New Careers : Individual Action and Economic Change

"′To career′ used to mean to swerve wildly or to go swiftly. In this beautifully argued, richly documented, original, liberating work, Arthur, Inksen, and Pringle demonstrate that the new careers once more are about swift swerves, unexpected agency, and enacted opportunities and constraints. Readers will think about the future in ways they never imagined possible."

--Karl E. Weick, University of Michigan

The New Careers offers a major new approach to the concept of career and the relationship of the individual to the contemporary workplace. It shows that our traditional conceptions of careers are rooted in the stable conditions of the industrial state model, which has dominated the 20th century, and that new models, are now needed.

Michael Arthur is a professor of Management at Suffolk University in Botson MA. Professor Arthur is an originator and princuple advocate of the notion of ′boundary′less careers′. In 2007, Michael recieved the Academy of Management′s Everett Hughes Award for lifetime achievement in the field of career studies

Kerr Inkson (PhD University of Otago, New Zealand) is an Emeritus Professor in the University of Auckland Business School, New Zealand. His 55-year academic career included 32 years as full Professor, at five New Zealand universities. He has expertise in management, organizational behavior and career development, and his careers research includes work on new forms of career, the use of metaphor in career theory and practice, and international careers. He was first author of a paper “Expatriate assignment versus overseas experience: contrasting models of human resource development” which was awarded Best International Paper by the Academy of Management in 1997. He is a former Chair of the Careers Division, Academy of Management.

Kerr has been the author or co-author of 18 books, over 50 book chapters and 75 refereed journal articles. His journal credits include Administrative Science Quarterly, British Journal of Management, Human Relations, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Journal of World Business, Organizational Dynamics, and Organization Studies. His latest books are Understanding Careers, 2^nd edition, co-authored with Nicky Dries and John Arnold, SAGE, 2015; Cultural Intelligence, 3^rd edition, co-authored with David C Thomas, Berrett-Koehler, 2017; and Laugh out Loud: A Users’ Guide to Workplace Humor, co-authored with Barbara Plester, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Recently retired, he lives in Auckland with his wife Nan, plays some golf, and writes, directs and acts in plays on the local amateur drama scene.

Dr. Judith Pringle is a Professor of Organisation Studies in the Management department in the AUT Faculty of Business and Law. Her specialist research interests lie in the areas of women, gender, diversity and careers. She currently teaches ‘Gender and Diversity in Organisations’ at postgraduate level. She is a co-investigator on the Marsden funded grant ‘Glamour and grind: New Creative Workers’, co-editor of the Sage Handbook of Workplace Diversity (2006) and The New Careers: Individual Action and Economic Change (1999). She published chapters in edited books and wide ranging articles in journals such as Gender Work and Organization, British Journal of Management, International Journal of HRM, Journal of World Business, Personnel Review, Organization, Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, Women and Management Review, Women Studies Journal (NZ) and consistently contributes to international conferences. She is on the editorial board for British Journal of Management, editor for the Gender and Diversity division of Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences and member of the European Groups of Organization Studies Standing Group on Gender and Diversity. She has four Emerald journal citations. Judith is a Pakeha New Zealander who grew up on a sheep farm in the South Island. Her academic study began in psychology culminating in a doctorate in social psychology. Study was interrupted by OE (overseas experience) where she had 19 different jobs in a variety of countries. Before her academic career she was a self-employed consultant with large and small public and private sectors organisations. Over the last two decades (formerly at University of Auckland) she has researched extensively issues relating to the various experiences of women in organisations. This has been an evolutionary research pathway exploring strategies used by women in male-dominated organisations, experiences of senior women managers and leaders, the functioning and cultures of Pakeha, Maori and Pacific Island women-run organisations (non-profit and business). A related research strand is how individuals change and adapt their careers to shifting job opportunities. With colleagues she has critiqued and broken open the traditional career theory to create more inclusive models that are better labelled as career-life frames. Earlier methodologies were within a positivist paradigm while latterly she has been greatly influenced by the emergence of critical approaches. Now she researches, and supervises graduate students, working primarily in an interpretive paradigm. Data is drawn from interviews and ethnographic materials and meaning made through life history and narrative analyses. Judith is coordinator of the Gender and Diversity Research Group, an AUT wide network of researchers