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CAREER ANCHORS OF FILIPINO
ACADEMIC EXECUTIVES
Lily P. Custodio*
Catanduanes State Colleges
College of Business and Accountancy
Virac, Catanduanes, Philippines 4800
Telephone: +63 052 811 2196
Telefax: +63 052 811 1485
Email:
Flinders University of South Australia
School of Commerce Research Paper: 00-13
ISSN 1441-3906
ABSTRACT
Careers research has principally been an area of research by Western researchers, and few studies have been reported of research on non-Western subjects. Career researchers have primarily focused on external motivators associated with organizational factors and material incentives. Research investigating internalized career orientations is necessary to match individual expectations with institutional human resource planning. This study investigates the career anchors held by Filipino academic executives, using results from administering Schein’s Career Orientations Inventory to academic executives. These career anchors influence how academic executives and human resources management should (1) plan institutional career paths, (2) nurture academic executives during their careers, and (3) encourage appropriate communication about career advancement.
INTRODUCTION
In the past decade there has been an explosion of research and writing about career perceptions and career development. Most of this research has been undertaken by Western researchers on Western subjects, and there have been few reports of research in non-Western societies. The theories of career which guide research mostly have been developed by Western theorists. There is an assumption in Western career theory that individuals pursue one career at a time, and that any career change results in a serial pattern of careers. There is also an assumption that the Western concept of career as a series of events is universally applicable, but career patterns such as the lifetime employment of Japanese executives in major corporations are not covered by Western career theory.
In the Philippines, it is observed that it is common for executives to pursue simultaneous careers. That is, during the day they work as, say bank vice-presidents, during the evenings they work as faculty in graduate schools of business at private universities, and at other times they work as independent consultants or manage the family business. In such a context, researchers investigating career perceptions or career development are met with a stare and a question “Which career are you asking about?”
Unable to identify previous investigations of careers in the Philippines, this researcher identified academic executives in state universities and colleges in Bicol Region, Philippines as a group on which to carry out initial studies of career anchors. Public servants, including academics in these state universities and colleges, are required by law not to have a second, simultaneous, career.
Career Anchors
The aspect of career investigated was career anchors. The career anchor model developed by Edgar Schein, of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has received considerable attention. Schein (1978) coined the term career anchor to describe a constellation of self-perceived attitudes, values, needs and talents that develops over time, and which when developed, shapes and guides career choices and directions. It can be thought of as a central component of the self-concept that executives are unwilling to relinquish, even when forced to make a difficult choice. The career anchor is significant because it influences career choices, affects decisions to move from one job to another, shapes what individuals are looking for in life, determines their views of the future, influences the selection of specific occupations and work settings, and affects their reactions to work experiences (Schein, 1988). He postulated that individuals’ career anchors gradually come to be their own definition of career success (Schein, 1974, 1978).
Schein (1993) pointed out that all people develop some kind of picture of their work life and their own role in it. Derr (1986a) and Igbaria & Baroudi (1993) asserted that this work role focuses on the individuals’ self-concept and career values - the internal career. Career anchors are important element of individuals’ internal careers. This is the result of their conscious educational, work and career decisions (Schein, 1990). In this context, the career anchor theory signifies nonmonetary or psychological factors (Barth, 1993).
Schein (1978) identified five career anchors during research conducted in the early 1960s, viz:
· managerial competence represents the need to be competent in the activities associated with management such as problem analysis skills, emotional stability, and interpersonal competence;
· technical competence is associated with motivation for the challenge of a technical field, functional area, or content of the work (not the managerial process);
· security/stability anchor symbolizes the desire for an organization that provides long-run stability, good benefits, and basic job security;
· entrepreneurial creativity embodies the need to create something, that is, to try new projects; and
· autonomy encompasses people’s need to be free of constraint to pursue professional or technical competence.
While it is recognized that work experience in early years is particularly influential in forming individual career anchors, these dispositions also are applicable in later career stages (Crepeau, Crook, Goslar, & McMurtrey, 1992; Schein, 1978).
