Career Barriers

How People Experience, Overcome, and Avoid Failure

Manuel London

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9780805825794
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317778516
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

This volume's goal is to help readers understand how people react to career barriers and how people develop constructive ways of coping with them. Drawing on original cases and data from interviews with people who faced different types of career barriers, the author describes how people react to, and make sense of, unfortunate events in their lives--and career barriers when they occur. He considers how and why some people cope constructively while others don't, and explores how resilience and support from others help get us through tough times and emerge with a sense of renewal and career growth. He suggests how we can manage career barriers and prepare for--or even prevent--career barriers through foresight, planning, and education. These methods also suggest what managers and organizations should do to help their employees who are or may soon be facing career barriers.

People can learn while facing the stress and self-questioning that accompany career barriers, but this is not an easy process. Learning requires considerable self-understanding and environmental support. The organization can play a vital role in limiting people's pain and creating opportunities. However, despite generous severance packages and outplacement services, many organizations have been little help to people who lose their jobs, suffer job stress, face unreasonably demanding bosses, or suffer from physical handicaps or chronic illnesses. Most of the burden falls on individuals and their families. Assistance can and should come from employers, government agencies, educational institutions, and religious organizations.

While the book focuses on the perspectives of people who have been or may be affected by career barriers, the material should be of interest to a broad range of readers --in particular, academics who study careers, practitioners in the fields of training and development, and government officials who set public policy that affects displaced workers.

Part I What Is a Career Barrier?

1 Examples and Types of Barriers

DOI: 10.4324/9781315805764-1

Some career barriers hit you in the face, they come unexpectedly, and are nothing short of traumatic. They have severe negative effects on employees and their families. Other barriers emerge slowly—perhaps imperceptibly. Changes in the situation occur incrementally and eventually amount to a career barrier. Corresponding emotions, such as frustration and anger, build up slowly as well. In this chapter I describe characteristics and types of career barriers. Then I present an overview of the exploratory interview study I used to gain a deeper understanding of how people react to a host of career barriers. First, consider two cases.

Job Loss: The Ultimate Career Barrier (Case 1.1)

Abe is a 58-year-old married man with two children over the age of 20. An electrical engineer, he had worked for a defense contractor in the aerospace industry for 26 years before being laid off. For most of his career with the defense contractor, he felt his job was secure. The work environment was friendly and mostly stress-free. Also, he felt the work was important, not only to the company but to the country.

Job security become a concern for Abe in 1989 as defense spending was cut. Abe was assigned to a new project, but felt this might be short-lived. He thought that receiving jobs in the company seemed to be due to who you knew rather than what you could do. The firm merged with another contractor, and Abe watched as numerous colleagues lost their jobs. Morale in the firm reached a low point. Abe was used to sharing his work with his family, and he continued to keep them informed as times got rough. He hoped this would prepare them if he was hid off. Nevertheless, he occasionally took out his anger on them. He became doleful and somber, and had trouble sleeping.

During his last year with the firm Abe began looking for a job elsewhere, but had no luck. After the inevitable layoff, he discovered that jobs were available in software engineering, and he took classes to move into this field. Although he went on several interviews, it seemed that his age was a barrier. Younger people with less experience were cheaper to hire. After 2 years of looking for a job and the employment situation in the region getting worse, Abe found a position as a consulting engineer for a small firm. He had less autonomy and disliked the constant monitoring. Also, once the project was completed, the consulting assignment was over. He continues to look for other consulting assignments and is thinking about starting his own firm.

This case shows what it means to be a grain of sand in the storm of organizational change. It is a typical case of a displaced engineer—someone who had a secure job for many years but fell victim to an organizational downsizing. Although Abe foresaw the change, he did nothing about it until after he was laid off. After some retraining, he struggled to find a niche as a consultant. Now consider someone who was also forced out of his job late in his career.

Another Victim of Downsizing (Case 1.2)

Bernie is a 58-year-old married man with five children and had been with his current employer in the same position for 22 years. He worked as an executive assistant to the administrative county judge. A management change brought a new administrative judge who forced Bernie to retire after working with him for 7 months. The new judge wanted “his own man” as his assistant. The judge made Bernie’s life miserable, treating him in disrespectful, unprofessional ways. In Bernie’s opinion, this lowered morale in the unit and increased the pressure on all the staff.

Ironically, after Bernie was forced to retire, the new judge lost his position and was placed in another assignment. Although this was of some consolation to Bernie, he did not mire in self-pity and a negative attitude. He reasoned that his retirement was beyond his control. Now a real estate salesman, he feels he is in a people-oriented business. He believes he is gaining a good reputation and doing more business because of it.

This case shows what it means to be a pawn at the mercy of a tough boss. Bernie is an example of the “typical” older worker who was forced out. Fortunately, he was able to find a new avenue for employment.

Characteristics of Career Barriers

Career barriers vary along at least three dimensions: (a) clarity, the individual’s understanding of the barrier’s causes and consequences; (b) costs in terms of the financial losses and emotional suffering; and (c) the certaintyor irreversibility of the barrier. For both Abe and Bernie, job loss had high costs. There was not much either of them could do to avoid the layoff, and perhaps they denied the situation or hoped it would go away. They were able to find other places for themselves—other ways to bolster their self-esteem and continue to make a living, although Bernie seemed to be more successful at this than Abe.

Clarity, cost, and certainty of the career barrier combine to make the barrier more traumatic, for instance, when the individual realizes that a negative event is definitely going to happen but does not understand why or what to do about it. In general, the stronger these characteristics, the greater the impact of the barrier on the employee’s emotions, thoughts, and actions. Here are some of the components of these characteristics of career barriers.

