The Transition to work

The transition to work brings the individual’s employability into conjunction with
opportunities for employment. Employability and employment are not synonymous terms.
Employability refers to one’s potential for gaining access to adjusting to and being productive
in the workplace. Therefore, employability refers to a composite set of traits and skills which
permit the individual to meet the demand of the workplace (Herr, 1984). Employability
relates to the ability to hold a job even if no jobs exist. Most observers now believe that
employmability can be broken into subsets of skills. Usually these are divided into such
emphases as general employability skills, ocuppational specific skills, and firm-specific skill.
The latter two sets of skills usuaslly refer to those that are technical and refer to the content of
work. General employability skills usually refer to the emotional, affective self-management,
and decision-making or planning aspects of choosing. Preparing for, and adjusting to the
demands of the workplace, in a society where teamwork, occipational diversity, and adjusting
to different management styles and organizational entities become major issues in both and
scope of and individual’s general employability skills become extremely important aspects of
career development

The term employment-in contrast to he term employability-refers to holding a job.

One can have hifhly development employability skills but be unemployed. Employment
means that the occupational structure has opportunutues un which one’s employability
potential can be realized. Obvioysly, the smaller the gap between one’s employability skilss
and the requirements of available jobs, the more likely it is that an individual will be
employed. But these relationships are complex. At different stafes of the transition to work,
mobility throught work structures, or changes in one’s career paths, different types or
combinations of general employability skills are required. Similarly, as the job market, the
occupational structure, or the organization of work moves through various transformations,
the general employability skills they require are likely to change as well. Later in this chapter
the changing demands on workers’ “personal flexibility” as a function of the emerging global
economy will illustrate the reality, discussed earlier in the chapter, that employability skills
are not absolute but are likely to change across time, cultures, political systems, and nations

Conselor need a thorough undestanding of the skills and perspectives embodied in the
term general employability. They also need to understand challenges and employability skills
for workers at the beginning of their work life and at various points along a continuum of
consolidation and advancement at work

The initial transition to work

Research shows that, as a group, young workers in the united states enter the labor
force gradually rather than abruptly on the comppletion of school (Stevenson, 1978) and that
their career attitudes are substantially formed prior to the first job itself (Raelin, 1980), then a
trial-and-error period typically precedes complete assimilation into the labor force. Large
numbers of teenager and young adults combine school and work before completing the
transition. This process is made possible larely through opportunities for part-time
employment in the secondary labor market (including fast-food restaurants, service stations,
agriculture, odd jobs, and retail stores). However, a growing body of research indicates that
beyond a predictable period of experimentation. Hoblessness among out-of-school teenage
youth carries with it a “hangover effect” adams and mangum (1978) show.

Those who have unfavorable early labor market experiences are less likely than others to
have favorable experiences later, education and other background characteristics held
constant. Thus, early labor market experiences are related to subsequent measures of labor
market succes. They cannot be trated as benign phenomena which “age out” noe as simple
individual problems which have no implications for socials policy or governmental
intercention. (Garry. 1978)

Frequent unemployment and other poor labor market experiences during the early
years have a deleterious effect later, in part because periods of unemployment represent loss
of work experience, information, and skills that may put the person at a competitive
disadvantage in the eyes of an employer and may also have an injurious effect on attitudes
toward work.

The demoralizing effects of prolonged unemployment have been documented in many

reports in the united states and elsewhere 9for example, peregoy & schliebner, 1990)
unemployment has been characterized as a global phenomenon and one which is unequally
distributed among the nations of the thitd world and the industrialized societies. Such studies
have shown that inemployment is destructive enough for adults, who have already achieved a
work identity, and who because of their life experience and knowledge may find it possible to
see unemployment as a social rather than a personal problem. Young persons or women
entering the labor force for the first time have no such indentity or experience to sustain them,
and their resulting sense of rejection and worthlessness may well reinforce negative self-
images that have already been established at school or in the family. Borow (1989) has
indicated that
The net effect of youth’s limited contact with and uncertainty about the working
world has not been so much to engender anti-work attitudes, as is often claimed, as to
create persistent anxieties about the nebulous vocational future.attending these anxieties,
in any case, is an insidious form of avodance behaviour, a reluctance to plan and to
explore, and a resultant slowing of the process of career development. (p.9)

The most serious problem in this regard is found among those youths who are both out
of school prematurely and out of work. In addition, major transition problems are frequently
experienced by certain groups of disadvantaged youth, particularly but not exclusuvely black
males and females, Hispanic youth, Native Americans, and inner-city and rural poor
According to Borrow (1989)

A disproportionate number of youths among sociq-economically disadvanteged

populations appear to exhibit depressed levels of achievement motivation, self-efficacy
expectative coping behaviors. (p.9)

Many disadvantaged youth are likely to experience disordered career pattents and be
characterized by the following:
  Negative self-image and feelings of inadequacy as workers-to-be;
 Fatalistic attitude and distrust in the efficacy of rational planning;
 Unrealistic picture of the world of work;
 Poor understanding of the sequence of preparatory steps leading to a stated
vocational goal (Borow, 1989, p. 10).

