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70 career
are many other factors that might affect individual
perceptions.
In a career development orientation, there is a
continual matching process between the organisation
and the individual. The organisation needs to
recruit, train, motivate, manage and develop
human resources in order to maintain its effectiveness
through survival and growth. Individual
workers, on the other, hand need to find work
contexts that provide challenge, security and
opportunities for development throughout their
entire working life. A psychological contract may
be said to develop, which is continually renegotiated
throughout the career of the individual
within the organisation. The outcomes for the
organisation may be seen in terms of productivity,
creativity and effectiveness. Individual outcomes
may be measured by satisfaction, security,
personal development and integration of work with
other aspects of life. The ideal situation is one in
which this matching process leads to a mutually
beneficial relationship.
A variety of commentators have pointed out that
each career transition step requires decisions. As
such, there are many important and difficult
milestones facing people during their working
lifetime, including deciding on a particular career
to pursue, obtaining the education and training
necessary for the chosen career, selecting a starting
point to fulfil career plans, developing a strategy for
obtaining a specific position in an appropriate
organisation, selecting work offers from among
alternatives, deciding the assignments and tasks to
pursue within an organisation, developing a career
path �such as technical or managerial), obtaining a
position in another location or with another
organisation, preparing for the next position �for
example, strategies for continuing education and
development), continuing self-appraisal and development
of one's career goals, deciding to step down
or move laterally during the latter part of a career,
and selecting the time for retirement and an
appropriate strategy of disengagement.
According to career development counsellors,
there are a large number and great diversity of
decisions to be made. Like all other workers,
tourism employees face many career transitions
and choices, and they need to actively manage the
decision making process. Such choices should be
made in the context of long-range career plans,
and workers are more likely to enhance vocational
satisfaction if they develop such plans. One of the
most important theoretical formulations in the
context of career planning and development
involves the notion of career anchors. As a result
of education, early organisational socialisation and
work experience, an individual is said to develop
certain knowledge about the match between self
and job.
Schein �1992) holds that the career anchor
functions in the individual's work life as a way of
organising experience and identifying one's area of
contribution over a working life. It determines
those types of activities in which an individual feels
competent. Schein identified a number of areas
where the categories of career anchors. In Anchor
1, the individual seeks and values opportunities to
manage. There is a strong motivation to rise to
positions of managerial responsibility. In Anchor 2,
the individual seeks and values opportunities to
exercise various technical talents and areas of
competence, and is interested primarily in the
technical content of the job whether the work is
finance, engineering, marketing or some other
functional area. In Anchor 3, the individual is
motivated by the need to stabilise the career
situation. This person will do whatever is required
to maintain job security, a decent income and the
potential of a good retirement program. In Anchor
4, the individual has an overarching need to build
or create something that is entirely his or her own.
This is self-extension through the creation of a new
product, process, or theory, a company of their
own or a personal fortune as an indication of
achievement that seems to be the career objective
of these people. In Anchor 5, the individual seeks
work situations that will be maximally free of
organisational constraints so as to pursue their
professional competence. Freedom from constraints
and the opportunity to pursue one's own
life and work style appear to be a primary need.
It is argued that workers do not firmly develop
career anchors until after they have been involved
in a work situation for an extended period. Career
anchors clearly reflect the underlying needs and
motives which the person brings into adulthood,
but they also reflect the person's values and, most
important, discovered talents. By definition, there