How We Define Success: A Qualitative Study of What Matters Most to Women and Men

Dyke, Lorraine; Murphy, Steven A.

doi:10.1007/s11199-006-9091-2

Cited by 135 publications

(183 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Research, however, has failed to evidence a significant difference in terms of subjective career success between men and women -unlike the one found for objective career success (Ng et al, 2005). This means that objective career success alone may not be that important for determining subjective career success, and that how one's career is interpreted could be as important or even more important than the objective outcomes that have been reached, especially when comparing men and women (Sturges, 1999;Dyke and Murphy, 2006). This possibility was the basis for including the concept of career anchor into the present research.…”

Section: The Moderating Role Of Career Anchorsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Perceived Gender Discrimination and Women’s Subjective Career Success: The Moderating Role of Career Anchors

Herrbach¹,

Mignonac²

2012

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Subjective career success reflects an individual’s internal apprehension and evaluation of his or her career, across any dimensions that are perceived relevant by the individual. It has beneficial consequences on several individual and organizational outcomes, such as job performance, employee commitment, occupational retention as well as organizational retention. Given the pervasive result that women are subjected to gender discrimination in the workplace, we first wanted to check whether the level of perceived discrimination they report having faced is related to their subjective career success. We also wanted to check whether individual priorities, as evidenced in the concept of career anchor, have an influence on the relationship between perceived discrimination and career success.Using a sample of 300 women employees working in a large French company, we therefore investigated the relationship between perceived gender discrimination, subjective career success and career anchors. We found that perceived gender discrimination was negatively related to subjective career success overall. However, the relationship between the two variables was moderated by career anchors. Some anchors (i.e. managerial, technical and lifestyle) enhanced the impact of perceived gender discrimination, while other anchors (i.e. security and autonomy) lessened it.Our results show how individual expectations, reflected in the notion of career anchor, have an influence on how the work environment is interpreted. In addition, they provide a potential explanation for the apparently contradictory findings of the literature on gender and career success. Finally, our results suggest that organizations should pay special attention not only to the work experiences of women who aspire to move up the hierarchy, but also to the women who aspire to achieve a high level of competency at their job, or seek balance between their work life and their home life.Le succès de carrière subjectif reflète l’évaluation globale par un individu de sa carrière en utilisant pour ce faire différents critères qu’il juge pertinents. Il a des conséquences bénéfiques sur plusieurs phénomènes individuels et organisationnels, tels que la performance, l’engagement au travail, le maintien dans la profession ou la fidélisation organisationnelle. Face au constat largement répandu que les femmes sont sujettes à de la discrimination au travail, la présente recherche a pour objectif d’étudier s’il existe une relation entre la discrimination sexuelle perçue et le succès de carrière subjectif. Elle s’attache également à vérifier si les priorités individuelles, telles qu’elles se manifestent dans la notion d’ancre de carrière, ont une influence sur la relation entre la discrimination et le succès de carrière perçus.En nous appuyant sur un échantillon de 300 femmes employées dans une grande entreprise française, nous montrons ainsi qu’il existe un lien négatif entre la discrimination sexuelle perçue et le succès de carrière subjectif. Toutefois la relation qui existe entre ces deu...

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Section: The Moderating Role Of Career Anchorsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Perceived Gender Discrimination and Women’s Subjective Career Success: The Moderating Role of Career Anchors

Herrbach¹,

Mignonac²

2012

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“…Fifteen criteria were selected to represent subjective success based on an examination of the qualitative (Dyke and Murphy 2006;Sturges 1999) and quantitative (Gattiker and Larwood 1986;Nabi 2001) research literature on how people define success. The success criteria examined in this study (see Table 1) include a mix of traditional objective criteria such as increasing financial rewards and moving through po-sitions of increasing responsibility, plus more intrinsic criteria such as enjoyable work and making a contribution to society.…”

Section: Subjective Successmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Subjective success represents an individual's self-evaluation of her or his success (Gattiker and Larwood 1986;Peluchette 1993). Research suggests that subjective success is related to but broader than objective indicators of success (Abele and Spurk 2009b;Ng et al 2005) and may include criteria such as relationships, balance, enjoyment, and recognition (Dyke and Murphy 2006;Sturges 1999).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The implications of subjective career success

Dyke

Duxbury

2010

ZAF

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The present study examined the relationship between employees' ability to achieve subjective success and their work attitudes. Four dimensions of subjective success were measured: fulfilling work, financial rewards, recognition, and authority. Hierarchical regression models predicting job satisfaction, commitment, and turnover were examined. Objective indicators of success (organizational level, promotions, and salary) were included as control variables along with importance scores and achievement scores for the success criteria. Results indicate that an employee's achievement of fulfilling work is the strongest predictor of their attitudes towards the job and organization. Together, the achievement of the four success criteria explained significantly more variance in attitudes than objective indicators of success or success criteria importance.

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“…First of all, since men and women seem to define the career success construct differently (Dyke & Murphy, 2006;Parker & Chusmir, 1992;Powell & Mainiero, 1992;Russo, Kelly & Deacon, 1991;Sturges, 1999), it is well possible that they would use different frames of reference when rating themselves on the construct (i.e. configural non-invariance).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second and more probable is that men and women value the respective dimensions of subjective career success differently. Since the literature indicates that gender differences in the meaning of career success exist even when occupational attainments are similar (Dyke & Murphy, 2006), metric invariance or the invariance of scale intervals can be expected. Finally, it is possible that men and women have different intercepts or different subjective "null points" when it comes to career success (i.e.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Career Satisfaction Scale: Response bias among men and women

Hofmans

Dries

Pepermans

2008

Journal of Vocational Behavior

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Gender invariance 1Response behavior and the career satisfaction scale: Testing for gender invariance Gender is a specific predictor of interest in many studies on career success. Important implications, mostly about "glass ceilings" and discriminatory career opportunity structures within organizations on a micro-level and societies on a macro-level, are often drawn from these studies. However, when comparing subjective career success (i.e. career satisfaction, which is a latent variable) between men and women, strong measurement invariance is a precondition for being able to interpret most findings.The results of the current study demonstrate that strong gender invariance does not hold for all items of the career satisfaction scale. Implications of these findings in terms of optimal measurement of the subjective career success construct are spelled out.

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How We Define Success: A Qualitative Study of What Matters Most to Women and Men

Cited by 135 publications

References 45 publications

Perceived Gender Discrimination and Women’s Subjective Career Success: The Moderating Role of Career Anchors

Perceived Gender Discrimination and Women’s Subjective Career Success: The Moderating Role of Career Anchors

The implications of subjective career success

The Career Satisfaction Scale: Response bias among men and women

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