Understanding career decision-making and progression: Careership revisited

Careership constructed: Researching a Training Credits pilot scheme

Hodkinsons first research with career and Training Credits

  • Phil Hodkinsons first research engagement with career was an investigation of a short-lived government scheme (in other words a plan) to train young people and it was called 'Training Credits'. This scheme was introduced in a pilot form in 1991. Drawing upon the then dominant market thinking, the central idea was that each trainee would be given a credit (paid education), which was to be used to pay for their training. This was supposed to provide the trainee customer power over training providers. Central to the operation of Training Credits (in the pilot scheme that Hodkinson, Hodkinson and Sparkes studied) was the folk theory about career already outlined. The research was a small longtudinal case study (a study that was done over an extended time), following 12 trainees for 18 months, from school and through their training. Hodkinson, Hodkinson and Sparkes repeatedly interviewed the trainees and also interviewed networks of stakeholders involved with them, including parents, careers teachers, careers advisers training providers and employers (Hodkinson, Sparkes and Hodkinson, 1996).

The data from the study of the plan, the folk theory and other career theories

  • The data from the study revealed two major failures of the folk theory of career:
    1) Actual career decision-making was not rational in the ways assumed by the plan.
    2) Career progression was often non-linear and was strongly affected by actions, events and circumstances that lay beyond the control of the young person.


  • After these weaknesses were found, Hodkinson, Hodkinson and Sparks searched the literature, looking for a career theory that better fitted with the experiences of their subjects. All of the theories they stumbled upon proved to be insufficient or inadequate. Some, such as those based on matching personal traits to job characteristics (Holland, 1985) were just simply wrong. Not only did none of the young folk generally make decisions like that, but both they and the jobs changed as time went by, making the whole idea of matching unrealistic. Other theories were too incomplete in ways that twist our comprehension of career processes. One problem was that the majority of them focussed on te individual decision maker, seeing the person at the only agent involded in making a career decision, and seeing that individual as separate from the context that the decision was made in. These person-centred theories, such as the developmental work of Ginsberg (1951) and Super (1953, 1957), and the social learning theory of Krumboltz (1979) were in direct conflict with Roberts (1975) work on opportunity structures. Roberts work argued that career was not determined or formed by the individuals at all, since people fitted in to existing deeply dug in (they were in there) patterns of social inequality, which mirrored and were part of structured occupational opportunities. Hodkinson, Hodkinson and Sparks data showed that both the personal theories and Roberts theory were partially correct despite the fact that they were mutally contradictory (they didn't agree with each other). All of the young people in the study chose and were following careers that fitted existing social and occupational structures These were working class young people, leaving school 16, and following working class careers. The career pathways chosen also fitted gendered occupational patterns. Helen, one of their sample, chose the predominatly male career of car body repairs. However, she was made jobless after less than a year, and then moved to a more typically female job, working in a record shop. Nevertheless, it was evident through their data that all of their sample young people were active agent in choosing and constructing their careers. Law (1981) argued that we need a theory at the meso-level but according to Hodkinson, Hodkinson and Sparkes, they could clearly see the all-pervasive or spreading influences of social and occupational structures, even at the micro-level of the individual. Their subjects were making gendered and classed decisions. Put differently, occupational and social strcutres were part of the individual and the decision making processes, not simply the external (outside) context within with such decicions were made. None of the existing theories they studied was dealing with this

Pierre Bourdieu

  • It was the inadequacy in the existing theories in regards to career decisions that Hodkinson, Hodkinson and Sparkes set out to overcome when constructing their Careership theory. They turned to Pierre Bourdieu to do this. Bourdieus work resonated with their data and with the ways they were thinking about it. Like them, his work was partially concerned with disproving the assumptions of economic rationalism which lay behind the views of Bennett (1992) and the dominant folk theory assumptions about decision-making. Also, Bourdieu's work gave a way to go beyond seeing structure and agency as opposites or as alternative ways of thinking about the world. Finally, they were drawn to the heuristic (a commonsense rule (or set of rules) intended to increase the probability of solving some problem) nature of Bourdieu's thinking. This was not conventional grand theory based upon a priori assumptions and logic, but theorising that was grounded in empirical data, where ideas were developed and used as necessary to explain whatever problem Bourdieu was considering at the time. This met directly with Hodkinson, Hodkinson and Sparkes research needs, to use modivified versions of some of his idea to make hueristic sense of their data.

