Abstract
This first issue of the Australian Journal of Career Development (AJCD) in 2024 continues its mission to publish international contributions for the advancement of research and intervention in the career development field. Additionally, the AJCD encourages various approaches and methodologies, as well as promoting a balance of quantitative and qualitative research.
Two invited articles open this issue. The first invited article by Luciano Gamberini and Patrik Pluchino offers a comprehensive insight into the future of work, social sustainability, sustainable development, and career. Industry 5.0, which combines human-centricity with technological advancements, represents a significant shift in the industrial sector. It reinterprets the nature of work, placing a focus on the importance of talent development, upskilling and reskilling, continuous learning, fair and inclusive workforce training, social and environmental sustainability, and sustainable development when determining career paths. A sustainable and inclusive industrial future requires workers’ well-being alongside technological adaptability. The reality of Industry 5.0 establishes a new standard for industrial operations and career development, in terms of a cutting edge for responsible, inclusive, and sustainable processes and practices.
The second invited article by Kobus Maree considers factors that affect career counseling in various contexts. A systematic literature review on the developments in the career counseling domain highlights innovative career counseling strategies with universal relevance. The usefulness and ongoing importance of career counseling in South Africa, a developing Global South nation representative of the situation globally, is analyzed. The contribution also proposes a theoretical and conceptual framework for career counseling in the “Career Counsellocene” era, advocating for an approach that addresses the needs of individuals in the challenging Anthropocene era, and contextualizes career counseling in various workplace contexts in the future. Maree argues for reinvigoration of a career-counseling framework based on an integrate perspective anchoring to self-construction theory, career construction theory, psychology of sustainability and sustainable development, eco-awareness, highlighting the significance of mitigating the negative effects of environmental abuse by human beings as well as promoting the quality of life and well-being of individual/s and environment/s.
The quantitative research contribution by Jason L. Brown, Peter McIlveen, Sara J. Hammer, and Harsha N. Perera examined the measurement properties of the Dispositional Measure of Employability in Australian university students. Dispositional employability emerged as a psychosocial process that facilitates behaviors aimed at promoting career self-management. The results provided new validity evidence for the multidimensional construct of dispositional employability. The concurrent validity was confirmed by the positive relationship of the dispositional measure of employability with career adaptability, perceived knowledge, career optimism, and job search self-efficacy, behaviors, and outcomes. The instrument is a valid and reliable measure in the Australian context and opens future perspectives for research and intervention.
The contribution by Rita Chiesa, Audrey Ansay Antonio, Dina Guglielmi, Marco Giovanni Mariani, and Greta Mazzetti examined the career goal management strategies of Italian young adults. This study analyzed the relationships between assimilation and accommodation—two adaptive personal resources—and young adults’ career goal engagement and disengagement based on the dual-process framework of goal management. It was proposed that career adaptability and perceived employability would mediate these relationships. The findings demonstrated that assimilation was positively correlated with engagement in career goals and that this relationship was mediated by perceived employability. Furthermore, it emerged that while accommodation was positively associated with career goal disengagement, assimilation was found to be negatively associated with it. These findings could open new perspectives for university programs and career counseling for the transition of young adults to the workforce.
The quantitative research contribution by Remya Lathabhavan examined the impact of working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic on working mothers in patriarchal-minded India. The study was carried out with mothers from different industries who were working from home during the pandemic. Using structural equation modeling, the results of a moderated mediated model indicated the absence of paid domestic work and family–work–guilt able to affect job satisfaction via family–work–conflict. This study offers new perspectives on working from home and considerations for working mothers’ career development.
A hinge between quantitative and qualitative articles is a retrospective review by Parijat Lanke, Papri Nath, Surabhi Verma, and Vibhav Singh focused on research into job crafting over 20 years. The research that has been published on the subject is widely distributed across various disciplines, such as psychology, management, and career development. The researchers used a bibliometric approach to provide an objective and systematic review of the topic examining articles from the Web of Science and Scopus databases. This study advanced the literature on the subject and outlined potential future research.
The qualitative research by Marina Milosheva, Peter Robertson, Peter Cruickshank, and Hazel Hall focused on young people and careers advisers in Scotland examining their career information seeking behaviors. Three essential features of information seeking emerged in career advisory settings (prompted information seeking; information seeking on young people's behalf; collaborative information seeking). These results open interesting opportunities for developing career information, advice, and guidance policies enhancing career services.
The article by Inge J. M. Wichgers, Hanke Korpershoek, Matthijs J. Warrens, and Monique A. Dijksis focused on how counselors and tutors help students choose their study profiles for secondary education in the Netherlands. Results underlined students’ interests, abilities, and future-oriented considerations as crucial factors as well as the relevance of different viewpoints confirmed by the responses to the forced-choice scenarios. This study contributes to future perspectives regarding career choice and development of students.
The qualitative research by Melissa Tham and Elizabeth Knight highlighted the difficulties for recently arrived students from immigrant and refugee backgrounds who need access to high-quality career development to support their transitions. In Australia, schools that enroll immigrant and refugee families can find career guidance from nonprofit organizations. The results emphasized the need to for improvements in terms of applying social justice principles as well as of enhancing engagement with career education discipline, particularly considering the refugee and migrant reality in Australia.
The qualitative research article by Dina Banerjee, NaziaZabin Memon, and Alka Sharma is centered on “Dalits” in India, in terms of a marginalized caste group. This study investigated how career change is impacted by the caste system. The reasons behind the departure of members of the Dalit communities in India from STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) careers in favor of non-STEM occupations emerged in terms of caste and gender in the participants to this study. This contribution underlines the value of career development for eradicating inequalities.
This AJCD issue shows its inclusive approach and prospective vision, giving voice to specific contexts as well as global impact perspectives. The global scenario is constantly changing and requires new and refined awareness and approaches, different methods for different research questions, and new intervention perspectives.
The two invited articles allow us to focus on the urgency of new frameworks for both research and applied intervention. On the one hand, there are the challenges of human-centricity to be integrated with very challenging technological evolution and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, we have the stimulus of the counseollocene era for career development, characterized by the integration of eco-awareness, principles of sustainability and of sustainable development enriched by the psychological perspective, preparing the construction of the eco-generativity pillar (Di Fabio & Svicher, 2023) in career construction and development.
The AJCD continues to publish contributions from scholars worldwide to stimulate new perspectives and reflections. The aim is to generate, build, and promote new sensitivities in step with the times to be increasingly prepared to respond to constantly changing scenarios, and to rethink career development and work (Blustein & Flores, 2023). Only integrated sensitivity and competences, not misaligned with the new complexity, aware of the value of prevention and education (Duffy et al., 2022; Kenny et al., 2023) and committed to their progressive transposition into real contexts, can facilitate the construction of adequate responses of research and intervention.
As a field of research and practice, we must be able and prepared to cope with the incredibly challenging new era into which we already find ourselves and will increasingly be catapulted further and further. The challenges are more numerous, urgent, and complex. It is a crucial purpose of career development research and intervention.