Career Forms and Structures: taking a macro-view

What became apparent in analysing the transcripts is a sense in which respondents' careers developed, not haphazardly, but according to certain organising principles. This is, I expect, partly a function of the research methodology. As discussed in Chapter 3, the interview was a sense-making process; schisms and ambiguities, while not

disappearing altogether, became part of the narrative, contributing to its logic. Yet this issue notwithstanding, it is notable that not only does each individual story seem to have its own logic, but also that certain patterns are repeated across the sample. The question then emerges: "Are there existing theoretical models that can help us to make sense of the career patterns of women who move from employment to self-employment?"

The significance of studies into career forms and structures is reviewed in section 2.3.7. As I suggested in that section, underlying many such studies is an organisational

perspective, a sense in which the organisation is the norm, in which an individual's career is evaluated by organisational standards and careers which lie outside of organisations are seen as deviant. Kanter, as noted previously, takes issue with such an orientation.

This discussion draws principally on her theoretical work on career forms, exploring its usefulness for understanding the career patterns of the women in this study. As

explained in the review of the careers literature, Kanter identifies three principal forms: bureaucratic, professional and entrepreneurial (Kanter, 1989), and explains the

significance of these for organisations and society more generally.

Kanter's is a macro-perspective, and thus leaves many questions unanswered. On an abstract level, she does not grapple with questions about the nature of the career concept, or how we come to understand the concept in certain ways: questions, raised by Gowler and Legge (1989) about ideology, and how individuals come to make sense of their career experiences. More specifically, Kanter does not explain how an individual comes to have a certain career structure; nor does she refer to the internal* psychological, or external, social processes that may lead one to identify with these structures.

Furthermore, her definitions connote a certain uniformity within each of these career structures, a connotation which is at odds with the diverse ways in which they are experienced/constructed by the women in the study. In my view these unanswered questions do not invalidate Kanter's model, but they do warn us against applying it in an overly simplistic way.

As regards the issue of how one comes to be associated with a particular career form, taking the bureaucratic career structure as an example, twenty out of the twenty-four women in the study had worked in large, hierarchical organisations. However, the

question arises: "Can one be said to have a bureaucratic career structure simply by

virtue of working in a such an organisation?" The data suggest otherwise. For example, a nurse explained how her career had developed within the hierarchical structures of the National Health Service - according to Kanter's definition, hers was a classic bureaucratic career. Yet, such a definition is at odds with the experience of another respondent who, although she was a University employee, had no interest in advancing within that

organisation and left as soon as her own catering business became viable.

Clearly there is an important time factor distinguishing these two examples: twenty years in the NHS compared to less than two years at the University. There is a related issue of identity. For many years the nurse strongly identified with the NHS and saw her career

as inextricable from that organisation. Similarly, although she only worked for her multi­ national company for five years, a sales manager explained how she had immersed herself in organisational life, applying for promotion after only eighteen months. In contrast, in the case of the caterer cited above, there were no such psychological links with the University. Likewise, a local authority race relations officer suggested that although she was committed to her work, she never really identified with the organisational itself - she never sought to climb the organisational hierarchies, and indeed described her persistent feelings of being an "outsider”.

This is not to suggest that a positive endorsement of a particular organisational structure is necessary for that structure to influence an individual's career development. Indeed, there are several women in the sample who were highly critical of their organisations, and of bureaucracies in general. However, the difference between such women and the race relations officer is that whereas she distanced herself psychologically from the hierarchy, other respondents, though critical, were deeply involved in and influenced by bureaucratic life, seeking promotion and generally "playing the game".

The association of a person's career with one of Kanter's "career structures" is therefore not inevitable: it does not depend simply on doing a particular job or working in a certain type of organisation. Rather, it seems to depend on the way in which that individual makes sense of their career and its development, and their (willing or

unwilling) participation in a particular career form. Fundamental to this analysis is a

notion of career, not as a fixed entity, but as a dynamic process, constructed by

individuals through interaction. In section 3.2.7 I discussed Gowler and Legge's work on career* discourse and ideology, in particular on the bureaucratic ideology implicit in our understanding of careers, and the possibilities of alternative meanings. It could be argued that Kanter's professional and entrepreneurial career forms represent two such alternatives.

4.4.1 "Career Forms " or "Career Discourses "?

As suggested above, Kanter's is a macro perspective - focusing on the structural dimension of individuals' career experiences. As outlined both in the review of the

literature and in the methodology chapter, in this thesis I am interested in exploring the move from employment to self-employment in terms of both structural and agentic dimensions. That is, I want to examine the relationship between these career structures and the ways in which individuals make sense of and construct their careers. Whereas the concept of "career forms" suggests something static, fixed and external, in my view the notion of "career discourse" more aptly reflects this more dynamic, more complex process.

