Chaos Theory For People Development in 21st Century

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Introduction

At the beginning of the 21
st
century, a new social arrangement of work poses a series of
questions and challenges to scholars who aim to help people develop their working life.
It requires a new revision to the nature of labor market and how to connect them to both
current social norms and the transformation of personal career. Consequently, Chaos
theory emerged among traditional approaches to pick out people out of the box of mind
to face the complexity of world.

Chaos theory of career development

Chaos theory for career development was introduced by Pryton and Bright since early
years of the 21
st
century with the first studies posted on Australia Journal of Career
Development (2003). McMahon and Tatham (2008) arranged Chaos theory during the
fifth generation of career development history which includes: theories of content,
theories of process, theories of content and process, wider explanations and
constructivist approaches.

From the first glance of the book Chaos theory: A perspective for career development
in the 21
st
Century (Pryton and Bright, 2011), people can see homologous idea of
Chaos theory and various other scholars in depicting the world of work in the new
century. People have multiple identities (Ibrra, 2003), multiple commitments (Cohen,
2003), variety due to obligation (Burke, Greenglass and Schwarzer, 1993; Wiley, 1987),
and high level of stress and anxiety (Cooper, Dewe and ODriscoll, 2002).
Organizations go through fast changes and become boundaryless (Ashkenas, Ulrich,
Jick, and Kerr, 1995), global (Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1989), and competitive (Porter,
1998).

However, the new ideology of Chaos theory offers radical changes for the full range of
working people to focus on supporting career development despite unpredictable
economic, social, political environments. Chaos theory goes beyond the previous
theories which had been developed on the theory of Parson (Baruch 2004) since
1909. These theories tried to measure a particular person and to determine what was
required by organizations and environments to fit them together. The traditional
approaches also illustrate the career path is predictable and be acquired by climbing on
the hierarchy ladders of systems. On the other hand, Chaos theory tends to person and


not only sees him as impacted object by the environment but also a created object.
Besides, this approach also is applicable in the developing of modern career definition.
Moreover, core thought of Chaos theory has successfully fulfilled the insufficiencies of
previous theories to adequately take into account of four crucial elements in career
development and choice: Complexity, Change, Constructiveness and Chance.
Furthermore, Chaos theory emphasizes the recognition of chance as a norm. Pryor and
Bright insisted on non-linear (Parton and Bright, 2003) element since their first
journals and had improved it to encompass the entire of the theory and make it to a core
element. Due to non-linear element in the theory, people are encouraged to open their
mindset toward a new outlook of world and to build a personal perspective on the path
of developing career and life.
A demonstration of Chaos theory
An instance of Chaos theory and non-linear element can be the example of David
Beckham who had a high reputation during his career. In an indoor training court, he
was able to kick a stationary ball to any corner of the goal from any position. It is
explained he could determine and control all the factors that influence the balls
trajectory and its final resting spot. This can be regarded as a linear system that is
predictable and measurable. This idea relates to career paths in some theories of career
development that tried to measure personal characteristics such as personality trait to fit
in a job. Continuing the example of David Beckham, the context is changed to a real
football match. He has to face external complex factors that influence his kicks
including such as wind, competitor, and speed. The situation is hard to predict because
any small change in those factors could lead to a large change in where the ball ends up.
There are too many dynamic factors in a non-linear system.
As expansion of this example, it is impossible to be sure about what is going to change
and impact our lifes trajectory suddenly and unexpectedly. In addition, Chao theory
also acknowledges the personal psychology that prefers certainty and prediction is the
first barrier need to remove. In fact, most of people do not want to chance but they must
to do it to take a success career.
Individual practicing of Chaos theory
Finally, in my personal point of view, the issues that Chaos theory depicted in current
nature of world are fit in my case as a person in the 21
st
Century, even in a developing
country. During five years of work until now, I has struggled to several job and


challenged both threats and opportunities. I see that the thoughts of Chaos theory make
me more clear about environment in future and have a confident feeling of the past
(Appendix I). As self-summaries the personal practicing of Chaos theory, I believe on
four stage that must to know: Firstly, accepting the non-perfect of organizations,
systems and ourselves; Secondly, admitting that change is inevitable and keeping a
proactive attitude by self-equipping with skills and knowledge; Thirdly, to be positive
and curious about any change. Fourthly, take as much as possible lots small action to
increase the proactive opportunities.
Conclusion

Chaos theory offers a clear context and encourage people adapt to new nature of work
in the 21
st
Century. However, it likely to delivers a new perspective. It has not given
clear applicable instruction frameworks about how to do in the new nature of work. But
the best way to harness the power of Chaos theory seems to follow the path of wise
wandering.