The Careership Theory

  • The Careership theory was published in several places (Hodkinson, SParkes and Hodkinson, 1996; Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1997,1998); Hodkinson, 1998). It argued that career decision-making and progression had three copletely overlapping dimensions (parts or sides). They were the positions and dispositions of the individual, the relations between forces acting in the field(s) and within that decisions were made and careers progressed, and the on-going longitudinal pathways the careers followed.

Introduction: the place of theory in the career guidance field

The career guidance field and career-decision making theories

  • In the career guidance field there is an excess of competeting theories of career decision-making and career development. This plurality raises important questions about the place and purpose of theory in the field. Mouzelis (1995) identifies two kinds of theory in social science and argues that it is important to differ between them. These theories are:

(i) Theory as tools for thinking
(ii) Theory as a set of statements telling us something new about the social world and which can either be proven or disproven by empirical investigation.



The range and diversity of competing career theories demonstrates that even if some of those theories were intended to be of the second type, none has yet achieved that status. In Hodkinsons way of seeing it, it is more helpful to comprehend these theories as ways of helping us think about and understand career. Inkson (2004), following Collin (1998), indirectly makes the same point in identifying nine key metaphors through which career is understood. Though John Killen (1996) saw theory as of the second kind, even he indirectly acknowledged aspects of theory as a means of thinking, when he classified career theories by the dffering ways in which they understand the relationships between agents, action and environment.

**Theories for improving and justifying career guidance

  • For practitioners, policy makers and others interested in improving/bettering or justifying career guidance, good theories provide ways where you can evaluate and improve provision and practice. With this purpose there are two questions follow up: Why do we need theory to help us do this and how do we choose theory (or theories) to use? More on theories in the next part.

Theories for a general understanding of career

  • Theories provide a general way of understanding career processes that is more than just the accumulation of practitioner experience or the blending together of idiosyncratic stories (unusual stories). In fact, all policy and practice in the guidance field are informed by theory, which is not simply an area of academics. In the UK, much career guidance policy and some practice are supported or constructed by a folk theory of career. Politicians and civil cervants follow this apparently common-sense theoretical position when trying to decide what to do about guidance and some educational provision. This folk theory is fluid and changeable, but often includes many of the following assumptions:

-Career decisions entail matching a person with a career opening
-Career decisions are or should be cognitive and rational
-Career decision-making is a process culminating (a highlight)
-Career decicions are made by the person following the career
-Good career decicions reduce educational drop out and increase employment
-Career decisions are made at the start of a linear career, or linear careet stage
-Career progression is usually straightforward if a good decision has been made


From this position it is assumed that the main purpose of career guidance is to increase the quality of the career decision-making process, leading to an increase in the number of good decisions being made, which in turn will lead to less educational waste and lesser unemployment. Although much of this lecture that Phil Hodkinson will give will show how and why this folk theory is wrong, his beginning point is to establish that those interested or engaged in career guidande can't help but have some theoretical perspective about career. More on careers in the next part.

Which career theory should one use?

  • In the previous part, it was said that those who are interested or engaged in career guidance cannot help but have some theoretical view about career. As this is the case, how can we decide which of the many competing career theories should we use? A good theory should meet two requirements or criteria:

-It should be corresponding or in agreement with the ways in which career decisions are and/or could be made and the ways in which careers actually and/or could develop.
-It should give an understanding that can valuably inform research, policy and practise.


Many existing theories of career decision-making try to do two different things. They set out to explain how decisions are made but also to set out how decisions should be made. Perhaps, they do it like this because many people make career decisions in less than optimal ways. If we wish to help them improve these processes, it may aid them knowing what a good career decision would look like. But to do so, there really is no point in identifying idealistic ways of making decisions that are so far removed from actual expereince that they create an impossible model to strive for. This is something that occurs when we approach career decision-making as an abstract logical process rather than studying the complex, messy ways in which such decisions are actually made.