Employment Transition Problems

Persons entering the labor force without a substantial base of experience are likely to
experience a variety of transition problems to which career guidance programs and career
conselors must be prepared to respond. The sophistication and the organization of
contemporary work frequently walls off young people from what jobs they might choose and
how information about available work might be obtained. Many conselors and teachers suffer
from the same lach of knowledge. In some cases, students find that what they studied in
school is unrelated to available jobs or to new processes, materials, or technological
developments. Furthermore, as a nation, energy crises and international complication have
direcly affected the content and organization of work. Out nation has come to realize the
incredible complexity and intense interaction of the technological and human problems facing
us in the foreseeable future. It has become evident that many of the problems experienced by
out work force are not simply technical, but psychological and sociological.

As much as many persons need to acquire occupational task skills, they also need
assistance to clarify or strengthen their self-attitudes and to change their personal habits,
emotional responses to life situations, attitudes toward work, planning skills, and methods of
adjusting to new jobs.

Haccoun and campbell (1972) conductedan extensive study of the work entry
problems of youth. The results of their survey were used by crites (1976) in his discussion of
“thwarting conditions” that new workers may experience as thet attempt to become
established in a job. According to haccoun and campbell and to crites, there are two classes of
thwarting conditions: (1) thoses dealing with job performance probles and (2) those dealing
with job entry, career planning, and management problems. Each of these classes of
“thwarting conditions” contains a number of pertinent problems, as shwonin table 2.4
I. On the job performance problems II. Job entry, career planning, and management problems
Responsibility, maturarity, attitudes and values Job-seeking
Work habits Interview and test-taking
Peer and supervisory adjustment Geographic mobility
Communication Family and personal situational adjustment
New roles Job layoffs and rejections
Automation and changing technology Educational preparation and job placement
Self-image Career planning and management
Alienation Occupational aspirations and job expectations
Youth image
Military
Prejudice and discrimination
Prior work experiences
Trade unions
 Research adds increasing insight into the “thwarting conditions” related to the
transitions to work and work adjustment. Ashley et al. (1980) studied in depth the adaption to
work of 38 males and 30 females, from 17 to 30 years of age. The result of the study indicate
that fot those who adapt to work successfully, a sequence of adjustments in five areas may be
involved.
Performance Aspects. In the initial phase of adjustment, upon job entry, the performance
aspects of adaptions occupied the center of employees’ concern. Some of the performance-
related adjustment problems they encountered included learning what was expected and how
to do the new job task, doing unusual job tasks (often not in the job description) or leaening
new ways to do old ones, coping with idle time or sporadic work schedules on the job, and
dealing with a great volume or variety of wotk tasks or unexpectedly complex job tasks,
physical or mental fatigue or inefficiency, and production quotas and standards.
Organizational Aspects. Informal (unofficial) rules, procedures. And hierarchies presented a
major challenge to most workers coming into a new job. They frequently found a distinct
difference between the official and the unofficial rules of the job, workers seemed to feel that
satisfactory adjustment had a lot to do with a good initial orientation. Most workers
recognized a need to know about the company. Its functions and activities, and how workers
fit into the total organization of the company.
Interpersonal Aspects. Overlapping in time with performance aspects was the need to begin
to adapt to co-workers because their assistance was needed in order to achieve adequate
adaptation in performance. Subjects who could not relate to co-workers were unhappy in the
work situation. Many of the subjects reported feeling that they had adjusted to the new job
when they “felt accepted” by their co-workers. Several workers reported difficulties in
adjusting to supervisory styles that conflicted with their own attitudes, values, or work styles.
For some of the young workers, especially those in a full-time work environment fot the first
time, interpersonal aspects of the jobs (such as teamwork, dealing with desagreeable co-
workers, adjusting to supervisors, getting assistance from others) represented the most
difficult part o adjusting in the work environment.
Responsibility Aspects. As adaption proceeds and performance and interpersonal aspects of
the job come under control, adjustment problems related to responsibility tend to emerge.
These include proving oneself making use of training opportunities, getting ahead, getting
raises, and related tasks
Affective Aspects. Throughout the adaptation process, adjustment totwork in affected by the
worker’s attitudes and feelings. Subjects indicated theimportance of maintaining a good work
attitude and a willingness to work hard, regarfless of how good or bad the perticular job was
seen to be, they also reported that self-awareness and goog feelings abaout one self and one’s
job performance were important aspects of adaptation to the job
In another study of functional competencies fot adapting to the world of work. Selz,
Jones and Ashley (1980) asked four national respondent groups (general adult population,
high school seniors, public school teachers, and employers) to establish the priority of
competencies important to occupationa adaptability Fifty percent or more of all samples
thought one would hae a great deal of difficulty at work if one did note have the following
abilities
 Use reading, writing, and math skills the jobs calls for
 Use tools and equipment the job calls for
 Get alon with others
 Deal with pressures to get job done
 Folow rules and poliies
 Have a good work attitude
As a function of in-depth interviews with some 135 owners, managers, and supervisors
and 130 entry-level employees, Hulsart (1983) identified skills needed by entry-level workers.
The 121 employability skills defined were able to be classified within 12 skill groups as
follows:
1. Job seeking/career development
2. Mathematics
3. Computer
4. Reading
5. Writing
6. Communications
7. Interpersonal
8. Business economics
9. Personal economics
10. Manual perceptive
11. Work activity
12. Problem solving/reasoning
Hazler and latto (1987) asked some 91 employees in wetern kentucky to indentify the
usedfulness of skulls and attitudes on the job using a 7 point likert scale, with 7 indicating
“freatly needed” and 1. little or not at all. Forty-six of the employees responded to the
surveys. Their perceptions suggested thet attitudes generally received higher rating than did
skills. The four skills with a combined average of 6.68 on a 7 point scale were being
dependable, getting along with other people staying with a task until it is finished, and
recognizing the importance of good health. The skills that were indentified with a 6.16 and
6.65 average respetively were following spoken instructions and reading and understanding
what has beed read, those with a 5.84 to a 5,46 average included following written
instructions, speaking and listening, thinking and solving problems, using shop tols, writing
skills, and using basic arithmetic
A final example of employee perceptions of skills and attitudes needed by students in
the transition to work is available from a prohect funded by the parker pen company in
cooperation with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (Oinonen, 1984). This study
was concerned with both th skills that students need for job entry and the degree to which
schools are preparing students for the transition, in the the project, some 7.400 survets were
sent to some 2.500 businesses employing 50 or more workers. As in similar studies, high
schools are seen’as preparing students for the world of work only adequately and only in
some areas. For example, in the wisconsin study, 34 percent to 42 percent of the employers
reported that high schools were preparing students at a good to excellent level in these
competencies:
 Works with others, improves job skills
  Accepts advice and supervision
 Speaks well enough to be understood
 Maintains personal health
 Follows throuht on assignments
At the other end of the spectrum, only 3 percent to 10 percent of the employers
thought that high schools were preparing students at a “good” or “excellent” level in the
following
 Understands U.S. economic system
 Has general knowledge of business operations
 Recognizes, solves problems by self
 Understands career ladders, advancement
 Writes well
 Demostrates spelling and grammar skills
 Applyinh and interviewing for a job
Put in a somewhat different way, employers in this survey felt that it will be
increasingly necessary to emphasize the following skills for hight school students engaging in
the transition to work:
 Writing, spelling, grammar
 Arithmetic
 Flexibility, learning new skills
 Oral communication, speech
 Applied computer literacy
 Reading/interpretation of blueprints and instructions
 Business economics
 Technology (applied science)
 Human relations
 Decision making
The types pf transitional or entry-level skills reported here permit counselors to aler
students and new workers to the types of preparations, skills, and attitudes they will encounter
as they enter the workplace. For some persons, these competency sets will serve as diagnotic
tools to help identify why some persons are having difficulty in these transitions. Finally,
much of what career counselors will be concerned about is helping students and others
develop the attitudes and general employability skills that are of primary significance in
choosing, implementing, and adjusting to work.

