Conceptual View on Career: Systemic and Substantive Analysis
In the present context of increasing appreciation and scarcity of labor career development becomes of ever growing importance for an organization to achieve its strategic goals, as ongoing changes in organizations’ business activities and structure require the correspondent changes in ways of positioning workers in the stream of social life. The paper provides rationale for conceptual basics of systemic and substantive analysis of a career. Within this approach professional career is considered to be the interplay of con icting and colliding aspects and tendencies despite their internal unity and interpenetration. On the one part, professional career is essentially a way for a worker to assert himself in the social space through resolving con icts between working life and personal life, between labor time and leisure time, between personal needs and public needs. On the other part, professional career can be seen as complete and consistent set of resources for a worker to achieve social sustainability, as he is aware of the con nes of freedom and responsibility he enjoys for self-actualization in formal, non-formal and informal aspects. Systemic and substantive career analysis allows to reveal the nature of its components’ internal unity, to identify the career type as well as sources, drivers and mechanisms of self-organization, self-development and self-destruction of a professional career. Based on implementing basics of systemic and substantive analysis of a career development the author has formulated proprietary de nitions for such notions, as «the system of career», ‘career space»; to reveal features of a career system components; to prove di erences between career position and job position and to identify several tiers of career space.