Students' Career Preferences: Intercultural Study of Croatian and German Students

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Students' career preferences are an important issue to various stakeholders: to university administration, career counselors, higher education policy makers as well as to human resource managers in companies. Students, whose career preferences and goals are fulfilled, are better and more highly motivated employees. By a questionnaire survey carried out in 2016 in two institutions of higher education the present study compares career preferences and attitudes of 478 German and Croatian students. Factor analyses identify latent variables behind students' preferences. The identified significant differences between the Germans and Croatians are related to differences in socio-economic environment and cultural differences derived through the Hofstede model. German students value safe jobs, trust and a high income significantly more, whereas for Croatian students stimulating tasks, career opportunities, a recognized profession and social responsibility are more important. Our results indicate that Hofstede's findings for the uncertainty avoidance index and the individualism/collectivism index might be questioned for the subsample of a young student population who show different value criteria in their career preferences. JEL Classification: J24

A Systematic Review of Factors That Influence Youths Career Choices—the Role of Culture

“…Job security was reported as influential in only one study where it was identified as highly important by German youth in comparison to their Croatian counterparts (Wüst and Leko Šimić, 2017). They suggested that their finding are in line with the uncertainty avoidance index proposed by Hofstede (2011) which also takes on a relatively high value for Germans.…”

“…No articles focused solely on extrinsic or intrinsic factors. Two studies each explored the relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic (Choi and Kim, 2013;Atitsogbe et al, 2018) as well as extrinsic and interpersonal factors (Yamashita et al, 1999;Wüst and Leko Šimić, 2017). The remaining five articles (17%) explored all three factors (intrinsic, extrinsic, and interpersonal, (Bojuwoye and Mbanjwa, 2006;Agarwala, 2008;Gokuladas, 2010;Fan et al, 2012;Tao et al, 2018).…”

“…Italy was considered as partly individualistic and collectivist. Fourteen studies included participants from both collectivist and individualistic cultural settings (Mau, 2000;Lee, 2001;Caldera et al, 2003;Howard et al, 2009;Fan et al, 2012Fan et al, , 2014Cheung et al, 2013;Choi and Kim, 2013;Gunkel et al, 2013;Shin and Kelly, 2013;Zhang et al, 2014;Guan et al, 2015;Fouad et al, 2016;Wüst and Leko Šimić, 2017;Atitsogbe et al, 2018;Hui and Lent, 2018;Polenova et al, 2018;Tao et al, 2018). Twelve studies focused on collectivist cultural settings (Yamashita et al, 1999;Bojuwoye and Mbanjwa, 2006;Agarwala, 2008;Gokuladas, 2010;Lent et al, 2010;Cheung and Arnold, 2014;Sawitri et al, 2014Li et al, 2015;Kim et al, 2016;Sawitri and Creed, 2017).…”

“…Income was considered as an important component of life, particularly among youth who had a higher level of individualism (Agarwala, 2008;Wüst and Leko Šimić, 2017). Wüst and Leko Šimić reported that German students ranked "a high income" highest with a 3.7 out of 5 and regarded it as the most important feature of their future job in comparison to Croatian students who gave it a lower ranking of 3 out of 5 (Wüst and Leko Šimić, 2017). While amongst Indian management students, it was rated as the third most important factor influencing career choice (Agarwala, 2008).…”

“…Professional prestige was identified as an important deciding factor for youth career decision making in India (Agarwala, 2008), South Africa (Bojuwoye and Mbanjwa, 2006), Croatia (Wüst and Leko Šimić, 2017), Japan and Korea (Yamashita et al, 1999), which are all collectivist settings. Prestige statuses attached to some occupations were strong incentives to career choices; was ranked as the second most important positive influence in career decision making by over half of the respondents in a South African study, indicating that these youth wanted prestigious jobs so that they could live good lives and be respected in the society (Bojuwoye and Mbanjwa, 2006).…”