Affective Work Competencies

In the studies reported here of eihter transition tot work or work adjustment, what
seems to be repeared is that, although job skills and “task teachability” are important, so, to is
what some nations call “industrial dicipline” and what Kazanas (1978) has described as
“affective work competencies.” Many of us have long contended that people typically do not
lose their jobs because they cannot perform them but rather because of “personality.” We
have used that term in a vague, almost glib. Way to respresent some complex of behaviors
that do not fit the expectations of the work setting, and so we have dismised the person
Kazanas’ research confirms that what hs so often been characterized as personality factors in
unemployment can really be defined in terms of hte characteristics, habits, values, or attitudes
comprising affective work competencies. He contends that within management theory and
behavioral research in industry, there has been a shift in emphasis from cognitive and
psychomotor behavior to the social and psychological components of affective behavior.
A review ot the research on why employers discharge or fail to promote employees
identified fifteen behaviors, the first seven of which were common across studies (Kazanas,
1978 p. 32)
1. Carelessness
2. Laziness
3. Absence/tardiness
4. Disloyalty
5. Distraction
6. Too tittle or to much ambition
7. Lack of initiative
8. Dishonesty
9. Noncooperativeness
10. Lack of courtesy
11. Unwillingness to follow rules
12. Troublemaking
13. Irresponsibility
14. Lack of adaptability
15. Misrepresentation
The opposite of the reasons for being dismissedd are the affective work competencies
identified by employers as important to work adjustment (Kazanas, 1978, p. 34)
1. Punctuality
2. Honesty
3. Reliability
4. Dependability
5. Initiative
6. Helpfulness
7. Cooperation
a. Willingness to cooperate
b. Ability to get along with others
c. Character skills-performance as a co-worker
8. Willingness to learn
9. Sense of humor
Affective work competencies, like other work contectskills, can be taught and must be
seen as part of the content of career guidance programs. Such skills reflect a worker’s
understanding of the sociology and psychology of the “work culture.” With such and
understanding of the organizational structure and expectations that mediate the performance
of work, career guidance personnel can encourage the development of affective work
competencies not simply as arbitrary or capricious value sets but as “occupational survival
skills” (R. E. Nelson, 1979).
Indeed, these emotional dimensions of work have been found to be mediators of a
variety of career-related tasks. For exampl, kivlinghan. Johnsen, and Fretz (1987), in a study
of the role of emotional components in career problem solving, suggested that if career
intervention are to be eggective, clients need to have an opportunity to express their feelings,
to confront issues related to personal responsibility, and to develop a sense of university and
acceptance in theindividual or group counseling process. Other studies of career intervetions
have similarly indicated the importance of dealing with affective or emotional problems or
deficits if theissues involved in career indecision or problem solving are to be resolved
(Clarke & Greenberg), 1986; Sepich interactions of workers within the workplace is seen in
other surveys of employees, which validate the research. The major reasons high school
graduates or dropouts lose their jobs include the following:
 Poor work habits (tardy, undependable)
 Poor work attitude
 Work lacks quality (inaccuracies, wasteful)
 Work lacks quantity (low output)
 Inability to accept advice and supervision (Oinonen, 1984)
Although worker deficits in employability skills reported here have been studied
primarily in young workers as they center ther labor force, a growing research base has shown
simpilar deficits in information, planning, and jobseeking skills among older workers
experiencing occupational dislocation. The studies of Northcutt (Knowles, 1977), for
example, suggest that only 40 precent of the american adult population is coping adequately
with typical life problems (such as getting work and holding a job, buyingthings, managing
one’s economic life, and parenting). Evidence suggests that such persons need to experience
skill building approaches that are organized around thetype of life crises they are facing.
These obsevations are supported by findungs from the national assessment of educational
progress (Westbrook, 1978), which indicate that a large percentage of adults are weak in basic
skills and in occupational information; they have had little opportunity, tested or otherwise
with a counselor and they are unclear about their educational or career needs.
As the occupational structure changes, the inadequacies in skills of the adult
population as identified above are exacebated. For example, according to a joint publication
of the U.S. Department of education and the U.S. Department of Labor (1988), “New
technology has changed the nature of work-create new jobs and altered others-and, in many
cases, has revealed basic skills problems where none were known to exist” (p. 3). Such
findings have stimulated the need for “literacy audits” among workers and the necessity of
introducing basic skills training directly into the work place where such audits show that it is
