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Questions and Answers
What is the primary focus of Social Cognitive Career Theory?
How does job satisfaction typically change with age?
Which factor is NOT mentioned as contributing to alienation in the workplace?
What characterizes harmonious passion?
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Which of the following best describes 'Reality Shock'?
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What motivates women to pursue non-traditional occupations according to the provided content?
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Which category do men fall into when choosing non-traditional occupations?
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Which of the following statements about gender differences in occupational choice is true?
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Which leisure activity profile is associated with the best recovery experiences and job performance?
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What is a key psychological experience associated with recovery from work stress?
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What factors primarily influence married women's decisions to retire?
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In which scenario does 'bridging employment' occur?
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What aspect of leisure activities is emphasized as more beneficial for individual well-being?
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Which group is identified as the one that engages in physical activities but rarely participates in social or cultural events?
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What does career construction theory emphasize as crucial in building a career?
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Which of the following is NOT one of the four meanings derived from work according to the DUES model?
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Holland's Personality-Type Theory aims primarily to achieve what between individual characteristics and their chosen occupation?
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Why might an individual interested in biology choose a different career path according to career construction theory?
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Which industries are commonly associated with high-risk occupations for men?
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Which personality type is NOT included in Holland’s Personality-Type Theory?
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What can lead to work being a source of stress for an individual?
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What are two primary reasons women may leave their jobs?
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What does the term 'Glass Ceiling' refer to?
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What effect does occupational insecurity have on workers?
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Which group experienced 57.4% fewer positive responses for leadership positions according to the Australian job application study?
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What is one main predictor of satisfaction for ethnic minority employees in organizations?
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What is a potential outcome for older workers who face age discrimination?
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How does work-family conflict peak among families?
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What does the 'Dependent Care Dilemma' highlight?
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What is implied by the term 'work-to-family spillover'?
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Study Notes
The Meaning of Work
- People need to derive meaning from work.
- Four meanings of work: Developing self, Union with others, Expressing self, Serving others.
- Work can be a source of stress if you are not deriving meaning from it.
Occupation Choice
- Career construction theory: People build careers from the interface of personal characteristics and the social context.
- Holland’s personality-type theory: Optimizes person-occupation fit.
- Social Cognitive Career Theory: Career choice is influenced by interests and self-efficacy.
Occupational Development
- People have expectations about what they want to become and when they hope to get there.
- Change in occupation can be a result of: Changes in interests, Age, race, or sexual discrimination, lack of opportunity, and obsolescence of skills.
- Reality shock: The realization that what you learn in the classroom does not always transfer directly into the "real world."
- Having a mentor or coach can help buffer reality shock.
- In today's world, you can have several different occupations, not just one long-term career path.
Job Satisfaction
- Job satisfaction: Positive feelings resulting from an appraisal of one’s work.
- Job satisfaction is linked to productivity.
- Job satisfaction tends to increase with age.
- Older workers report higher job satisfaction than younger workers.
- Job satisfaction improves with age due to self-selection, where unhappy workers may quit their jobs.
- Other reasons for increased satisfaction with age include intrinsic satisfaction, good fit, lower importance of work, finding non-work diversions, and life-cycle factors.
Alienation and Burnout
- Alienation: Feeling that what one is doing is meaningless or cannot see the connection between their work and the final product.
- Burnout: Depletion of a person’s energy and motivation, loss of occupational idealism, and feeling exploited.
- Symptoms of burnout include cynicism, lack of personal accomplishment, and emotional exhaustion.
Passion
- Passion: Strong inclination toward an activity an individual likes, values, and invests time and energy in.
- Two types of passion: Obsessive (makes it difficult to engage in other activities) and Harmonious (freely choosing to engage in an enjoyable activity).
Gender Differences in Occupational Choice
- Traditionally, women were expected to enter secretarial, teaching, and social work jobs.
- Women who enter non-traditional occupations and are successful are often viewed more poorly by both men and women.
- Women in traditionally female occupations change jobs less often.
Men in Non-Traditional Occupations
- Men in these occupations fall into three main categories: Seekers, Finders, and Settlers.
- Settlers are associated with a more intrinsic career orientation and express a desire to remain close to occupational and professional practice.
- Role strain is prevalent in men’s experiences in their non-traditional career – result from balancing masculine and feminist aspects of the role.