DeLong (1982a, 1982b) attempted to validate the career anchor model empirically. Beyond the five anchors identified by Schein, he investigated three additional career anchors. These are:
1. identity - the desire for status and prestige from belonging to certain companies or organizations;
2. sense of service - concern with helping others and seeing changes that result from efforts; and
3. variety - the desire for several different challenges.
Operationalizing Schein’s model through research questionnaires, DeLong’s (1982a, 1982b, 1982c) studies validated Schein’s conclusions by clearly identifying the five anchors and, moreover, distinguishing these additional three career anchors. He also found that the security/stability anchor emerged as two independent anchors. One, stability, represents individuals who will accept an organizational definition of their careers. The other, security, is demonstrated by individuals who will move from company to company to ensure permanence in a geographical area (DeLong, 1982a, 1982b, 1982c).
Schein’s (1985, 1987a, 1993) subsequent career history interviews of several hundred people in various career stages found that the identity anchor can be viewed as an extension of the security/stability anchor. Recent studies (Applin, 1982; Igbaria & Baroudi, 1993; Igbaria, Greenhaus & Parasuraman, 1991), however, have identified a type of career anchor defined by the belief that it should somehow be possible to integrate work, family, and self-concerns into a coherent lifestyle - the lifestyle integration anchor. Similarly, recent studies (Applin, 1982; Igbaria & Barroudi, 193; Igbaria et al, 1991; Schein, 1985, 1987a, 1993) have reported that the variety anchor is favored by individuals who defined all work situations as self-tests that are won or lost against either an absolute standard or an actual competitor. Thus the label pure challenge was adopted as the essence of the variety anchor.
The lifestyle integration anchor supports the recent trend in human resource management (HRM) that recognizes the way people value the importance of balancing work and family responsibilities (Adler & Ghadar, 1990; Smith, 1992; Welch, 1994a, 1994b; Zedeck, 1992). The pure challenge anchor, on the other hand, illustrates the general contention about the ‘winning’ attitude of executives; that is, they value competition and challenge as essential ingredients of success (Campbell, 1987). These characteristics are especially true among executives whose career success orientations are getting ahead, getting free, and getting high (Derr, 1986a, 1986b). Simply put, they are success-oriented executives (Rogers, 1987). Responding to the present trends in human resource management and in executives orientations toward their careers, it would be more appropriate to utilize the anchors pure challenge and lifestyle integration instead of identity and variety anchors.
THE STUDY
This study was designed to investigate career anchors of Filipino academic executives. Review of similar research studies conducted in different fields provided insights in undertaking this study. Research studies (e.g., Applin, 1982; Burke, 1983; Burke & Deszca, 1987, 1988; Crepeau et al, 1992; DeLong, 1983; Igbaria & Baroudi, 1993; Igbaria et al, 1991; Slabbert, 1987) have looked at occupational groups such as dentists, engineers, law enforcement officers, managers, management consultants, and management information system personnel in Western countries. These studies found that their subjects were oriented to most of these career anchors, although some of these were identified as more dominant than others. Among management consultants, Applin (1982) found that these people had three dominant career anchors, (i.e., autonomy, pure challenge and managerial competence). Burke’s (1983) and Slabbert’s (1987) studies of managers showed that these individuals had managerial competence, technical/functional competence, pure challenge and autonomy as their most dominant career anchors. While law enforcement officers were found to be more oriented to autonomy, pure challenge and sense of service (Burke & Deszca, 1987, 1988). Management information system personnel were found to have managerial competence, technical/functional competence, autonomy and lifestyle integration as their more prevalent career orientations (Crepeau et al, 1992; Igbaria & Baroudi, 1993; Igbaria et al, 1991). DeLong (1983) concluded that the central career drives in his study of dentists’ career orientations were pure challenge and entrepreneurial creativity.
Although the security and stability anchors did not surface as more dominant than the career anchors in any of the studies reviewed, such anchors were part of the wide variety of career orientation of the subjects. There is a dearth of research studies on career anchors of academic executives, though DeLong (1982c) and Zerdavis (1982) examined the career anchors of educators. These studies identified educators as service-oriented in their careers. The other anchors exhibited by educators are managerial competence, autonomy, variety and creativity. Most educators seemed interested in a multifaceted approach to teaching. Others, however, had technical/functional competence and geographical security as their central career anchors. In the Philippines, however, no comparable study of career anchors could be identified.