needed. In such processes, it has become clear that many workers requiring retraining do not
have the basic academic skills which permit them to learn new tasks and procedures, such
persons are, in fact, often functionally illiterate.
Other studies also speak to such problems. One national study of employers found that
30 percent of those surveyed reported that secreataries have difficulty reading at the level
required by the job; 50 percent reported managers and supervisors unable to write a paragraph
free of grammatical error; 50 percent reported skilled and unskilled employees, including
bookkeepers, unable to use decimals and fractions in math problems; 65 percent reported that
basic skills deficiencies limit the job advancement of their high school graduates (Berlin &
Sum, 1988). In another example, the new york telephone company, in a major recruitment
effort, found that from january to july 1987, only 3,619 of 22,888 applicants passed the
examination intended to test vocabulary, number relationship, and problem solving skills for
jobs ranging from telephone operator to service representative (U.S. Department of Education
& U.S. Department of Labor, 1988). Such issues affect the economic security of the United
States in a global economy andm indeedm the job access and mobility of many adults. They
will increasingly become formidable concerns in career counseling and career guidance

Multidimensional Barriers to Work

For disadvantaged adults particularyly, but nit exclusively, transition to work and
work adjustment are multidimensional problems. Often when people are provided job training
or occupational information or encouragement or career counseling and they still do not get
work and adjust to it, we assume that they do not really want to work, they prefer welfare, or
thet are lazy. It is more likely that we have provided help in only one of the dimensions of life
that is affecting their transition to and effective induction into work. C.D. Miller and Outting
(1977) identified some 37 specific barriers to work in 11 categories, which were reported by
409 economically and vocationally disadvantaged persons in the Denver area. These barriers
included child care, health, transportation, social and interpersonal conflicts, financial
problems, legal problems, emotional-personal problems, drug and alcohol abuse problems,
job qualifications, discrimination, and language and communication problems. In such
perspectives we again see the need for career guidance approaches to take a multidimensional
view of individual problems with work and a diffrerential treatment approach to the resolution
of the various problems experienced by any given individual.
It is useful to reaffirm that the transition to work and the adjustment to work are not
single events but dynamic ones likely to recur throughtout the life of adults. In 1978, the
College Entrance Examination Board conducted a major study probing career changes for
adults (Arbeuter, Aslanian, Schmerbeck, & Brickell, 1978). They concluded that some 40
million adults in the United States anticipated making a career change and were engaged in
various life transitions-entering, progressing in, and exiting not only specific jobs, but also
career fields. As part of this study, it was found that the spur to much career change liew in
requirements for learning or, on the other side of that issue, life transitions tend to trigger
learning, either voluntary or mandatory. These findings have been further explored in another
national study that has examined life changes as reasons for adult learning (Aslanian &
Brickell, 1980) Clearly, the nature of work in America is interwoven with the need to learn as
one moves into a new job, adapts to a changing job, and advances in a career. Therefore, as
work in the American society increasingly replaces experience with knowledge as a major
criterion of admission and success, career guidance programs and pratitioners must also
respond clients with assistance in sorting out alternative and often nontraditional forms of
learning and their implications for personal time commitments, travel, residency, and
occupational preparation. Such assistance must be provided with an awareness of the fact that
adults deciding to return to school also have many personal responsibilities and emotional
demands on their time and energy. Also at issue may be adult problems with learning. Such as
lack of self-confidance in one’s ability to learn, unrealistic expectations of progress,
theoretical or irrelevant learning tasks, seeking help too late or from the wrongsources, lack of
efficient reading and study habits, press of time, and related matters (Porter, 1970).
Papalia and kaminski (1981) have discussed various counseling skills required in an
industrial environment. They indicate that career counselors should advise and counsel on
programs offered by local and regional institutions og higher education. They should help
employess prepare and process material related to tuition reimbursement, matriculation,
admission, or assessment of prio learning. Of particular importance is the career counselor’s
role in negotiating for an industry the offering of special credit and noncredit course, either in-
house or at a campus location, locating special resource personnel needed to offer special
programs and renting space and equipment from area educational facilities so that industry
can conduct its own programs in these locations.