Careership constructed: Researching a Training Credits pilot scheme
-Horizons for action

Horizons for action

  • The central or the important concept in Careeship theory is that career decision-making and progression take place in the interactions between the person and the fields they populate or put their feet in. Thus, career decision-making and progression (success) are bounded by a persons horizons for action . The word horizon is a metaphor taken from vision. What we can see it restricted by the position we stand in, and the horizons that are visible form that position. Those horizons enable us to see anything within them, but prevent us from seeing what lies beyond or behind them. The horizons for vision are affected by the human eye and brian. Some people can see more than others, and humans can see way less compared to animals and birds. Similiarly, career decision-making and developtment are made possible within horizons for action, and limited or prevented beyond them. The horizons for action are influenced by a person's position, by the nature of the field or fields within which they are positioned, and the embodied (personified) dispositions (The particular type of character that a person naturally has) of the person him/herself. All existing career theories acknowledge the limitations that are forced or imposed by the world outside the person. However, very few of them actually deal with this in a way that brings satisfication. Bourdueius concept of field brings a better understanding of what is too often seen as simply an external environment or labour market. What is central or of a great signifance to the field theory is an understanding that social environments are dynamic, complex and concist of interacting and unequal forces. Thus, the employment field in any greographical location involves complex interactions between employers, education providers, local, regional, national and international labour markets and production relations and wider but pervasive influences (spread out influences) of social structure (class, gender, ethnicity, age). It also involves national and international politics and policies, national and international economic climates and globalisation. These and other forces interact with each other, so that changes to one may result in changes to others and this means that these forces are relational. The person making a career decision or developing a career is an intergral (a part of a whole) part of that field. Their positions within and in relation to the field and their actions and dispositions provide to the on-going formation and reformation of that field. The fact that few young women want careers as engineers contributes to the continuing gendered nature of employment in that field.

The unequal influences in the relations of force

  • Within a field every player influences the relations of force but the influences are not unequal. This fundamental or basic attribute or feature of career decision-making was revelead in the research data but overlooked in other career theories. Often, the greatest influence in career decision-making was not the person who was making the decision. Thus, Sam 'chose' to work as an apprentice in the same company as his step-father. But, Hodkinson, Hodkinson and Sparkes research showed that Sams step-father encouraged him to do that and negotiated with this employer ro create the vacancy (job) and Sam could not ahve chosen this career step if that employer had not then decided to take him on. Helen was made jobless from her car body repairing traineeship by her employer. Her next choice of a job in a record shop was strongly influenced by the refusal of another garage to give her a similar traineeship and the government-imposed rules for traineeship funding, which meant that she had to get another placement to continue her college course in car body repairing and would lose her funding after only six weeks. The power relations between an employer and potential employee are not always so comprehensively (including all or everything) in employers favour. Potential employees offering rare and necessary skills or experience can often exercise great influence over choice of position of employment. Top professional footballers are an obvious example.

A persons dispositions

  • The person always exercises a significant amount of influence on their own horizons for action. Bourdieu's concept of dispositions (the particular type of character that a person naturally has) is a good way to understand that. A persons dispositions are deeply held and mainly tacit (understood without being expressed directly) ways of viewing and understand the world, that orientate us towards all aspects (parts) of life. These dispositions (collectively termed the habitus, by Bourdieu) develop throughout our lives and are strongly influenced by our position(s) in the world, and our interactions within it.

Careership constructed:researching a Training Credits pilot scheme
-The decision-making process


The interaction between the position field, dispositions and horizons for actions


  • If the interactions between the individuals dispositions and the field establish that persons horizons for action, that same interaction also influences decision-making within those horizons. This has already been illustrated in describing the ways in which some of the young peoples (the ones in Hodkinson, Hodkinson and Sparkes study) career decisions were strongly influenced by others, and by the forces in the field. Yet all of them took an active part in the decision making process. At the minimum they had to say yes and could have said no to opportunities that came their way. Some were as proactive (Taking action by causing change and not only reacting to change when it happens) in deciding not to do things as they were finding, constructing, choosing or accepting opportunities that became available. In theoretical terms, the interactions between position, field, dispositions and actions strongly influenced all decision-making but were not deterministic.