References:
Baruch, Y. (2004) Managing Careers: Theory and Practice, 1
st
ed., Pearson, Harlow.
Burke, R. J., Greenglass, E. R., & Schwarzer, R. (1993) Work stress, role conflict, social support, and
psychological burnout among teachers. Psychological Reports, vol.73. no.2, pp.371380.
Cohen, A. (2003) Multiple commitments in the workplace: An integrative approach. 1
st
ed., Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah.

Cooper, C. L., Dewe, P. J., & O'Driscoll, M. P. (2002) Organizational stress: A review and critique of
theory, research, and applications. 1
st
ed., Sega Publications, California.
Ibarra, H. (2003) Working identity. 1
st
ed., Harvard Business School Press, Massachusetts.

McMahon, M., Tatham, P. (2008) Career more than a job. 2nd ed., Education.au limited, Dulwich.
Pryor, R., Bright, J. (2011) The Chaos Theory of Careers: A New Perspective on Working in the
Twenty-First Century. 1st ed., Routlege publisher, UK.

Pryor, R., Bright, J. (2003) The chaos theory of careers. Australian Journal of Career Development,
vol. 12, no.3, pp.12-20.
Porter, M. (1998) Competitive strategy: Techniques for analyzing industries and competitors. 1
st
ed,
Free Press.

\



Appendix I: Personal Development Map
The Chaos theory of career development is a really new and strange to me until now. But from the
understanding of the theory, I see that I have challenged the new context that is depicted. Furthermore,
the elements of the theory make me feel more confident on what I did and what I will do, a confident
in chaotic context.





Appendix II: The developing of career definition
The root of career derived from Latin carrus and carruca. The former term meant a kind of two-
wheeled wagon for transporting burdens as well as the latter one understood as a sort of four-wheeled
traveling and state coach (Lewis, 1980, p. 295). Nowadays, the term career became ambiguous.
The word Career is variously meanings to many people as well as researchers. In many instances, the
term of career, occupation and vocation are used synonymously since the time of Parson (1909).
Reflecting this more recent thinking about career is a Canadian definition listed in the agreed
terminology of the Professional Standards for Australian Career Development Practitioners. It
describes a career as: A lifestyle concept that involves the sequence of work, learning and leisure
activities in which one engages throughout a lifetime. Careers are unique to each person and are
dynamic Careers include how persons balance their paid and unpaid work and personal life roles.
(McMahon & Tatham 2008)
More than a word, career concerns with the interplay between individuals and environments and
attempts to describe the nature of the patterns of positions held and resultant experiences during an
individuals lifespan. This sub discipline focuses on providing models and explanations for
organizational career-related activities such as: the origin and measurement of individual aptitudes,
personality, interests and career orientations, motives and values, how individual, social, chance
and environmental factors shape educational and training experiences, employee employability,
career embeddedness and mobility, experiences of career well-being, job and career satisfaction,
career agency, early work history, occupational choice, organizational/job choice and career
movements after organizational entry, work/family issues, career plateaus and retirement planning.
Recently, the career is insisted as a propertyof the individual, who may be inspired by new social
norms, but on the other hand, for employed people, it is planned and managed to a large extent by their
organizations (Baruch 2006).
References:
Lewis, Charlton T. (1980) A Latin dictionary. Oxford University Press.
Careers New Zealand (2014) Parsons' theory. [ONLINE] Available at:
http://www.careers.govt.nz/educators-practitioners/career-practice/career-theory-models/parsons-
theory/. [Accessed 19 February 14].
McMahon, M. and Tatham, P. (2008) Career more than a job. 2nd ed., Education.au limited, Dulwich.