Adult Career Problems

As discussed in Chapter 1, Campbell and Cellini (1981) have development a
diagnostic taxonomy of adulr career problems. In doing so, they have indicated that across the
stage of adult career behavior, four common tasts tend to recur: (1) decision-making; (2)
implementing plans; (3) achieving organizational/institutional performance at an acceptable
level; and (4) accomplishing organizational/intitutional adaptation so that the individual can
effectiely take part in the work environment. They then develop a diagnostic taxonomy of
problems in each of these areas that can be used to classify client problems (see Table 2.5).
In broad terms, this taxonomy represents an array of adult career problems to which
differential treatments can be related. It also provides a structure from which groups of
persons needing similar assistance could be inferred and relevant skill-building efforts
constructuted
In using such a classification scheme, other research reminds us that it is a mistake to lump
together all midlife or, indeed, other career changes that occur throughout adulthood. L. E.
Thomas (1980). For example, found four distinct groups of changes among seventy three men
who had left professional and managerial careers between the ages of 34 and 54, the four
groups-labeled the drift-outs opt-out, force-outs, and bow-outs-differend on several variables
including amount of education completed. Additional education undertaken to change careers,
time taken to make the change, radicalness of change and the importance of personal values in
deciding to leave their former careers. Undoubtedky, other differentiations could be made
among blue-collar changers and other subpopulations. However, the needs for content and
process in career guidance will likely differ from group to group. Subsequent chapters adderss
many of these issues in depth.

COUNSELING FOR PERSONAL FLEXIBILITY

As discussed in chapter 1 and briefly noted in this chapter, the structure of the world’s
economy is changing rapidly. National economies are eroding and being intefrated into an
interdependent global economy. This process is setting new standards for the quality of a
nation’s work force and for the creation of educational and counseling processes that will
imbue students, citizens, and workers with the knowledge, attitudes, habbits, and skills that
are necessary in the societies they hope to create for the twenty-first century, as the
occupational structure of a nation changes due to the prevasive influence of advanced
technology, transnational commercial interaction, or a pool of jobs to choose from that are
more international in scope, it is likely that the meanin of work, as well as the skills necessary
to work, also change. The begaviors, skills, and attitudes the industrialized societies are
seeking for their work force can be summarized under theterm personal flexibility (Herr,
1990)
Personal flexibility as the target of career guidance and counseling in a global
economy is not likely to have an absolute meaning across the world. Nevertheless. There tend
to be clusters of knowledge and skills that will be important for those workers in the
industrialized societis who will be either directly or indirectly affected by the changes in the
meaning or content of work or the shifts in work organizations necessitated by the global
economy is just emerging without the previous terminologt of East versus West, non-
Communist versus Communist, or other geopolitical barriers with which to contend, the
notion of “personal flexibility” is itself a term in the very early stages of development. What
is decribed here is undoubtedly a primitive tratment of how models of personal flexibility are
likely to be mediated by political, cultural, and organizational structures across the world and
what hte behavioral elements of such models are. Never the less, there are catehories of skills
subsumed under the broad rubric of personal flexibility that, at this early stage of
conceptualization, seem relevant to working within the contect of global economic
transformations, intense psychological change, shifts in the organization of work, and career
opportunities that are not confined to one community, culture, or nation but may be chosen
from a larger pool or globally defined career possibilities. Such emerging concepts will
inexorably broaden the role of career counselors in the furure. In the next section, some of the
ingredints of personal flexibility for workers in a global economy will be described.

