Careers - in Theory

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56 posts · 28,485 views

The aim of the blog is to highlight and discuss theories, models, research and other interesting stuff that might have an impact on the work of careers education and guidance.

David Winter
56 posts

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  • January 5, 2012
  • 11:23 AM
  • 139 views

New year, new identity?

by David Winter in Careers - in Theory

It’s a new year — the end of one chapter and the beginning of another — a time to change. The more dramatic the change, the more likely it is to lead to a transformation of your identity. Some changes involve integrating into new environments, building new relationships and developing new behaviours. You may have [...]... Read more »

  • December 8, 2011
  • 06:02 AM
  • 207 views

The complexity of self-esteem

by David Winter in Careers - in Theory

Self-esteem can play an important part in career success. This has been on my mind quite a bit in recent weeks. I have been doing a lot of work with people involved in organisational restructuring. Even when they are not facing redundancy, they are often having to deal with the prospect of applying for roles [...]... Read more »

  • November 24, 2011
  • 12:45 PM
  • 271 views

How stable are work values?

by David Winter in Careers - in Theory

How much do your work values change over time? Are there times when your work values change more than others? How much are your work values influenced by what is happening around you? Do you adjust your values according to what is available to you? Do some generations have more stable work values than others? [...]... Read more »

  • October 12, 2011
  • 09:59 AM
  • 306 views

Overcoming the self-fulfilling prophecy of social rejection

by David Winter in Careers - in Theory

Way back in 2009 I wrote about the social rejection self-fulfilling prophecy. This relates to the unfortunate fact that if you are expecting someone you meet for the first time not to like you, you tend to behave more distantly towards them, which increases the chances that they won’t like you. The reverse is also [...]... Read more »

  • October 6, 2011
  • 06:42 AM
  • 302 views

How many needs?

by David Winter in Careers - in Theory

According to Maslow we have five (or is it eight?). However, many other people have thought about what human beings need to be happy and fulfilled, what we strive for and what motivates us, they have come up with some different numbers. ERG Theory (3 needs) Clayton Alderfer (1969) set about rearranging Maslow’s needs. Rather [...]... Read more »

  • September 27, 2011
  • 06:32 AM
  • 291 views

Approach or avoidance matching

by David Winter in Careers - in Theory

A few weeks ago I wrote about regulatory focus theory (approach and avoidance motivations) and its possible impact on your career satisfaction. To summarise quickly: approach or promotion focus is about trying to achieve positive outcomes, whereas avoidance or prevention focus is about trying to preclude negative outcomes. Different types of goals and situations can [...]... Read more »

Righetti, F., Finkenauer, C., & Rusbult, C. (2011) The benefits of interpersonal regulatory fit for individual goal pursuit. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(4), 720-736. DOI: 10.1037/a0023592  

  • September 13, 2011
  • 07:40 AM
  • 500 views

Is your work meaningful?

by David Winter in Careers - in Theory

Rachel Mulvey’s post last week on the existential nature of continuing professional development has turned my thoughts once again to the concept of meaningfulness. Partly inspired by Rachel’s idea, I have been writing an article for the Journal of the National Institute for Career Education and Counselling on the use of narrative techniques in reflective [...]... Read more »

Joske, W. (1974) Philosophy and the meaning of life. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 52(2), 93-104. DOI: 10.1080/00048407412341101  

  • September 1, 2011
  • 05:57 AM
  • 1,134 views

What we should be teaching in interview training

by David Winter in Careers - in Theory

Every now and again during interview coaching, I will stop and ask the client, “What do you think I’m looking for with that question?”. Having read an article by some organisational psychologists at the University of Zurich (Kleinmann et al., 2011), I’m going to ask that question a lot more. In various studies these researchers [...]... Read more »

  • August 17, 2011
  • 06:04 AM
  • 294 views

Universal needs?

by David Winter in Careers - in Theory

What are the fundamental human needs? What things, if we get them, will make us happy human beings? Are there such things as universal human needs, that everyone in every society would identify with, or does it depend on your personality and cultural background? In an earlier post on Maslow’s classic hierarchy of needs, I mentioned [...]... Read more »

Tay, L., & Diener, E. (2011) Needs and subjective well-being around the world. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(2), 354-365. DOI: 10.1037/a0023779  

  • August 11, 2011
  • 05:30 AM
  • 350 views

Towards or away from?

by David Winter in Careers - in Theory

Think about a recent job change that you made by your own initiative (rather than by force of circumstance, such as redundancy). Why did you change? Had you got so fed up with your previous job that you had to move to preserve your sanity? Or were you tempted away by the opportunities on offer [...]... Read more »

