Upsetting Events and Career Investments in the Russian Context

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. In this paper we examine the role of disruptive or upsetting events in people's professional lives and explore how they influence individuals' investments in their careers. Based on previous research we have assumed that due to considerable societal and economic changes in Russia and the reported negative consequences felt by many individuals, the context of that country is a fruitful arena for an investigation of the role of upsetting events on individuals' careers. At the same time, despite the negative events and a disruption of many traditional career-supporting structures, a significant number of Russians managed to reinvent their careers and achieve tremendous objective and subjective success in their careers in a relatively short time period . Terms of use: Documents inThis paper examines stories about career investments of 140 successful entrepreneurs from Russia. A significant portion of these people explicitly reported influence of upsetting events on their own career investments. Based on the exploration of career stories, the paper introduced a typology of the upsetting events in the Russian context. The events were generally classified into those that represented "macro" and "micro" upsetting events. Macro events refer to changes in socio-economic, and political systems. Micro events refer to the events that only concern the individual him-or herself, or may include events at work or at home. Our analysis of the career investments of the Russian entrepreneurs using the intelligent career concept shows that when faced with the upsetting events individuals tend to (a) reconsider their existing events, (b) divest from their old ways of knowing, and (c) invest in relatively new ways of knowing.Our study calls a particular attention to the role of career divestments, or discontinuing certain ways of investing in order free resources for a different investment expected to be more fruitful in terms or returns. Attention to divestment may be warranted due to the increased unpredictability of working lives of today's career actors.This study contributes to responding to a call for a better understanding of the role of upsetting events on people's careers and the society at large. We also bring further our understanding of human adjustment to the sometimes upsetting changes in their surroundings through working life, thus enhancing our understanding of the role of careers in socio-economic systems. Last but not least, the study also contributes to a be...

Career reinvention in Russia

“…We looked at 140 cases of career changes during the Russian transition to capitalism published in 2005 and 2006 in the Russian daily newspaper Business (Gansvid, 2006a(Gansvid, , 2006b. From those cases, we observed that the career paths of Russians were affected by several disruptive macro-level events (Korotov and Khapova, 2008), including:…”

“…Throughout her reinventions, Arina invested in her career and divested from her old ways of working. With a growing focus on career investments in careers research (DeFillippi and Arthur, 1994;Inkson and Arthur, 2001), we invite attention to be paid to the concept of career divestments (Korotov and Khapova, 2008).…”

“…Divesting is a phenomenon related to the notion of sunk costs (Korotov and Khapova, 2008). The latter, in investment terms, means throwing good money after bad, for instance continuing to invest resources into something that is not working and should be written off.…”

Executives and career shocks: observations from coaching practice

“…Despite this field's novelty, a few studies have described how career shocks affect various types of employee populations. Examples include blue-collar workers (Baruch et al , 2016), young professionals in the Netherlands (Blokker et al , 2019), early career employees in the US (Seibert et al , 2013), young entrepreneurs (Rummel et al , 2019), career actors at times of significant socioeconomic change in post-Soviet Russia (Korotov and Khapova, 2008), and a specific professional group of management academics (Kraimer et al , 2019). There has been little coverage of business executives in published career shock research.…”

Executive education (MBA) as a factor of career development of women managers

“…Для этого этапа анализа было характерно понимание карьеры как последовательного изменения опыта работы и должностного статуса человека с течением времени. карьера описывалась с помощью вероятностных моделей должностного роста, позволяющих выявить зависимость реализации карьерных целей от уровня образования менеджера [молл, 2003;Korotov, Khapova, 2008]. основное внимание уделялось факторам построения карьеры в организационном контексте.…”