Working and ageing - Cedefop - Europa

CHAPTER 10
Career development in later working life: implications for career guidance with older workers 195
stagnation, which also appears as a distinct and real threat to the respondents
in our study. Molly, quoted above, prefers unpaid work to stagnation in the
kind of ʻMacJobʼ that she fears the State benefits system may force her to
take.
How should careers advisers think about generativity in their work with
clients? Clark and Arnold argue that generativity is not a single, global
construct; rather ʻit takes many forms, all evincing care, whether for people,
things or ideasʼ (2010, p. 31). The proposition that all jobs require workers to
function, in varying degrees, in relation to data, people and things has
underpinned various classifications of work roles, for example the Dictionary
of occupational titles of the US Department of Labor. Clark and Arnoldʼs study
of older men leads them to the proposition that generativity goals reflect work
interests: engineersʼ goals tending towards productivity and the goals of
human resource practitioners inclining towards nurturance: ʻoccupation was
relevant to the character of individualsʼ generativityʼ (Clark and Arnold, 2010,
p. 34). The ʻgiving backʼ might be in the form of passing on skills and modeling
high standards, as well as discrete activities such as mentoring, which in fact
did not feature as a goal for any of Clark and Arnoldʼs sample.
This mix of aspects is vividly captured in the case of Colin, who until shortly
before the research interview was a team leader in a manufacturing
workplace. He described his concern to manage the paperwork essential to
his job in such a way that he could spend some part of each day on the
manufacturing floor, where he and others engaged in an enjoyable competitive
game – but ʻwithout winnersʼ, he emphasised. The game is simply to produce
the best quality and greatest number of ʻweldsʼ (the firm made metal cases
for electronic components) and Colin combines pride in his skill as he
comments ʻI wouldnʼt allow myself to be beatenʼ with an explanation that the
workplace was ʻjust like a familyʼ.
Clark and Arnold propose that generativity may have ʻnarcissistic or agentic
motivations as well as communal or altruistic onesʼ (2010, p. 33). That
proposition reflects a comment made by an adviser who worked with some of
the older people who were our respondents. (The study included discussions
with a small number of such advisers.) This adviser particularly commented
that career change in later working life gave the chance to follow personal
interests, often of a more creative nature than previous work roles. The adviser
based much of her initial discussion with older people around outside-of-work
interests and hobbies that might be developed into some form of employment
or self-employment. This could include creative use of ʻtalents and interests
that may until now have remained dormantʼ (DfES, 2003).