Baruch, Y. (2006) Career development in organizations and beyond: Balancing
traditional and contemporary viewpoints. 16
th
ed., Human resource management review.



Appendix III: The developing of Career development
After the industrial revolution in late 16
th
and early 17
th
Century, agricultural production methods and
business of old society was impacted and changed on the planet. But it also generated variety of new
types of jobs and many forms of organization. From there, individuals have been becoming
increasingly involving and influencing by the external factors to build up working live. Organizational
level in society is higher leads to a consequence that an individual did not longer depend on personal
performance. As instances, a well-farmer could become a manager of an agricultural company or a
personal writer could be recognized by public more broaden through the corporate with publishers or
publish channel.
And the career more involve to the position in an organization or achievement that is recognized by
society.
Building an effective individual development which helps people get success and gain achievement is
more difficult from the changing of factors and general competition. It encourages expanding of study
about career development that is defined by The Professional Standards for Australian Career
Development Practitioners: The lifelong process of managing learning, work, leisure and transitions
in order to move towards a personally determined and evolving future. (McMahon & Tatham 2008)
References:
McMahon, M., Tatham, P. (2008) Career more than a job. 2nd ed., Education.au limited, Dulwich.



Appendix IV: The structure of theories

The structure of theories by Patten & McMahon (2006) in Career development and system
theory

References:
Patten, W. and McMahon, M. (2006) Career Development and System Theory. 2nd ed, Sense
Publishers, Rotterdam.



Appendix V: The transition of characteristic from linear to non-linear context

The transition of characteristic from linear to non-linear context by (Baruch 2004)

References:
Baruch, Y. (2004) Managing Careers: Theory and Practice. 1
st
ed., Pearson, Harlow



Appendix VI: An article about the changing of work environment under the
impact of technology
Coming to an office near you
The effect of todays technology on tomorrows jobs will be immenseand no
country is ready for it
Jan 18th 2014 | From the print edition

INNOVATION, the elixir of progress, has always cost people their jobs. In the
Industrial Revolution artisan weavers were swept aside by the mechanical loom. Over
the past 30 years the digital revolution has displaced many of the mid-skill jobs that
underpinned 20th-century middle-class life. Typists, ticket agents, bank tellers and
many production-line jobs have been dispensed with, just as the weavers were.
For those, including this newspaper, who believe that technological progress has made
the world a better place, such churn is a natural part of rising prosperity. Although
innovation kills some jobs, it creates new and better ones, as a more productive society
becomes richer and its wealthier inhabitants demand more goods and services. A
hundred years ago one in three American workers was employed on a farm. Today less
than 2% of them produce far more food. The millions freed from the land were not
consigned to joblessness, but found better-paid work as the economy grew more
sophisticated. Today the pool of secretaries has shrunk, but there are ever more
computer programmers and web designers.
Remember Ironbridge