The Elements of Personal Flexibility in a Global Economy

Basic Academic Skills. Given the charecteristics of the emerging technologies that are
increasinglt critical to international compettitin, basic academic skills-literacy, numeracy,
communication-are perhaps the ultimate employability skills. Within the industrualized
nations, very few new jobs will be created for those who cannot read. Follo directions, and
use mathematics. In an information era, knowledge has replaced experience as the requisite
for a growing proportion of the jobs being relocated or created around the world. Without
basic academic skills, it is difficult to comprehend how individuals can prossess personal
flexibility, teachabilit, or be capable of engaging in life-long learning, a condition that
increasingly will be required to maintain personal flexibility. Personal possession of these
skills will certainly depend upon the quality and nature of schooling and training one receives
in one’s life and in the personal understanding that, in many of the emerging jobs across the
world, working and learning have become blurred and essentially interchangeable concepts.
Although it is not accurate to argue that the only skills of value in the future will be
high level intellectual skill, it is certainly accurate to suggest that basic academic skills and
the ability to acquire the knowledge bases necessary in the occupational structure as it is
emerging will be minimal requirements for many workers in the global economy. Not every
worker is or wil e directly involved in a high technology occupation or one that is technology
intensive, but the pervasive application of advanced technology throughout the occupational
structure is causing the educational skills required in the workplace of the world to rise. This
phenomenon is related to the fact that the automation of work is easiest in the lower-skilled
jobs; by eliminating many unskilled and semi-skilled jobs through technology, the average
education or training required in the remaining jobs or in the emerging occupations is
increased: Undoubtedly, there will continue to be a large number of jobs with medium to low-
skilled requirements, but jobs that are currently in the middle of the skill distribution will be
the least skilled occupations of the future, and there will be very few net new jobs created fot
the unskilled workers (Hudson Institute, 1987). The future of the occupational structures in
the industrialized world is to eliminate more and more such unskilled jobs and to put and
increasing premium on higher levels of reading, computation, communication, and problem-
solving or reasoning skills. In essence, the skills learned in school and the skills learned on the
jobs will be increasingly seen as complementary and interactive.
Given such realities, career counseling for personal flexibility will need to
acknowledge perhaps for the first time in history. That educational skills and choices must be
clearly seen as major components of career development and, therefore, that career counselors
must be seen as integral to learning systems for youth and for adult, cognizant of the likely
outcomes of different education and training options, and brokers of such opportunities
trailored to the needs of different individuals.
Adaptive Skills. But personal flexibility will not be confined to intellectual skills. As
technological adaptation of a cariety of forms continues to be implemented in the
occupational structures and wok places of the world, the economic development of individual
firms and other enterprises will suffer if its employees are not able or willing to learn new
production systems or new manafement strategies. While academic skills in reading,
mathematics, and science are important to such processes, there are other qualitative skills
likely to be critical in such employment environments as well. One ser of such overaching
skills has been defined by the U.S. Congress’s Office of Technology Assessment as including
the following:
 Skills of problem recognition and definition recognizing a problem that is not clearly
 Presented
Defining the problem in a way that permits
Clear analysus and action
Tolerating ambiguity
 Handling evidence
Collecting and evaluating evidence
Working with insufficient information
Working with excessive information
 Analytical skills
Brainstorming
Hypothesizing counter arguments
Using analogies
 Skills of implementation
 Recognizing the limitation of available resources
Recognizing the feedback of a proposed solution to the system
The ability to recovery from mistakes
 Human relations
Negotiation and conflict resolution
Collaboration in problem solving
 Learning skills
The ability to indentify the limits of your own knowledge
The ability to ask pertinent questions
The ability to penetrate poor documentation
The ability to identift sources of information (documents and people)
These skills are important not only to manufacturing but to service industries. They
represent the survival skills necessary in an environment of rapid change and one which is
information-rich
In addition to the skills cited above, an increasing number of employers are extending
their conception of basic skills to include self-discipline, reliability, perseverance, accepting
responsibility, and respect fot the rifhts of others (U.S. Department of Education & U.S.
Department of Labor, 1988). Other observers are discussing the needs for adaptive skills are
also referred to as coping skills, occupational employability skills, work survival skills, or
sometimes, career employment skills. They frequently involve skills necessary in positive
worker-to-worker interaction or worker-work organization interaction. Thus, they frequently
include work context skills, self and career management skills, and decision-making skills
(Herr, 1982a) Transferskills “enable a person to draw upon prior learning and previous
experience for application to new and different situations” (Oratzner & Ashley, 1985 p. 19).
Such skills include those involving learning to learn, dealing with changem being a self-
initiator, coping, and self-assessment skills. Mobility skills are those related to making a
career or job change and include job seeking and job getting, interviewing skills, resume
preparation, and carrying out alternative job search strategies. Each of these skill sets are
increasingly subsumed under the notion of feneral employability skills discussed earlier in the
chapter. Such general employability skills are important across the spectrum of work and are,
in that sense, very elastic in their application and less likely to become quikly obsolescent
than are technical or work performance skills. Like technical skills, general employability
skills must be learnerd through some complex of modeling. Reinforcement, and incentives.
The elementary and secondary schools have major contributions to make to such learning if
they see such skills as important to their broader edicational mission. Certainly, vocational
education needs to include the teaching of such skills in concert with other entry-level
occupational skills (The National commission on Secondary Vocational Education, 1985).
These general employability skills do not substitute for the basic academic skills or job
performace skills but they are clearly mediators of how such academic or job performance
skills will be practices, and they are important dimensions of personal flexibility.
There is another set of skills, only dimly perceived, in a sociental trend that is only vaguely
understood. In addition to the shift from manufacturing to service in the United States, there
has also been a shift from Fortune 500 comanies, large multinational organizations, to
companies, to companies which employ less than 100 workers as the sources of new jobs in
this economy. In part because of the adaptation of advanced technologies to their work
processes and in art because of the effects of internaltional competition, the Fortune 500
companies in this nation have essentially created no new jobs since 1978. They have
rearranged jobs and career ladders, but they have not added significant numbers of new jobs
for a decade thus, the United States is experiencing a major rise in self-employment and in
small businesses, which require sets of skills embodied in such terms as entrepreneurial
behavior and innovation. It has also been contended that, as the larger corporations require
down-scaling in size and “deintitutionalizing,” there are needds for entrepreneurs within such
organizations. As the workplace, the organization of work, or the content of work undergoes
transformation, there are needs for persons who have the skills and desires to manage
innovation and change.
Some of the skills associated with entrepreneurial behavior are taught in courses
which stress the pragmatich of owning and running a business: accounting, marketing,
deploying resources, sources of risk capital, and time and resouce management for example.
But, in a larfe sense, the skills associated with entrepreneurial behacior involve acquiring
understanding of systems, risks, and change. These are combined behaviors, strategies, and
traits. They are essential to systemcatic innovation, whether in creating a new, small bussiness
or modifying an existing one to take advantege of new market forces and potentiality. By
definition, “systematic innovation therefore consists of the purposeful and organized search
for changes, and in the systematic analysis of the opportunities such changes might offer for
economic of social innovation” (Drucker, 1986, P. 35) systematic innovation requires the
entrepreneur to be able to monitor the unexpected, the incongruities between reality as it
actually is and as it could be or ought to be; innovation bases on process needs, filling
missinglinks redesign world processes around new knowledge; changes in industry structure
or market structure that catches everyone unaware. Systematic innovation also requires the
entrepreneur to monitor demographic chaes: changes in perception, mood, and meaning; and
new knowledge, both scientific and non-scientific.
One might argue that being an entrepreneur is to be a manager of information and, in
turn. Of innovation. It is to be a futurist. It is to be one who views needs in systems terms. It is
to be cross-disciplinary in one’s reading and analysis. It is to be a professional learner, if you
will, frequently a generalist, not a specialist in a restricted sense.
Entrepreneurial behavior will be an important ingredient in the future in many aspects
of the global economy, in government, in service industries, in manufacturingm and in
education. The skills needed are directly related to working and learning, although our
perceptions of these skills are yetto be fully understood and addressed in most of out learning
environments. It is likely that, whether such behavior are manifested in self-employment, in
small venture industries, or in transforming older industries into new economic structures,
entrepreneurial behavior will be critical to many nations in both domestic and international
economic development.

