Career entrenchment: A quiet march toward occupational death?

Academy of Management Executive

Volumn 11, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 62-75

  Carson, Kerry D ^a   Carson, Paula Phillips ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LOUISIANA AT LAFAYETTE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0002205450     PISSN: 10795545     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5465/ame.1997.9707100660     Document Type: Article

References (19)

1. Miller, A, Death of a Salesman. New York: Penguin Books, 1949. Selections demonstrate the perspectives of Willy Loman (the salesman). Linda (his devoted wife), Ben (his adventurous brother), Happy (his compliant son). Biff (his independent son), Bernard (his sons' friend), and Howard (his boss).
2. An instrument which can be used to empirically measure Career Entrenchment is offered in: Carson, K.D., Carson P., & Bedeian, A.G. (1995), "Development and construct validation of a career entrenchment measure, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 68, 301-320.
3. There is also a forthcoming article in the Journal of Career Development (authored by Carson, Carson, and Phillips) that empirically investigates the construct. The authors would like to thank Arthur G. Bedeian and the two anonymous AME reviewers for their thoughtful and constructive comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.
4. The original "side bet" concept was developed by: Becker, H.S. (1960), "Notes on the concept of commitment," American Journal of Sociology, 27, 32-40.
5. Brockner and his colleagues have published an enormous body of literature on the concept of entrapment in decision-making. A selected review of some of this work follows: Brockner, J. (1992), "The escalation of commitment to a failing course of action: Toward theoretical progress," Academy of Management Review, 17, 39-61.
6. Brockner, J., O'Malley, M., Kite, T., & Davies, D. (1987). "Reward allocation and self-esteem: The role of modeling and equity restoration," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 844-850.
7. Brockner, J., & Rubin, J.Z. (1985). Entrapment in escalating conflicts: A social psychological analysis. New York: Springer-Verlag,
8. Brockner, J., Shaw, M.C., & Rubin, J.Z. (1979). "Factors affecting withdrawal from an escalating conflict: Quitting before it is too late," Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 15, 492-503.
9. Rubin, J.Z., & Brockner, J. (1975), "Factors affecting entrapment in waiting situations: The Rosencrantz and Guildenstern effect," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31, 1054-1063.
10. Throughout discussion of the career entrenchment model, a career is not defined as narrowly as a single "occupation," nor as broadly as "the pattern of work-related experiences that span the course of a person's life." Rather, it is defined as stability within a single or closely connected vocational fields. Hence, an individual's pursuit of closely connected jobs (e.g., a business professor who becomes a consultant) is considered to constitute a career, whereas a series of unrelated positions (e.g., a business professor who becomes a bricklayer) would not.
11. Holland's congruence theory is presented in: Holland, J.L. (1985). Manual for the vocational preference inventory. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.
12. Driver's career prototypes are identified and discussed in the following works: Driver, M.J. (1979). Career concepts and career management in organizations. In C.L. Cooper (Ed.), Behavioral problems in organizations (pp. 79-139). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
13. Driver, M., & Mock, T. (1975), "Information processing, decision style theory, and accounting information systems," Accounting Review, 50, 490-508.
14. Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance is described in: Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson.
15. The exit-voice-loyalty-neglect framework is developed in the following works: Rusbult, C.E., & Farrell, D. (1983), "A longitudinal test of the investment model: The impact on job satisfaction, job commitment, and turnover of variations in rewards, costs, alternatives, and investments," Journal of Applied Psychology, 68, 429-438.
16. Rusbult, C.E., Farrell, D., Rogers, G., Mainous III, A.G. (1988). "Impact of exchange variables on exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect: An integrative model of responses to declining job satisfaction," Academy of Management Journal, 31, 599-627.
17. Rusbult, C.E., Zembrodt, I.M., & Gunn, L.K. (1982), "Exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect: Responses to dissatisfaction in romantic involvements," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 43, 1230-1242.
18. The original treatise on organizational citizenship behavior can be found in: Organ, D.W. (1988). Organizational citizenship behavior: The good soldier syndrome. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
19. In the 1970s, when the leading edge of the baby-boom cohort was just approaching its 30s, the management literature saw the insurgence of the concept of "plateauing." An organizational plateau is the point in a career where the likelihood of additional hierarchicalpromotion is very low. The cause of organizational plateauing is not attributable to the individual - it is not the result of skill obsolescence, or poor productivity, or a weak work ethic. In the ensuing 20 years since the concept of plateauing emerged into the mainstream, much research has focused on mechanisms for maintaining the productivity and morale of workers thwarted on their climb up the organizational ladder. But today, the issues loom much larger. Enterprises often wanted to retain organizationally plateaued workers, because although they were derailed, they had been and are expected to continue to contribute the vitality of the enterprise. The challenge is maintaining motivation. With career entrenchment, the challenge is how to encourage those who are attached to their careers, and as a result, their organizations simply for "economic" reasons to move on. Differences between the constructs of plateauing and entrenchment are summarized in Table 1.