skills and credentials needed to fill the qualification gap of both white-collar and blue-collar workers. It provides a brief history of apprenticeship concepts, and it covers topics such as alignment of career pathways with apprenticeship concepts and trends. It illustrates the main ideas with examples of apprenticeship concepts and systems in several European countries and in the United States. It concludes with some considerations concerning future directions for research and practice.

Rapid technological changes, an increasingly global economy, and employment’s changing nature require a workforce that is not only trained prior to embarking upon a career but also remains current through lifelong learning. Advanced manufacturing is one of many industries in the United States in which employers face challenges finding sufficient workers with necessary skills. This chapter presents a case study that explores the way the Industrial Manufacturing Technician (IMT) apprenticeship supports workers’ and companies’ needs, focusing on three factors: (1) harnessing the apprenticeship’s potential, (2) implementing it, and (3) future options. Six months after the Labor Institute for Training helped the Benteler Automotive Corporation launch its IMT program, employee turnover declined from 33% to 11%. In addition, the IMT includes inclusive strategies while creating access to wages averaging $24 per hour. The case study shows that developing accessible and equitable apprenticeships for culturally diverse and underserved populations offers a solution to employers and unemployed individuals.

This chapter examines psychologists’ career-long policy journeys. The first section of the chapter centers on psychologists’ multiple policy involvements during the course of their careers, with specific focus on the nature of these multiple involvements. Six characteristics of these involvements are described. The second section of the chapter focuses on three distinctive aspects of a policy career that interviewees highlight as particularly important for the field moving forward. The importance of these aspects resides in their respective contributions to expanding the quality, effectiveness, and scope of policy influence. The three distinctive aspects are interdisciplinary collaboration, policy-related leadership positions, and international policy involvement.