Career anchors revisited: Implications for career development in the 21st century

Organizations are today undergoing a metamorphosis. Whether one thinks of it as "downsizing," "rightsizing," "flattening," becoming a "learning organization," or simply as "transformations" into something as yet unknown, no one would challenge the fact that profound changes are occurring worldwide. These changes in the occupational environment have implications for career development in the future. Will there even be such a concept as an "organizational career" or will careers become a more fragmented set of jobs held together far more by what I have labeled the "internal career." By the concept of internal career I mean the subjective sense of where one is going in one's work life, as contrasted with the "external career," the formal stages and roles that are defined by organizational policies and societal concepts of what an individual can expect in the occupational structure In studying careers longitudinally it became evident that most people form a strong self-concept which holds their internal career together even as they experience dramatic changes in their external career. I called this self-concept a "career anchor" and found that an understanding of it helped to illuminate how people made career choices. But will the concept of "career anchor" still be applicable in this rapidly changing world and what are the implications for career development as we look at several future scenarios of how the world might evolve further in the 21st Century (Malone & Scott-Morton, 1995)?