Clarity

A person’s understanding or grasp of the situation is lower when the barrier is:

Sudden—A career barrier that arises without warning results in surprise and shock.

Involuntary—The individual had no choice about the barrier happening. For instance, it might have resulted from an organizational change such as a merger. Contrast this with a barrier that occurred by choice, that is, the employee made a decision or behaved in a way that precluded him or her from career opportunities (e.g., decided not to apply for a job; decided not to work harder; lacked important knowledge or work skills; or did not know how to search for, demand, or request a career opportunity).

Unclear—The causes and consequences of the barrier and its long-term impact on one’s life are unclear. The event may be puzzling to the employee. The employee realizes that a desired career goal has been denied or will not be available, but the employee is unsure who is to blame and how to deal with the situation, for instance, whether it is worth trying to change it or whether it is better to give up on the goal.

Costs

The costs of a career barrier are higher when the barrier is:

Visible to others—The career barrier is public knowledge. For instance, others know that the employee was denied a promotion, did not receive a raise, or was fired. This is likely to make the career barrier all the more salient and require a public reaction, even if this reaction does not match how the employee really feels. For example, saying “It doesn’t really matter” or “I didn’t want the promotion anyway” may save face but still requires internal coping to deal with feelings of rejection and lower motivation.

Has an effect on other people—A career barrier is likely to seem worse to the employee if he or she is the only one affected than if others were affected similarly. When a career barrier is a shared experience, people available for commiseration and possibly taking joint actions to fight or in other ways deal with the situation. Employees may devote energy to organizing protests or helping each other seek other career opportunities through personal, one-on-one relationships or community efforts (for instance, ways to encourage new businesses in the region that in turn will generate new career opportunities).

Affects other aspects of life—The career barrier has effects on other aspects of life beyond career, such as family, health, leisure pursuits. This can be thought of as the multiplier effect. Price (1992) reviewed the literature on the mental health effects of job loss. He found that the impact of job loss included the effects of financial strain, marital difficulty and conflict, reduced affiliation in personal and social networks, and financial loss (e.g., loss of house or other personal property). For married workers, the spouse and family provided a strong support system that had protective effects on mental health. Being married provided a strong support system.

Certainty

A barrier is more certain, definite, or unequivocal when it is:

Permanent—The career barrier is not going to change. Waiting it out will not alter the situation. The employee does not see a way to alter or reverse the situation after it has occurred. The obverse is that the individual is able to change, influence, or overcome the barrier directly (by one’s own decisions, negotiations, or action) or indirectly (by influencing others’ decisions or actions). Of course, the same career barrier may seem insurmountable to one person, whereas another looks for loopholes or other alternatives.

Trauma

Traumatic changes are those that occur suddenly without explanation, have high costs, and are immutable. Overall, the more the aforementioned characteristics are prevalent, the more uncertain the individual is likely to be about how to react to, and cope with, the situation. On the other hand, the slower and more imperceptibly the barrier arises, the lower its impact on other aspects of life; the more easily the situation can be changed or reversed, the less traumatic the barrier and the easier it is to determine what to do or feel comfortable doing nothing, at least in the shortrun.

Types of Career Barriers

Abe and Bernie provide examples of job loss. However, this is just one type of career barrier. Table 1.1 lists types and examples of career barriers many people actually face and even more worry about. Abe and Bernie may have experienced several of these as their careers progressed, even without realizing it. Barriers can stem from factors that are external to the individual and beyond the individual’s control (Swanson & Tokar, 1991; Melamed, 1996). These may be general environmental factors such as economic trends (cost cutting, mergers), global markets and competition, demographics/the labor market, and new technology. There are also specific organizational, environmental, or situational changes or conditions. They may be stimulated by general environmental trends or by events that are organization-specific, such as restructuring, the decision to close a plant, adoption of a new technology, job redesign, quality of supervision, and increased work load demands, all of which may lead to career barriers. Other barriers stem from organizational actions that affect specific individuals, such as being fired or being passed over for promotion.

Barriers can also stem from the individual. General individual characteristics that may influence career progress are intelligence and certain aspects of personality, such as aggressiveness (or lack thereof). Individual characteristics that may influence career progress include the ability to learn and do particular work. Non-job-related individual characteristics, especially age, race, gender, and physical appearance, may hamper a person’s career; this occurs through the unfair discrimination or bias of those responsible for evaluating and making decisions about these individuals. As such, these career barriers have, in part, a social and societal explanation. Other sources of career barriers may not be work related at all, such as a personal loss or a physical disability that makes it hard to go on.

Table 1.1 Types and Examples of Career Barriers

General organizational/environmental barriers Limited career opportunities Technological change Changing business climate Early career ceiling Specific organizational, environmental, and situational barriers Job demands Poor supervision Organizational change Business failure Multirole conflict Uncertainty about the future Disapproval by others Lack of Information Company Relocation Underutilization Electronic monitoring Organizational actions that affect specific individuals Job loss Whistle-blowing Job stress Denial of tenure Demotion Passed over for promotion Job transfer General individual barriers Physical or mental disability Low motivation Desire for a nontraditional lifestyle Lack of self-confidence Indecision Overqualified for the job market Career transition late in life Job-specific individual barriers Poor job performance Disaffection with one’s career Inadequate experience/training Ph...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table Of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I What Is a Career Barrier?
• Part II How People React to Career Barriers
• Part III Ways to Help People Overcome Career Barriers
• Part IV Ways to Avoid Career Barriers
• Appendix A Additional Cases
• Appendix B Catalog of Cases
• Appendix C Case Description and Rating Forms
• Appendix D Relationships Between Appraisal, Coping, and Career Motivation
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index