The Chaos Theory of Careers

A New Perspective on Working in the Twenty-First Century

Robert Pryor, Jim Bright

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780415551885
• eBook ISBN: 9781135231293
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The Chaos Theory of Careers outlines the application of chaos theory to the field of career development. It draws together and extends the work that the authors have been doing over the last 8 to 10 years.

This text represents a new perspective on the nature of career development. It emphasizes the dimensions of careers frequently neglected by contemporary accounts of careers such as the challenges and opportunities of uncertainty, the interconnectedness of current life and the potential for information overload, career wisdom as a response to unplanned change, new approaches to vocational assessment based on emergent thinking, the place of spirituality and the search for meaning and purpose in, with and through work, the integration of being and becoming as dimensions of career development.

It will be vital reading for all those working in and studying career development, either at advanced undergraduate or postgraduate level and provides a new and refreshing approach to this fast changing subject.

Key themes include:

Factors such as complexity, change, and contribution

People's aspirations in relation to work and personal fulfilment

Contemporary realities of career choice, career development and the working world

Chapter 1 Complexity, Uncertainty and Careers

To live is to change.

DOI: 10.4324/9780203871461-1

Introduction

Everything in our universe is subject to change. When the rate of change is very slow we tend to ascribe “stability” to such phenomena and tend not to think of them as changeable or changing … but they are. Human experience is often interpreted in terms of the alternation between stability and change. Some crave continual change and some seek perpetual stability. The tension between these two parameters of our being, have frequently been the focus of artistic expression. The Elizabethans, for example, having experienced the upheavals of the Reformation and the Renaissance, were almost preoccupied with coming to terms with change. They called it “mutability.” The greatest writer of them all, William Shakespeare, wrote sonnets that repeatedly returned to the theme of change in human life and love, especially change in its ultimate form—the change from life to death.

The twentieth century saw the rate of change in many areas of human life and experience begin to accelerate in comparison with earlier centuries. With such acceleration came the loss of many previous certitudes (Peat, 2002). In science, for example, the beginning of the twentieth century saw the apparently immutable, generalizable and universal laws of Newtonian mechanics suddenly undermined by Einstein’s theory of relativity. Then, within about 30 years, the very fundamental concepts of causality and predictability on which Einstein, not to mention Newton, had depended were themselves challenged by quantum mechanics. Suddenly it became apparent that there were parts of reality at the sub-atomic level that appeared to defy much of what science had, at least since the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, assumed to be the way the universe worked.

As if all this were not enough, a further revolution in scientific thought was slowly, almost surreptitiously insinuating itself into various dimensions of scientific theory and practice as the twentieth century progressed (Briggs & Peat, 1989). Chaos theory, as it was subsequently to be designated, challenged traditional scientific methods of controlled laboratory experiments, of analyzing ever more specific phenomena and of attempting to control for all extraneous variables. Chaos theory pointed to the complexity of reality and its essential interconnectedness. These theorists emphasized the systemic nature of the universe and the need to consider phenomena in their totality and context rather than always reducing them to their constituents. Now it was not only sub-atomic particles that defied prediction: chaos theory pointed to the stochastic and contingent nature of all reality (Lorenz, 1993). The laws of science became understood not as immutable certainties but as statements of probability (Prigonine, 1997).

The recognition of complexity began to spawn not only change but also chance. It was not that classical physics, the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics were all incorrect or even superseded. In fact, each was and remains among the great intellectual achievements of humans’ aspirations to gain an understanding of the nature of things. It was just that they were not enough. Chaos theory has come to represent the “new frontier” of human endeavor in the same quest to which such luminaries as Newton, Einstein and Bohrs had so perspicaciously previously contributed. Now chaos theory is finding applications far beyond its original fields of endeavor of mathematics, biology and meteorology. The concepts and ideas of the theory have been applied across economics, political science, aesthetics, theology and clinical psychology. In fact, aspects of chaos theory are found in various forms in popular culture, especially films such as Chaos, Jurassic Park, Sliding Doors, The Butterfly Effect, Serendipity and Slumdog Millionaire.

In this book the authors will try to document, integrate, interpret and extend previous efforts applying chaos theory to the field of career development since work remains one of the most fundamental of all human activities. Moreover, as we try to demonstrate in this chapter, work and careers have been some of the aspects of human experience that have undergone monumental change which demands new approaches in terms of career development theory, research and counseling intervention practice.