ABS Data
- 2019-2020 Workforce Participation Rate:
- Men: 78.1%
- Women: 67.6%
- The 2019-20 workforce participation rate is the highest for women over the past 10 years.
- Women are also working for longer, likely due to better paid parental leave and flexible working conditions.
- There have been minimal changes for male employment over time.
Workplace Fatalities
- Majority of workplace fatalities are men.
- 194 workers were fatally injured in 2020.
- 96% of workers were male compared to 4% of females.
- Men tend to work in high-risk industries or occupations:
- Agriculture, forestry, and fishing
- Transport, postal, and warehousing
- Construction
- Most fatalities involve a vehicle, i.e., vehicle collision.
Women and Occupational Development
- Women entrepreneurs are starting small businesses at a faster rate than men.
- Women who leave their jobs do so for two main reasons: The organisation rewards the masculine values of working, and women may feel disconnected from the workplace.
Bias and Discrimination
- Gender discrimination: Denying a job to someone solely based on whether the person is a man or a woman.
- Gender discrimination is a significant issue in terms of getting a job, occupational development and also in pay.
- Glass Ceiling: The level to which women may rise in a company but not go beyond.
- Glass Cliff: When a woman is placed in a leadership position because an organisation is in crisis.
Ethnic Minority Workers
- Vocational identity and vocational goals differ across ethnic groups.
- If an organisation is sensitive to ethnicity issues, it's a strong predictor of satisfaction for ethnic minority employees.
- Discrimination based on ethnicity occurs in hiring.
Age Discrimination
- Making employment decisions or denying employment solely based on age
- Age discrimination occurs in many ways such as differential layoff patterns and stereotypical views about older workers.
- Older Australians can feel they don't get the same opportunities and are chosen as the first to go when organisations need to make changes.
- Retraining workers: Rapid changes in work have resulted in the displacement of older workers.
- Learning new skills is essential to maximize one's opportunities.
Occupational Insecurity and Unemployment
- Occupational insecurity is a growing problem.
- Fear of job loss is a better predictor of anxiety than the actual likelihood of job loss.
- Unemployed workers have significantly lower mental health, life satisfaction, marital satisfaction, and subjective physical health than employed workers.
- The effects of job loss vary with age, gender, and education.
- How long a person is unemployed affects their reaction.
Occupational Transitions
- The Dependent Care Dilemma:
- Whether a woman returns to work after having a child depends on financial need and how attached she is to her work.
- Stepping out of their occupations negatively affects their career paths, even for short leaves.
- Many workers must also care for a parent or partner and children (Sandwich generation).
- Being responsible for dependent care has significant adverse effects on caregivers.
- Less distress occurs if a woman has good partner support and average or high control over their job.
- Backup Care: emergency care for dependent children or adults so the employee does not need to lose a day or work when the usual care is unavailable.
Work and Family
- Dividing household chores: Working mothers do most of the housework.
- Unequal division of labour is a significant cause for arguments and unhappiness in relationships.
- Husbands and wives view the division of labour differently.
- Men are often most satisfied with an equitable division based on hours spent.
- Women are most satisfied when men perform traditional women’s chores.
Work-Family Conflict
- Feeling of being pulled in multiple directions by incompatible demands from one’s job and family.
- Work-family conflict peaks when at least two preschool children are in the home.
- Dual-earner couples have difficulty finding time for one another.
- The issues faced by dual-earner couples are global.
- Women generally feel work-to-family spillover more than men, but both genders feel the pressure.
Leisure Activities
- Leisure activities can be considered in terms of the degree of cognitive, emotional, or physical involvement.
- People develop a repertoire of preferred leisure activities.
- Each activity has different meaning and importance to every individual.
- The activities are determined by perceived competence and psychological comfort.
Longitudinal Leisure Profiles
- Four stable longitudinal leisure activity profiles:
- Social sports (wo)men: Engaged in physical and social activities but rarely in creative or cultural activities.
- Active Artists: Pursued all leisure activities, particularly creative activities (reported most beneficial recovery experiences and job performance).
- Socially and Culturally Inactives: Exercised frequently but seldom engaged in social, cultural, or creative activities.
- Inactive Soloists: Spent little time on physical activities.
