Case 5e: Sangita’s career

Mark Saunders, University of Surrey; Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill

Sangita was interested in the topic of careers. She had taken a Human Resource
Management module that involved studying issues related to career management,
the psychological contract and developments in contemporary careers. She was
interested in the distinction her tutor had drawn between traditional careers, where
people spend their working lives in one organisation gradually gaining promotions,
and so-called boundaryless careers, where people move between organisations to
develop their careers. She decided that this was the research idea she wanted to
work up into a research question. She discussed this idea with her friends, who
joked with her that what she was really interested in was ‘Sangita’s career!’

She laughed at this idea but told her friends that she really did find the idea of
careers fascinating! Her brother, who was four years older than Sangita had just got
his first career job. He had spent two years on an IT graduate training programme in
a large market research company. At the end of this, the organisation had offered
him the post of Information Services Analyst, Level 1, which he was delighted to
accept. In this organisation, there were five levels of Services Analyst. Sangita was
really pleased for her brother and recognised that here was an organisation which
was carefully managing the careers of its employees, offering them development and
progression opportunities in return for their commitment, hard work and loyalty.

Her thoughts about the continued existence and importance of traditional careers
were reinforced when she read some of the careers studies literature. She read a
report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development containing a
number of case studies from a diverse range of organisations indicating that these
approached ‘talent management’ and career development with great care and
attention, even when confronted by the impact of economic downturn and uncertain
times (McCartney, 2010). She also read an insightful article by Rodrigues and Guest
(2010). They used previously published literature and official data from a number of
European countries, Japan and the USA to conclude that in overall terms there was
little evidence to support the idea that job tenure had decreased significantly or that
careers had become more boundaryless. This included evidence that core workers
in these countries continued to experience similar levels of job tenure, measured in
years with one employer. However, there was some evidence from these data that
certain groups of employees, notably younger workers and those from lower socio-
economic groups, experienced less job stability.

Sangita concluded from this that traditional careers remained just as important
for those who had benefited from them in the past. The idea of the boundaryless
career was interesting but perhaps it was only of marginal importance. The
boundaryless career suggested that employees would have to become much more
individualistic about developing their careers as a consequence of job instability.
However, the evidence that Sangita read pointed the other way. For most career
oriented employees, organisations continued to hold the key to career development
(Rodrigues and Guest, 2010). This set Sangita thinking about the distinction
between individuals’ self-managed career development and organisationally-driven
career management.

Sangita read a number of articles that used a theory testing, deductive approach
to explore the distinction between self-managed career development and
organisational career management. These tended to test theoretical hypotheses
using a questionnaire-based survey strategy (e.g. Sturges et al., 2008). Sangita
discovered that not only were organisationally-driven career management
interventions still important; but these were statistically linked to job performance,
commitment to the organisation and also in some cultures to the promotion of
individual career management behaviours. Organisational career management
interventions that encourage employees to engage in their own career self-help could
lead to promotion within an organisation or to a career move to another organisation.
She also read an article by Zeitz et al. (2009) that highlighted the excessively
individualistic nature of the boundaryless career idea and discussed several ways in
which employees would need to be supported in order to develop their abilities to
move between organisations, including organisationally-based career management
support.

Sangita thought that these articles were very useful as they helped her to understand
that the reality of career development was much more complicated than was
suggested by those who advocated the growth of the boundaryless career. However,
she noted that employees did move between organisations to develop their careers,
some groups such as younger graduate workers being more likely to do this (De Vos
et al., 2009). If the concept of the boundaryless career was in doubt Sangita felt that
there was a need to understand more about the idea of career boundary crossing
(Inkson et al., 2010; Zeitz et al., 2009) and the respective roles of self-managed
career development and organisational career management in helping this.

Sangita felt that this would be a good topic for her research project. The question in
her mind was how to focus and design her research. There were potentially many
different ways in which she could explore this topic further. Her research might be
employee-focused. If this were to be the case, she thought that she could collect
data from employees in different age groups, or occupational groups, or sectors of
employment. Alternatively, she thought that she could collect data from employees in
stable employment relationships who enjoyed a traditional career structure and
contrast these with a second set from employees who moved between organisations
to develop their careers across organisational boundaries. Conversely, her research
might be management focused. If this were to be the case, she thought that she
might collect data within a case study organisation, or sample of case study
organisations, to examine the nature of their organisational career management
policies and how these related to internal promotion decisions and boundary crossing
career turnover.
 The research design possibilities for Sangita’s research were not only numerous but
also a little confusing. She thought about them carefully, especially in terms of what
would both be interesting and practical to undertake. She decided to focus on
analysing organisational career management policies using a case study
organisation to evaluate how these related to career promotions and boundary
crossing career turnover in her research proposal. Her initial research question was:
‘What organisational career management policies exist in (case study organisation
name) to retain key employees and how have these policies been evaluated in
relation to career-related employee turnover.’

On the morning of her meeting with her project tutor to discuss her draft research
proposal, she reread her proposal and notes once more. She reflected on her
research question and the notes she had made from various journal articles and
books that she was going to develop in to the first draft of her literature review.
Finally she read through her proposed research design. She checked that she was
satisfied with her methodological choice and research strategy and went to the
meeting with her tutor.

Questions
1. What are the possible research strategies from which Sangita might chose to
address her research question?
2. What are the likely advantages and drawbacks of using each possible strategy?
3. Which research strategy would you use to conduct this research project and why?

References
De Vos, A., De Stobbeleir, K. and Meganck, A. (2009). ‘The relationship between
career-related antecedents and graduates’ anticipatory psychological contracts’,
Journal of Business Psychology, 24, 289–298.
Inkson, K., Ganesh, S., Roper, J. and Gunz, H. (2010). ‘The boundaryless career: A
productive concept that may have outlived its usefulness’, Academy of Management
Annual Meeting Proceedings, 1–6.
McCartney, C. (2010). Fightback through talent innovation: talent management under
threat in uncertain times. London, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
Rodrigues, R. A. and Guest, D. (2010). ‘Have careers become boundaryless?’,Human
Relations, 63, 8, 1157–1175.
Sturges, J., Conway, N. and Liefooghe, A. (2008). ‘What’s the deal? An exploration of
career management behaviour in Iceland’, The International Journal of Human
Resource Management, 19, 4, 752–768.
Zeitz, G., Blau, G. and Fertig, J. (2009). ‘Boundaryless careers and institutional
resources’, The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 20, 2, 372–
398.