While it is not within the scope of this thesis to review the literature on discourse theory, it is nevertheless important to clarify the way in which the concept is being applied in this analysis. As explained in section 2.1.4, my definition of discourse is based on the work of socio-linguists Kress and Hodge (1985), whose use of the term is grounded in the work of Foucault (1976, 1980). Three central aspects of this definition are particularly worthy of note. First, discourses encompass and reflect all material practice, including talk, but also the ideas and all other forms of material practice reflected in and

constituted by that talk. Thus it would be a mistake to see discourse as only concerned with language. Second, discourses are conceptualised as culturally and historically embedded, and communicated through social practice. They do not originate from the individual, but from the social practice in which the individual is engaged. Third, Kress and Hodge argue that discourses do not exist in isolation from one another, but within a larger system of sometimes opposing, contradictory, contending or simply different discourses. Thus bureaucratic, professional and entrepreneurial discourses must not be seen as separate entities, but as co-existing in a kind of dynamic tension, deriving their meaning in relation to each other. In this view, then, discourses sit at the nexus of structure and agency, and it is through discourses that individual realities and identities are played out (Cohen and Musson, 1996).

The questions then emerge: "How was participation in a particular career structure articulated by the respondents in the study?" "What evidence would lead the researcher to associate certain respondents with certain career structures?" My initial response to the data was intuitive. Here, the process of intuition is used, not as a sort of "anything goes", irrational response, but to "indicate some process of recognition which draws on embedded cultural knowledge which is difficult to describe and quantify in abstract

terms" (Cohen and Musson, 1996, p. 5). Intuitively, then, some transcripts seemed to tell the story of a professional career, for example, while others "felt" more

entrepreneurial. A more detailed examination of the transcripts, focusing on such issues as career aims and objectives, and the meaning of career success, confirmed these first impressions. An early question about women’s ambitions upon joining their

organisations yielded particularly rich insights. Responses varied from: "I was certainly keen to be promoted... I think when I worked in plastics I wanted to get up to manager's level, and again when I moved into the textiles side I wanted my boss' job"

(bureaucratic), to "I wanted to become a big PR person in the music industry in

Toronto... I was really interested in magazine publishing and wanted to develop those

skills and understanding of how magazine publishing worked" (professional), and "I

didn't see my future as lying with [a particular hotel company]... there was^always an end

in sight" (entrepreneurial). These threads were developed in the course of the

interviews through women's responses to questions about career planning, reasons for embarking on self-employment and visions of the future, in particular. Taken together, these data reveal certain patterns in the ways that respondents made sense of their careers - patterns broadly consistent with Kanter's model, but incorporating both structural and agentic dimensions.

4.4.2 The Diversity o f Career Discourses

As suggested above, in applying Kanter's (amended) model it is important to consider the issue of how a person comes to be associated with a particular career discourse. In addition, the diverse ways in which such discourses are manifest must be explored. Over half of the women in the sample described their careers in terms of a professional career discourse. However, the way in which this discourse was articulated in each of these accounts was actually very different. Whereas for one respondent a professional career discourse included twenty years in one organisation, a traumatic move to self-

employment and a vision of the future based on security, stability and a commitment to certain professional values, for another it meant working for four different organisations and changing jobs every two years before setting up on her own. A third respondent explained how she had started out as a secretary, striving to be at "the top of the tree". When that position came to an end, she became a recruitment consultant, describing

recruitment as her new "vocation". Thus, the concept of the professional career

structure is clearly not monolithic. Instead it must be seen as diverse and dynamic,

encompassing a range of alternatives. Similarly, the sample encompasses a host of

bureaucratic and entrepreneurial career discourses.

In addition to the three career structures articulated by Kanter, several women in the

sample talked extensively about self-development, personal fulfilment and

empowerment. In these cases, respondents' careers seemed to be structured, at least in

part, by their quest for personal challenge and growth; indeed their career movement, between departments in a single organisation, between organisations or between employment and self-employment could be understood in terms of this quest. The race relations officer cited above, for example, explained how she felt that she~was

"stagnating" within the local authority, and how her desire to develop professionally led her to pursue a Masters course, and finally to set up as an independent management consultant:

"I want to see where I should go from here, what skills, what experience I am lacking at the moment... it's much more around this sort of thing".