Recovery Experiences
- It is not the activity per se that helps to recover from job stress, but its underlying attributes and psychological experiences.
- Individuals differ regarding the specific activities they experience as recovering.
- The underlying psychological experiences crucial for recovery are relatively uniform across persons:
- Psychological detachment
- Relaxation
- Mastery
- Control
Changes in Leisure Activities
- Developmental Changes in Leisure: Longitudinal research shows that preferences in adulthood reflect those in earlier life.
- Consequences of Leisure Activities: Leisure activities promote well-being and can enhance all aspects of people's lives.
- Quality rather than quantity of leisure activities.
Retirement
- Retirement: A development of the 20th century, still evolving.
- Changing conceptions of work are resulting in changing conceptions of retirement.
- Retirement can be crisp or blurred.
- Crisp: Making a clean break from employment by stopping work entirely.
- Blurred: Repeatedly leaving and returning to work, with some periods of unemployment.
- Why do people retire? Most people retire because they choose to retire.
- Gender differences:
- Married women's decision to retire is predicted by her husband's health status or number of dependents.
- The opposite is true for men.
Adjustment to Retirement
- New patterns of personal involvement must be developed in the context of changing roles and lifestyles in retirement.
- Most people are satisfied with their retirement if they have:
- Financial security
- Health
- A supportive network of relatives and friends.
Employment and Volunteering
- Bridging employment: Stop working full time and start working casually.
- Working in Late Life: For many people, “retirement” involves working at least part-time.
- Older workers face many challenges, including ageism and discrimination.
- The relationship between age and job performance is highly complex.
- Volunteering: Healthy, active retired adults maintain community ties by volunteering.
Other Work, Leisure & Retirement Issues
- Factors influencing the employment of individuals with a disability.
- The workforce participation rate for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population.
- The characteristics and increased use of casual employees in Australia and issues around job insecurity and stress.
- Sexual harassment in the workplace.
- Bullying in the workplace.
- Responses to and impact of being made redundant.
- Outcomes for low economic resource households.
- Loss of identity after being forced to retire or leave a job after sustaining an injury or disability.
- Diversity and inclusion issues for individuals whose gender does not meet the binary definition of males or female.
- Workforce participation differences between overseas born individuals compared to individuals born in Australia.
Cognitive Aging
- Cognitive aging is the natural process of changes in thinking and memory as people age.
- While some abilities like problem-solving (fluid intelligence) may decline, others like vocabulary and knowledge (crystallized intelligence) remain stable or improve.
- Mental exercise can help maintain cognitive function.
Social and Emotional Development
- Social and emotional development in adulthood involves changes in roles, responsibilities, and relationships.
- Middle adulthood often involves balancing work, family, and caregiving.
- Later adulthood focuses on managing personal losses and reflecting on life.
- Emotional regulation improves with age, as older adults manage stress more effectively and focus on meaningful relationships.
Physical Health and Aging
- Physical changes in adulthood include reductions in muscle mass, endurance, and mobility.
- These changes are normal but can be mitigated by maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
- Exercise, diet, and preventative health measures help maintain physical independence in older adults.
Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Development
- Erikson's theory of psychosocial development emphasizes conflict resolution throughout life.
- The key conflict in middle adulthood is "generativity vs. stagnation," where adults contribute to society or risk disconnect.
- Generativity involves finding purpose through work, parenting, and community involvement.
Theories of Life Structure (Levinson)
- Levinson's theory focuses on life transitions and stable periods.
- Adults need to reassess life goals and adapt to changes as they age.
Cultural Perspectives on Aging
- Cultures differ in how they view aging.
- In some, older adults are respected; in others, they may face marginalization.
- Cultural beliefs affect everything from family dynamics to attitudes toward aging.
Work, Retirement, and Identity
- Transitioning from work to retirement is a major life event.
- It requires redefining identity and finding new social roles.
- Financial security and social connections influence retirement experiences.
Mental Health and Aging
- Mental health challenges are common in aging, but are not inevitable.
- Depression and anxiety can be managed with proper care.
- Maintaining social ties and activities is crucial for emotional well-being in older adults.
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Description
Explore the various meanings of work and their impact on our lives. Understand theories related to career choice and the factors that influence occupational development. This quiz will help you reflect on your own career journey and the significance of deriving meaning from your work.