Given the dearth of previous research in the Philippines, this study examined whether these career anchors are operative for those in the academic field. Two research propositions were investigated.
Proposition 1: Academic executives possess a wide variety of career anchors.
While there have been a number of studies investigating career perspectives in other career fields (e.g., engineering, medicine, law, education, religion), little empirical research has been published that specifically looked at the career anchors of academic executives. Research noted above involving different occupations established that subjects in these groups are oriented in all or most of the career anchors described earlier, with some being more dominant than others (Burke & Deszca, 1987; DeLong, 1982; 1983). Support for this proposition would establish that academic executives are similar to personnel in other fields. However, an analysis is necessary to confirm or refute this traditional perspective; also, investigation of this proposition enlarges the academic executives career research foundation for more productive insights into career planning of this group of people. Thus the following proposition was also examined:
Proposition 2: The dominant career anchors exhibited by academic executives will be sense of service and managerial competence.
Among academics, it is speculated in the literature on career anchors that these individuals are service-oriented. This is because the education profession is dedicated for the welfare of others (Schein, 1987a). Recent research (Delong, 1982c) has reported that educators are indeed service-oriented although they also possess some of the other career anchors. Given the academic administrative involvement of the subjects in this study, they can also be viewed as managerially oriented in their careers. Support for this proposition is crucial considering the prevailing views of academic executives.
RESEARCH DESIGN
The Career Orientation Inventory (COI) (see Appendix A) survey developed by Schein in collaboration with DeLong was used for data collection. The COI has been refined and validated in several studies including Burke (1983), DeLong (1982a, 1982b, 1982c) and Wood, Winston & Polkosnik (1985). The COI provides a pretested instrument with demonstrated high internal validity ad reliability. The instrument contains 41 items that measure eight career anchors described earlier. Six-point Likert response scales for subject responses were designed to avoid neutral answers: previous researchers have administered four-, five- and six-point scales.
Subjects in this research were 116 academic executives in four state universities and colleges in Bicol Region of the Philippines. Data were gathered in the months of March and April in 1995. Usable responses were received from 114 persons, corresponding to a response rate of 98.28 per cent. Of the respondents, 49 were males and 65 were females. Six respondents were presidents or vice-presidents, 46 were academic or non-academic deans, and 62 were department chairpersons. No distinction was made in this study between persons holding acting and substantive positions.
STATISTICAL METHODOLOGY
Factor analysis tests were run on the data to determine whether respondents’ ratings on 41 Career Orientations Inventory (COI) items will respond to the nine career anchors. Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity (Hair, Anderson & Tatham, 1987) and the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) Measure of Sampling Adequacy (Kaiser, 1974) were employed. Both tests were conducted due to the sensitivity associated with the large sample size. These results suggest the presence of homogenous groups of variables and appropriate application of factor analysis.
Principal components analysis confirmed the existence of career anchors among academic executives. Factor analysis applying varimax rotation identified eight factors using the latent root and scree criterion. Appendix A lists survey questions used for each construct with notation for those items that did not satisfy a minimum factor loading of 0.50 (consistent with Delong, 1982a). The analysis identified the following factors: (1) lifestyle integration, (2) sense of service, (3) managerial competence, (4) autonomy, (5) geographical security, (6) entrepreneurship creativity, (7) technical competence, and (8) organizational stability. Since responses associated with the pure challenge construct did not load on any factor, they were excluded from further analysis. Subject responses clearly distinguished two dimensions of Schein’s security/stability anchor: organizational stability (i.e., long-term employment) and geographic location (i.e., remaining in one geographical location). These results are consistent with prior research (see DeLong, 1982a; 1982b).
Cronbach’s alpha was calculated for each factor to establish reliability and determine internal consistency (Churchill, 1979). As reported in Table 1, ranges of 0.5–0.8 surpass acceptable reliability coefficient levels (Nunally, 1967).