New Realities of Career Development

Fundamentally, our world is less predictable than was once thought. Our lives are uncertain and our work is subject to changes over which we can have limited control. Some of the “new realities” for twenty-first-century work are:

• Speed of communication
• Reshaping of organizations
• Speed and extent of change
• Need for lifelong learning
• Globalization of both consumer markets and labor markets
• Increasingly contractual nature of work
• Rapidity of technological innovation and its adoption.

Daniel Pink (2005) argued that developed economies are confronted by a trinity of challenges:

• Abundance—are the skills, products and services offered by individuals and organizations in demand when there are abundant alternatives?
• Asia—can the product be made or the service delivered more cheaply using Asian labor?
• Automation—can the product or service be made or delivered faster, better or more cheaply by a computer?

He argues that increasingly people are looking for meaning and social connection in their actions. We imbue our interactions with both people and objects with emotional value. Hence we realize that the company we keep, the jobs that we do and the products that we purchase are to some degree reflections or projections of ourselves. We are, in developed countries, confronted by choice in most areas of our lives. Literally from the choice of birthing methods, to the choice of a casket, we or our carers have an abundance of choices to make, and the way we make them is far from always being rational (e.g., Ariely, 2008).

The impact of globalization, most especially seen in the dramatic rise of Asian economic power especially in China and India, is another powerful reminder that our work practices, and hence our careers, are subject to continuous and unpredictable change. Friedman (2005) suggests that the conflagration of technology and attitude change has led to a “flattening of the world” where many more nations, companies or individuals can compete viably for business. These developments are unlikely to create the conditions for long-term stability classically associated with career development (e.g., Super 1980).

Technological advances, especially in information and communications technology, but also in medicine and robotics, have also played a major role in creating a complex, uncertain and unpredictable world, in which the notion of stable or predictable career paths becomes ever more questionable. The result of the forces of abundance, Asia and automation is uncertainty, and that is a reality that has not been addressed adequately in the career development literature to date.

Change and Uncertainty

Humans struggle with the reality that uncertainty is inevitable in all of our actions to a greater or lesser degree—we want control, and it disturbs us to think that total control is fundamentally unattainable. Approaches to career development that emphasize certainty and hold out the promise of providing neat answers are attractive to people confronted by the uncertainties and complexities of their lives. It is therefore not surprising to discover that clients seek out certainty in career counseling and prefer that counselors give advice, opinions and answers (Galassi, Crace, Martin, James & Wallace, 1992). This presents a challenge because we live in a world that is not simple, certain and predictable, and a world that is populated by people who are complex, changing and inherently unpredictable.

As Taleb (2007) noted, reflection on our own experience as humans will indicate the uncertain and unpredictable nature of many events in our lives and our world. He posed the following questions:

Look into your own existence. Count the significant events, the technological changes, and the inventions that have taken place in our environment since you were born and compare them to what was expected before their advent. How many of them came on schedule? Look into your own personal life, to your choice of profession say, or meeting your mate, your exile from your country of origin, the betrayals you faced, your sudden enrichment or impoverishment. How often did these things occur according to plan? (p. xix)

Some of the words commonly used to describe individuals’ involvement with work include “vocation” and “career development,” the former meaning a calling or to be called, and the latter suggesting progression. Other words that are commonly used include “transition,” “change,” and “outplacement.” All of these terms relate to movement or shift (Bright & Pryor, 2008). Definitions in the field of human careers always come back to the acknowledgement of shift. Indeed Savickas (1997) argues that movement is the defining quality of the human condition—to live is to move. Movement is what separates humans from inanimate objects. Amundson (2003a) observed that counseling clients often present their career problems in terms of being “stuck”—in effect, being unable to move. He sees a fundamental role of career counseling as getting people moving in positive directions toward worthwhile objectives.

Evidence of shift in career trajectories is plentiful. For instance, Jepson and Choudhuri (2001) followed a cohort of 170 people over 25 years and found almost two thirds experienced changing occupational career patterns. Not only is shift the most common career experience; it might even contribute positively to satisfaction. Jepson and Chouduri reported that stable occupational career patterns were associated with lower levels of career satisfaction.

Within the domain of career change, increasing attention is being given to unplanned change (e.g., Betsworth & Hanson, 1996; Bright, Pryor & Harpham, 2005; Cabral & Salomone, 1990; Chen, 2005; Mitchell, Levin & Krumboltz, 1999; Osipow, 1973). A consistent pattern emerges from studies employing a range of different methodologies including surveys and case studies that between 60% and 100% of adolescents and adults report chance events that significantly influenced their career paths.