  • August 2, 2011
  • 01:22 PM
  • 333 views

A matter of perspective

by David Winter in Careers - in Theory

Over on Careers Debate we are having an interesting discussion about narrative approaches to career coaching/counselling. Coincidentally, I’ve just finished reading a fascinating book which looks at how we reconstruct our memories and perceptions in order to keep them consistent with our self image. In Mistakes Were Made (but not by me), Carol Tavris and Elliot [...]... Read more »

Greta Valenti, Lisa K. Libby, & Richard P. Eibach. (2011) Looking back with regret: Visual perspective in memory images differentially affects regret for actions and inactions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47(4), 730-737. info:/10.1016/j.jesp.2011.02.008

  • July 6, 2011
  • 06:35 AM
  • 586 views

Cultural or universal

by David Winter in Careers - in Theory

In The East and West of Careers Guidance, my colleague Saiyada talked about the Jiva project promoting career development counselling in India. A recent paper by G. Arulmani (2011) expands on some of the cultural concepts that underlie this approach to careers work. I have my reservations about the research presented in the paper which [...]... Read more »

Arulmani, G. (2011) Striking the right note: the cultural preparedness approach to developing resonant career guidance programmes. International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, 11(2), 79-93. info:/10.1007/s10775-011-9199-y

  • June 23, 2011
  • 10:54 AM
  • 602 views

Intentional change

by David Winter in Careers - in Theory

How does change happen? What motivates change? What makes a change sustainable? Richard Boyatzis, Professor of Organizational Behavior at Case Western Reserve University, has the answers… or maybe an answer: Intentional Change Theory. Professor Boyatzis has earned a mention on this blog previously for a natty little theory he developed with David Kolb (of learning [...]... Read more »

  • June 13, 2011
  • 06:45 AM
  • 389 views

In the moment. When is mindfulness most useful?

by David Winter in Careers - in Theory

Mindfulness is a cultivated state of mind in which you pay attention to the present moment. The modern usage of mindfulness is based on, but differs from, the Buddhist concept of sati (awareness). It is often linked to the practice of meditation but is now being investigated in relation to a number of different areas. [...]... Read more »

  • May 25, 2011
  • 06:20 AM
  • 646 views

Positive Aspirations

by David Winter in Careers - in Theory

I would like to thank Vinny Potter from Queen Mary, University of London for contributing this post — David I work in two distinct careers settings. One is with high-achieving students at the University of London and the other is with clients who often have few qualifications (if any) at a small job club where [...]... Read more »

  • May 10, 2011
  • 06:49 AM
  • 376 views

Multifinality constraints – ends and means

by David Winter in Careers - in Theory

Quite a few of the journal articles I scan in order to generate material for this blog get filed under “Well, duh!”. They usually report studies that have gone to great lengths to prove something that was blindingly obvious to anyone with common sense. To be fair, these studies can be completely valid; they are [...]... Read more »

  • April 27, 2011
  • 06:06 AM
  • 466 views

Telling tales

by David Winter in Careers - in Theory

I would like to thank Lorna Dargan from Newcastle University for contributing this guest posting. — David. Now that it’s April and work has tipped in favour of “thinking” on the doing/thinking axis, I thought I would get back to my interest in words. I’ve been reading Reid and West’s (2011) article on narrative in [...]... Read more »

Reid, H., & West, L. (2011) “Telling tales”: Using narrative in career guidance. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 78(2), 174-183. DOI: 10.1016/j.jvb.2010.10.001  

  • April 13, 2011
  • 12:31 PM
  • 567 views

Social mobility needs more than paid internships

by David Winter in Careers - in Theory

The UK Government recently released Opening Doors, Breaking Barriers: A Strategy for Social Mobility. The report quotes some depressing statistics about social mobility in the UK. Only one in five young people from the poorest families achieve five good GCSEs, including English and maths, compared with three quarters from the richest families. 25% of children [...]... Read more »

  • April 5, 2011
  • 06:44 AM
  • 638 views

What does success mean to you?

by David Winter in Careers - in Theory

In this post, I’m doggedly continuing my pursuit to explore the idea of career success. We started with a simple binary distinction: objective success versus subjective success. We realised that this was somewhat crude and that a bit more subtlety might be useful. In the previous post, we added an extra dimension about how you [...]... Read more »

Dries, N., Pepermans, R., & Carlier, O. (2008) Career success: Constructing a multidimensional model. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 73(2), 254-267. DOI: 10.1016/j.jvb.2008.05.005  

  • March 29, 2011
  • 05:32 AM
  • 665 views

More success

by David Winter in Careers - in Theory

Do we need more sophisticated definitions of career success? Although I have got a lot of mileage out of the journal article I wrote about in my last post —  I’ve dropped snippets from it into a few talks and workshops lately — there is something very limiting about the ideas of career success used [...]... Read more »

Heslin, P. (2005) Conceptualizing and evaluating career success. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26(2), 113-136. DOI: 10.1002/job.270  

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