Understanding Career Choices in Context

Over several years, challenges have been made to traditional theories of career choice. One of these challenges has been to consider the contexts in which individuals live and how this can influence career choices. The purpose of this model is to create a framework to explain the influences on career choices over the lifespan. The term "career choices" as used in this model refers not only to initial occupational choice, but also to all those choices made previously and subsequently that influence occupation or job choice. The paper states that social, cultural, geographic, and hereditary contexts influence career choices. Individual characteristics play a role as do core beliefs. Specific factors that most immediately affect career choice are availability of information, expectations, barriers, interest, economic need, and achievement motivation. Some of the recommendations are: (1) the model can be applied to individuals of various cultures; (2) career counseling can use it as a checklist to identify individual experiences and beliefs that may influence career choices; (3) schools, families, and communities need to acknowledge and plan for their influence on the career decisions of young people; and (4) organizations need to acknowledge their influence on and responsibility towards employees. (JDM)