Technical Rationality


  • Given the dominance of the folk theory of decision-making within the Training Credits scheme, one thing struck (hit) Hodkinson, Hodkinson and Sparkes forcibly. Whilst the folk theory and the official Training Credits processes assumed that the achievable ideal was completely rational decision making, what they found were young people going through complex decision-making processes that were at odds with those assumptions. On the other hand, every one of their sample had at least partially (partly) rational reasons for making their choices. In order to make more sense of this observation, they analyzed both the rational assumptions in the folk theory and the actual decisions of their sample. Rationality, as assumed/described in the official documentation for the scheme and in the folk theory that underpinned (supported) it, had several characteristics.

1.Firstly, rational decision-making was only cognitive and discursive. It entailed the explicit logical analysis and evaluation of information (both about the self and about the labour market and/or particular possible job opportunities.


2.Secondly, this process was assumed to be improved if all relevant factual information was gathered and analysed, that good information was sifted out from information that was less reliable, and that good decisions entailed the comparison of a range of possible job opportunities.


3.A third assumption was that a good rational career decision was a firm choice of a pathway that would persist for a lengthy period of time. As Hodkinson, Hodkinson and Sparkes looked closely at these assumptions, they were struck by the parallels with what Habermas (1972) termed technical or instrumental rationality. This was most obvious in another assumption of the folk theory, that it was the quality of the decision-making that would determine whether or not a young person found themselves in a suitable and desirable career. That is, if we get the means right, the ends will take care of themselves. Consequently, they labelled this sort of rationality technical rationality.

Pragmatic Rationality

  • Hodkinson, Hodkinson and Sparkes described the decision-making of their subjects as pragmatic rationality The main ways in which pragmatic rationality diverged from technical rationality were as follows.

2.Secondly, all the decisions in their study were based on partial information, often taken from what Ball et al. (2000) later termed ‘hot sources’ (that is, from people whom they felt they could trust, rather than from, say, official printed materials. Non-one was concerned to get full information (whatever that means). Furthermore, many of them considered one opportunity only. Evaluative questions rarely entailed comparing this opportunity with possible others, but rather deciding whether or not this opportunity was what they wanted to do. Some, like David and Helen, actively worked with others to construct the opportunity itself. In David’s case there was never really ana actual decision (simply a lengthy process of constructing a training opportunity that was then taken up. On the other hand, Becky became a trainee dental nurse because a training provider found the opportunity and asker her if it would do. She said yes, because she was the traineeship as a chance to find out whether or not this was a job she really wanted. Her ‘choice’ provides a good example of a rational component that did not fit the technically rational model. From her perspective, getting a paid traineeship to explore a possible career was not irrational.

3.Thirdly, as Phil Hodkinson has already shown, career decisions often involved several people, yet the technically reation view was that only the young person made a decision. In a related way, serendipity was important in many of the storie. Helen got her firt traineeship, party because the garage owner had already employed one young woman, whow as taken on as a part of a package deal, to attract a very skilled male worked he wanted to attract. This serendipitous appointment opened the way for him to consider a second female (Helen) in a strongly male occupation.

1.Firstly, the decisions made by their subjects were more than cognitive and discursive: they were embodied (personified). They involved the physical, practical emotional and the affective, as well as the cognitive. In many ways, these decisions resembled the sorts of lifestyle choice that Giddens (1991) wrote about, involving, in his terms, the subconscious and practical consciousness, as well as discursive consciousness. Another way of describing the signifiance (importance) of the embodied nature of the decisons is that they were partly tacit. That is, the young people could not completely articulate some of their likes and dislikes. David expressed deep and consistent enthusiasm for farming, but his commitment went way beyond any rational reasons he could give. He knew that he had chosen a profession.