Optimism remains the right starting-point, but for workers the dislocating effects of
technology may make themselves evident faster than its benefits (see article). Even if
new jobs and wonderful products emerge, in the short term income gaps will widen,
causing huge social dislocation and perhaps even changing politics. Technologys
impact will feel like a tornado, hitting the rich world first, but eventually sweeping
through poorer countries too. No government is prepared for it.
Why be worried? It is partly just a matter of history repeating itself. In the early part of
the Industrial Revolution the rewards of increasing productivity went disproportionately
to capital; later on, labour reaped most of the benefits. The pattern today is similar. The
prosperity unleashed by the digital revolution has gone overwhelmingly to the owners
of capital and the highest-skilled workers. Over the past three decades, labours share of
output has shrunk globally from 64% to 59%. Meanwhile, the share of income going to
the top 1% in America has risen from around 9% in the 1970s to 22% today.
Unemployment is at alarming levels in much of the rich world, and not just for cyclical
reasons. In 2000, 65% of working-age Americans were in work; since then the
proportion has fallen, during good years as well as bad, to the current level of 59%.
Worse, it seems likely that this wave of technological disruption to the job market has
only just started. From driverless cars to clever household gadgets (see article),
innovations that already exist could destroy swathes of jobs that have hitherto been
untouched. The public sector is one obvious target: it has proved singularly resistant to
tech-driven reinvention. But the step change in what computers can do will have a
powerful effect on middle-class jobs in the private sector too.
Until now the jobs most vulnerable to machines were those that involved routine,
repetitive tasks. But thanks to the exponential rise in processing power and the ubiquity
of digitised information (big data), computers are increasingly able to perform
complicated tasks more cheaply and effectively than people. Clever industrial robots
can quickly learn a set of human actions. Services may be even more vulnerable.
Computers can already detect intruders in a closed-circuit camera picture more reliably
than a human can. By comparing reams of financial or biometric data, they can often
diagnose fraud or illness more accurately than any number of accountants or doctors.
One recent study by academics at Oxford University suggests that 47% of todays jobs
could be automated in the next two decades.
At the same time, the digital revolution is transforming the process of innovation itself,
as ourspecial report explains. Thanks to off-the-shelf code from the internet and
platforms that host services (such as Amazons cloud computing), provide distribution
(Apples app store) and offer marketing (Facebook), the number of digital startups has
exploded. Just as computer-games designers invented a product that humanity never
knew it needed but now cannot do without, so these firms will no doubt dream up new
goods and services to employ millions. But for now they are singularly light on
workers. When Instagram, a popular photo-sharing site, was sold to Facebook for about


$1 billion in 2012, it had 30m customers and employed 13 people. Kodak, which filed
for bankruptcy a few months earlier, employed 145,000 people in its heyday.
The problem is one of timing as much as anything. Google now employs 46,000 people.
But it takes years for new industries to grow, whereas the disruption a startup causes to
incumbents is felt sooner. Airbnb may turn homeowners with spare rooms into
entrepreneurs, but it poses a direct threat to the lower end of the hotel businessa
massive employer.
No time to be timid
If this analysis is halfway correct, the social effects will be huge. Many of the jobs most
at risk are lower down the ladder (logistics, haulage), whereas the skills that are least
vulnerable to automation (creativity, managerial expertise) tend to be higher up, so
median wages are likely to remain stagnant for some time and income gaps are likely to
widen.
Anger about rising inequality is bound to grow, but politicians will find it hard to
address the problem. Shunning progress would be as futile now as the Luddites
protests against mechanised looms were in the 1810s, because any country that tried to
stop would be left behind by competitors eager to embrace new technology. The
freedom to raise taxes on the rich to punitive levels will be similarly constrained by the
mobility of capital and highly skilled labour.
The main way in which governments can help their people through this dislocation is
through education systems. One of the reasons for the improvement in workers
fortunes in the latter part of the Industrial Revolution was because schools were built to
educate thema dramatic change at the time. Now those schools themselves need to be
changed, to foster the creativity that humans will need to set them apart from
computers. There should be less rote-learning and more critical thinking. Technology
itself will help, whether through MOOCs (massive open online courses) or even video
games that simulate the skills needed for work.
The definition of a state education may also change. Far more money should be spent
on pre-schooling, since the cognitive abilities and social skills that children learn in
their first few years define much of their future potential. And adults will need
continuous education. State education may well involve a year of study to be taken later
in life, perhaps in stages.
Yet however well people are taught, their abilities will remain unequal, and in a world
which is increasingly polarised economically, many will find their job prospects
dimmed and wages squeezed. The best way of helping them is not, as many on the left
seem to think, to push up minimum wages. Jacking up the floor too far would accelerate
the shift from human workers to computers. Better to top up low wages with public


money so that anyone who works has a reasonable income, through a bold expansion of
the tax credits that countries such as America and Britain use.
Innovation has brought great benefits to humanity. Nobody in their right mind would
want to return to the world of handloom weavers. But the benefits of technological
progress are unevenly distributed, especially in the early stages of each new wave, and
it is up to governments to spread them. In the 19th century it took the threat of
revolution to bring about progressive reforms. Todays governments would do well to
start making the changes needed before their people get angry.
References:
The Economist (2014) 'Coming to an office near you'. The Economist, vol. 24, pp. 9.

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