Career Motiviation
Given the world of uncertainty and complexity that characterizes the global economy
there are other competencies that need to be embodied in personal flexibility. One such model
is that of London and Stumpf (1986) that is directed to the ingredients of career motivation
that fit well within a concept of personal flexibility, as we have been shaping it. These include
“being resilient in the face of change, having insight into one’s self and the environment, and
indentifying with one’s job, organization, and/or profession as career goals” (p. 25). Each of
these dimensions includes sub-elements. For exsample, career resilience is comprised of
belief in oneself, need for achievement, and willingness to take risks; career insight means
having clear career goals and knowing one’s strenghs and weaknesses; and career indentity is
comprised of job, organization, and professional involvement, need for advancement and
recognition, and wanting to lead. By definition, career resilience has to do with “the extent to
which we keep our spirits up when things do not work out as we would have liked. This
includes how resistant we are to career barriers or disruptions affecting our work” (p. 26).
Such a perspective suggests that individuals need to feel that they are competent to control
their responses to what happens to them, that one can effectively discriminate how to act in
cooperation with other or independently. In some sense this interpretation of career resilience
is not unlike concepts such as an internal versus an external locus of control. Career insight
refersto the extent to which people are realistic about themselves and their careers and how
accurately they relate these perceptions to their careers goals, set specific career goals, and
formulate how they can achieve these goals. Career indentity is the extent to which they are
involved in their jobs, careers, and professions.
The concept of “personal flexibility” is not unlike that of “personal competence” or “life
development skills.” In each of these perspectives, personal flexibility or competence can
defined as a series of skills or forms of knowledge that an individual acquires either through
processes of socialization or training (Danish, Galambos, & Laquatra, 1983). More subtle,
perhaps, is and assumtion that

All human beings are capable of a far grater repertoire of behaviors than any single person ever exhibits.
Each of us, because of the accident of birth, begins life in a particular social contect, within which we
learn to make certain responses and not others. (Segall, Dasen, Berry, & Poortinga, 1990, p. 23)