Given the centrality of movement to career development theory and practice, it is perhaps ironic how relatively neglected movement has been in the literature in this field for most of its history. Thus two influential metaphors of career up to the present time that do not immediately imply movement are those of “career as fit” and “career as resource,” yet arguably these metaphors have dominated career development theory and practice for the last 100 years. This may provide a clue as to why theory and practice in the area of shift is strangely limited.

Career as fit is typically associated with the theories of Frank Parsons (Parsons, 1909) and John Holland (Holland, 1997). The counseling focused on narrowing down options and making recommendations based on person-job fit. Much has been written about these approaches, and it is fair to say that the concept of fit between individuals and occupations as the basis for predicting occupational outcomes or as a basis for practice has been subject to an exponentially increasing critical commentary (e.g., Amundson, 2003a, 2005; Arnold, 2004; Bright, Pryor & Harpham, 2005; Patton & McMahon, 2006; Pryor & Bright, 2003a,b, 2007; Savickas 1997).

Career as resource is seen most clearly in the discipline and practice of human resources. This discipline considers the potential of the career, in combination with other resources in the process of wealth creation. Essentially, the “career” is a building block or an ingredient in the construction of wealth, and hence it is seen as a stable entity. This allied discipline has also labored under a characterization of individuals that does not encourage one to think of them as continually shifting and subject to shift. Indeed much of the change management literature appears to be predicated on the notion of coercing or cajoling individuals to accept and adapt to change regimes. Furthermore, rarely is change construed in this literature as being anything more complex than a simple movement from an “old” structure to a “new” structure. For instance, in their textbook on organizational behavior, Greenberg and Barron (2000) distinguish first order change and second order change. First order change is “continuous in nature and involves no major shifts in how an organization operates”(p. 586). Second order change is “far more complex” (p. 586) and relates to structural changes that employ strategic planning which “must begin with a stated goal” (p. 594). Thus through the traditional approach to strategic planning radical change is conceived of as planned behavior where the current (old structure) is changed to the future (new structure).

The dominant metaphors of fit and resource have not encouraged us to deal with the complexity of shift. Most existing career development theories fail to account adequately for one or more of four crucial contemporary elements in career development and choice (Bright & Pryor, 2005; Pryor & Bright, 2003a,b, 2007).

1. Failure to incorporate the range of potential influences on people’s careers.
2. Failure to move beyond a narrow sense of matching to the dynamic, interactive and adaptive nature of human functioning in the world and in making career decisions and taking career action.
3. Failure to go beyond acknowledging to incorporating into theory the tendency of humans to construe and construct experiences and perceptions into meaningful and often unique interpretive structures for understanding themselves, their life experience and their world.
4. Failure to adequately conceptualize unplanned and unpredictable events and experiences which are often crucial and sometimes determinative in the narrative of people’s careers.

Things and people change, shift happens (Bright, 2008a), but many of our methods, our training and our clients’ expectations tend to privilege certainty over uncertainty. Taleb (2007) argued that all the shifts that have really mattered in life have shared three characteristics: (a) they are outliers that fall outside the realm of regular expectations; (b) they have an extreme impact; and (c) “human nature makes us concoct explanations for [their] occurrence after the fact, making [them] explainable and predictable” (p. xviii).

The observation that we live in times of exponential change seems to be increasingly accepted. Uldrich (2008) has estimated that 95% of what we know about the human brain has been discovered in the last 20 years. If we consider the discipline of career develo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface “Life is Uncertain”
• Chapter 1 Complexity, Uncertainty and Careers
• Chapter 2 Complexity, Uncertainty and Career Development Theory
• Chapter 3 The Chaos Theory of Careers: Background and Development
• Chapter 4 The Chaos Theory of Careers: Attractors
• Chapter 5 The Chaos Theory of Careers: Patterns and Fractals
• Chapter 6 The Chaos Theory of Careers: Research Support
• Chapter 7 Strategies for Chaos Theory Career Counseling and Assessment
• Chapter 8 Practical Applications: Counseling and Assessment
• Chapter 9 Practical Applications: Meaning, Purpose and Spirituality
• Chapter 10 Practical Applications: Organizational Development
• Chapter 11 Where Are We Going and Where We Have Been
• Appendices
• Bibliography
• Index