Similarly, a social worker described how her increasing disillusionment with her

organisation, and with bureaucracies in general, coincided with a growing concern about her own personal and professional growth and development, a concern which ultimately led her to self-employment:

"I think that [the organisational structure] stifles creativity... I couldn't bear it, I couldn't bear the rules and regidations. Ifound it a real constraint. They were stupid to me, they had no sense... Stifled very much on a day-to-day level, and I think also that working in local government there is no sense of career development. There is never a chance for individuals to be developed; it's very much about there are certain roles for you to take up, so in terms ofpromotion, if you want to get on in the organisation, you

have to say, 'I will go for that role', not 'what is it about myself that I need to develop in order to enhance my career? '...I was very clear about where I could go. I just didn 't want to go in that direction" (Social worker to management consultant).

The theme of self-development emerged as crucial in the stories of one-third of the respondents in the study, echoing Hennig and Jardim's (1978) and Mirvis and Hall's (1995) findings, mentioned above. Likewise, Gofifee and Scase (1995) found the quest for personal fulfilment, autonomy, and empowerment to be powerful motivators for managers and owner/managers in their study of creative and professional small businesses. Kanter insists that her three career forms do not "simply define different types of work; they are the organising principles around which a career logic unfolds - the incentives for continuation, the nature of opportunity, the path to increased rewards" (Kanter, 1989, p. 508). In my view, the quest for self-development and empowerment fit Kanter's criteria. The centrality of this quest in the accounts of the women in this study would therefore support its inclusion as a fourth career form.

4.4.3 Career and Lifestyle Discourses: converging, intersecting and competing

The family emerged as another key factor in the way in which respondents made sense of their careers. Indeed, a number of women described their families, and in particular their roles as wives and mothers, as a sort of linchpin around which their professional lives developed. However, despite its manifest importance, the family does not have the same role in structuring a woman's career as do bureaucratic, professional, entrepreneurial and self-development career discourses. Instead, I see the family as one of a number of "lifestyle" discourses that permeated women's stories. Indeed, as will be discussed in subsequent chapters, it was where these career and lifestyle discourses converged, intersected and competed, that the struggles over meaning were played out.

4.4.4 Mixed Career Patterns

As has been emphasised, each of the career discourses identified above must be seen as diverse. At the same time, it is important to note that it is not the case that one woman articulates a single discrete discourse. Instead, in seeking to apply Kanter's (amended) model, it is essential to consider the ways in which these different discourses

clash/collide/intersect within an individual's account. "Mixed career patterns" can occur

in two ways: on both synchronic and diachronic levels. As regards the former, a

notes the tensions and ambiguities which can arise from such mixed patterns, "as individuals and organisations attempt to marry seemingly incompatible principles" (p. 519). Such contradictions were glaring in the case of the NHS nurse cited above. She explained how the values and expectations engendered by her profession were

increasingly at odds with those of her organisation. This tension between a professional discourse on one hand, and a bureaucratic one on the other, became untenable, and she decided to leave the Health Service.

Mixed career patterns were also apparent on the diachronic level, where the move from

one career discourse to another can be seen as central to career transition: "the notion of individual career transitions can be enlarged to encompass transitions among career forms - the passage from professional to bureaucrat, from bureaucrat to entrepreneur, and so forth" (Kanter, 1989, p. 519). Thus the nurse's move from the NHS to the nursing home can be understood in terms of a transition from a bureaucratic/professional context to a professional/entrepreneurial one. Similarly, in the case of the social worker cited above, it was a change in the way that she thought about her career that served as a catalyst for change. No longer able to withstand a bureaucratic career structure, she began to focus on her own development:

"Initially my sense was about being a social worker who would advance through the ranks and become a senior, and then a principal. That's what I did. And then when I got the principal bit I thought, 'Now what am I going to do?' And then I thought, 'I am

utterly stifled here, I don't want to be a senior... It was very stifling, very uncreative" (Social worker to management consultant).

For other women, however, the process was reversed. In these cases the realisation of

what the move meant in terms of how they made sense of their careers came after their

decision to set up in business; indeed in some circumstances it came well after they had actually made the move.

'![At first] Ifelt really lost. Ifelt like I ’d got no anchor anymore. And it was really peculiar, for a long time really." (Office manager to Principal/owner business college).

For this respondent, her description of life within her organisation was characterised by a bureaucratic discourse: she talked at some length about her identification with her department, her movement through the ranks of the organisation, and of her extensive network of colleagues. Having left, she felt uprooted and directionless. She explained how it was not until her secretarial college was up and running that she was finally able to leave her old career identity behind, and begin to see her future in terms of her developing business.