Thus, it is possible to suggest that personal flecibility represents not a subtitute for
culturally defined perceptions of necessary life development skills, but another repertoire of
skills, an alternative set of cultural competencies, that people need to learn about and posses
as these relate to their ability to master change, cross-cultural migration, and other career
dimensions influenced by the global economy. Indeed, in a related view, Gladwin (1967)
suggests that competence includes an ability to utilize various alternatives in reaching a goal;
an understanding of social systems of which one is a member and ability to use their
resourcer; and testing.
In such a view, the targets of intervention for counseling for personal flexibility may
be one or more of the following skill sets for particular individuals; coginitive or physical
skills that is, alternative models of conceiving problems, problem solving, or reasoning about
self or others or ways of performing or doing certain tasks; interpersonal skills such as
initiating, developing, and maintaining relationships (for instance, self disclosing,
communicationg feelings accurately and unambiguously, being supportive, and being able to
resolbe conflicts and relationship problems constructively); and intrapersonal skills such as
developing self control, tension management and relaxation, settin goals, taking risks, and so
on (Danish, Galambos, & Laquatra, 1983).
Amundson, a Canadian counseling psychologist (1989). Has approached the concept
of personal flexibility as we are describing it from the perspective of competence refers to a
state of being as well as to a state of doing. A competent person is one who has the capacity
(or power to adequately deal with emerging situations.” (p. 1)
Amundson suggests that there are eivht components required to define his model of
competence and that to be competent in almost any job demands some capability in each of
these eight areas. They include: A sense of purpose, self/other/and organizational
understanding, communication and problem-solving skills, theoretical knowledge and
understanding of facts and procedures, oractical experience, a supportive organizational
contect which, at minimum, has elements that allow people to achieve without wasting time
and resourcer, a support network that allows competent people to give and to receive help as
part of maintaining their competency, and self confidence, including acceptance of oneself,
the strength to learn from mistakes, and perseverance.
It is likely that, as research into the requirements for human behavior within global
economies evolve, conceptions of the elements of life coping skills, of competence, or of
personal flexibility will gain credibility as organizing themes for career guidance and career
counseling in many settings. Such research will serve to demystify the problems of living,
which require different cobinations of the skills integral to personal flexibility in interpersonal
relations; coping with cultural indetity confusion; work adjustment in a culturally diferent
environment; geopgraphic rootlessness, uprooting and reestablishing family and other social
support systems; anticipating and handling changel managing anxiety and stress more
consciously and with more control; assuming personal responsibility for one’s life; gaining an
internal locus of control; and increasing feelings of power or reducing feelings of
poweslessness. Among others, these involve developing skills of interpersonal
communications, anger management assertivenes training, decision-making values
clarification, intercultural sensitivity, and strees recution as major foci for career counselors’
work with clients. Such emphases are consistent with the perspectives of Krumboltz and
Menetee (1980), who suggested that the future will require counselors to concentrate on
prevention rather than only on remediation. To give increased attention to helping people
develop self-control and the skills they need to regulate their behavior, and to adopt a more
integrated approach to the interactive effect of how people think, feel, and act. The promotion
of personal flexibility in workers of the future will necerssitate at least these emphases.

CONCLUSIONS

The rationale for career guidance and for continuing research into career development implies
that work is fundamental to how one feels about oneself. In addition, virtually any analysis of
human development indicates that access to work is crucial to the ability to move effectively
from adolescence to adulthood. Such a concern has particular vitality in those nations with
highly develped technology and great affluence, such as the United States and other
industrialized nations.
 Tyler, Sundberg, Rohila, and Greene (1968) found in an extensive cross-cultural study
of vocational choice patterns of adolescents that the more complex and affluent a society
becomes, the freer one is from choice contraints, and thus the more the choice process
becomes internalized. At the current level of American societal development, it’s likely that
the direction of one’s life is determined more by one’s own choices that by external social
conditions. Finally, the premise on which this book rests is that career behavior and
development, as well as access to work, are based on knowledge, skills, and attitudes that can
be fostered raher than left to chance.
This chapter has emphasized that the knowledge, skills, and attitudes important to the
transitions to work and to work adjustment are dynamic. As the national and, indeed, global
economies are transformed and create new posibilities for choice, new forms of knowledge
and new skill patterns emerge. A contemporary metaphor for the new combinations of
information and skill that an increasing number of workers across the world will need to
possess is personal flexibility. This term represents a summary of the prespectives held in
parallel with such terms as personal competence and life development skills. As such, the
term personal flexibility creates a focus toward the likely interaction of person, occupational
opportunities, and the dynamics of the work places in the twenty-first century.
Since 1945 our society has largely replaces the words “stability” and “scarcity” as
characteristics of our economy with the words “change” and “abudance” even though all
groups in the population do not share such conditions equally. This reversal has occured
largely because of science and techology’s fantastic abilities to harness energy and to translate
this energy into person-machine systems. No occupationa l group is unaffected by the
explosion of knowledge, changing social values, movement to corporate hierarchies,
occupational and geographic mobility, new housing patterns, and similar phenomena that
attend the fundamental realignment of our occupational structure and our economic base.
These processes are now escalating under the influence of international competition and the
economic interdependence of nations.
To assume, homeever, that work is dissapearing, or that a society with leisure as its
principal characteristic has emerged, is still premature, is appears more accurate to suggest
that many new types of work are appearing and that much of the work to e done requires new
levels of personal commitment and capability. To emphasize this latter point, one can
compare the help-wanted ads of any metropolitan newspaper with similar ads of twenty or
twenty five years ago. The job titles alone reflect significant changes in the type of work
being done now and the number of job choices possible.
In the future, work may become less attractive as an economic necessity because of
growing welfare benerfits or the possibilities of guaranteed income; it may occupy fewe hours
each week, even though it is morecentral in one’s life fue to the continuing education
necessary to perform it; or it may occupy a longer period in one’s total life because of longer
life expectancy. But there is no evidence that work will cease to ve a central force in defining
individual life styles in the foreseeable future. Therefore, a broad understanding of work and
its potential meaning to different clients is crucial to the effective pratice of career guidance,
career counseling, and counseling psychology.
SUMMARY

We have talked in this chapter about the terms that are associated with work and its
differences in meaning across gorups and across time. We have examined current perspectives
on job satsfaction and the relationships between work and mental health. Finally, we have
considered the transition to work including multidimensional barriers to work, adult career
problems, and the affective work competencies important to work. We have introduced the
term “personal flexibility” as an emerging target of career counseling and guidance for
persons involved in the global economy of the 1990s and beyond. These topics have been
discussed in terms of theirs impications for the practice of carer guidance and counseling.
Their critical importance in the industrialized nations, and their significance for new
paradigms of purpose and function.