Explaining influences on career ‘choice’: the case of MBA students in comparative perspective

Abstract

This study explores the micro-individual, meso-institutional and relational and macro-structural level influences on career choices of MBA students from three countries, questioning the apparent dominance of ‘free choice’ in the context of persistent forms of structural constraints in career markets. The paper takes a critical perspective on career ‘choice’, acknowledging the contested nature of ‘choice’ and identifying career as a socially and historically situated phenomenon. The central hypothesis of the study is that ‘it is more likely for the MBA students to report micro-agentic or meso-instutional and relational rather than macro-structural conditions as key influences on their career choices’. The study draws on the findings of a cross-national survey on careers involving Britain, Israel and Turkey. Findings show that MBA students consider the impact of structural conditions as less significant on their career choices than their own human capital and capacity to make free choices. The study provides an understanding of the main cross-national similarities and differences in reporting of influences on career ‘choice’, and brings to bare interesting theoretical and methodological insights.

Keywords:

• Career choice
• MBA
• cross-national study
• Britain
• Israel
• Turkey

Acknowledgements

Data for this project were collected as a part of a more extensive cross-national study on career choice, organized with a democratic principle in which all participants are allowed to publish the findings of the research by noting contributions and authorship. We would like to acknowledge the efforts of colleagues from different countries in conducting the questionnaire, inputting data and offering their suggestions for improving the methods, style and content of the questionnaire as well as our coding strategy. An earlier version of the paper was presented at the American Psychological Association (APA) Conference in Honolulu, 1–6 August 2004. We gratefully acknowledge the contribution of the conference participants and also wish to express our appreciation for the contribution of Professor Geraldine Healy to the design of the career ‘choice’ measure; and IJHRM editor and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on previous version of this manuscript. We would also like to express our gratitude to the organizers and sponsors of the International Visiting Fellow Programme at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University for facilitating our research on this paper.

Notes

1 In order to address emergent issues pertaining to cross-national application of the survey tool, an internet based forum through which the country coordinators were able to exchange ideas and discuss problems was created. The forum benefits from an archive of e-mail discussions as well as an archive of the questionnaire in various languages, data sets from all participating countries, notes for coding and analysis of data.

2 The British sample consisted of 39 MBA students from two universities.

3 The Israel sample consisted of 100 MBA students from two universities.

4 The Turkish sample consisted of 120 MBA students from four different public universities.