The doctor, the lawyer and the journalist: Neoliberal career changes and professional resistance during a mining boom

Recent scholarship has charted the dramatic social impact of mining booms and busts on local communities. Yet scant research addresses how mining economies shape different professions. This article ethnographically traces the careers of a doctor, a lawyer and a journalist during Western Australia's mining boom in the early 2000s. For vocally opposing a politically popular mining operation due to public health concerns, they were subject to backlash, which led to disillusionment and career changes. Their narratives share a pivotal shift: each expert initially conceptualised their role through a welfarist, liberal-democratic lens, underpinned by a moral imperative to disrupt imbalances of power, fight injustice and ‘help people’. Yet the mining boom revealed and exacerbated the neoliberalisation of their respective disciplines, in which profits were maximised, businesses treated leniently and worker protections calculated dispassionately. These stories illuminate the lived experience of neoliberalisation, and the limits of individual professional resistance in a pro-mining political economy.

(RE)CAREER SCALE: PILOT STUDY FOR THE VALIDATION OF A SCALE ABOUT CAREER POST-CAREER TRANSITIONS

This article aims to validate the factorial structureof the (Re)CareerScale: Coping Styles, which evaluates how late adults think and feel about career changes, in particular the transition to a career post-career. A career post-career is a development phase that takes place after the formal retirement of a job/ continued work and requires the involvement in a set of developmental tasks related to one’s own, the environment, and the decision-making and planning (Pinto, in press). Thirty-sixitems were developed, considering the literature review of the main career development models. These items were administered to a total of 95 Portuguese late adults (31 (32.6%) men and 64 (67.4%) women; Mage=62.91; SDage=6.901), of which 47 are in an active professional situation and 48 already retired. The Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) indicated a three-dimensional career post-careermodel considering a set of developmental tasks related to Identity, Opportunity and Adaptation. The final version of 30 items has good psychometric properties, with Cronbach’ salphas ranging from .82 to .89. The descriptive study and the correlation between the three dimensions suggest that the scale has potential to be used in research and intervention programs to support the transition to a career post-career.

Adapting to Involuntary, Radical, and Socially Undesirable Career Changes

Career adaptability is a psychosocial resource that aids in coping with current and anticipated tasks, transitions, and traumas that people experience in their occupational roles. Although there is a great deal of evidence that career adaptability relates to important career outcomes, the role that it is perceived to play in involuntary, radical, and socially undesirable career changes is understudied. Grounded in career construction theory, we conducted a study with an experimental vignette methodology to ascertain whether career adaptability moderates the influence of different types of career transitions on ratings of hypothetical employees adapting effectiveness. Findings suggest that career adaptability can be seen as an important resource for managing radical career changes. This is one of the first papers to test a key tenet of career construction theory—that career adaptability is efficient for managing career related transitions and traumas. Moreover, we extend the scope of this tenet to include the notion that people can readily identify qualities of career adaptability in others.

Acceptance

By the end of the decade the time revolution was a done deal. Moulin-Quignon still reverberated, but in 1865 Lubbock produced the first guided tour of the Old Stone Age, in which he accused Lyell of plagiarism. In Pre-Historic Times he filled the new space of deep history with stone tools to show an evolutionary pathway from St Acheul to the Neolithic monuments of Avebury and Stonehenge. Tracing history back was matched by the anthropologist Edward Tylor, who traced it up. Both men were interested in the evolution of racial groups and accounting for the world’s hunters and gatherers. In a typically upbeat assessment, Lubbock saw the lesson of the past as providing hope for the future. Victorian ‘savages’ at the uttermost ends of the earth had not degenerated from a civilized state. They had the potential to evolve, as his ancestors in Europe had done. Unwritten history was making universal history possible. The decade saw deaths and career changes. Prestwich largely abandoned the time revolution, married Falconer’s niece, Grace McCall, and became an Oxford professor. Falconer and Boucher de Perthes died, while Lubbock entered Parliament in 1870. Prestwich’s fixed notion of a single ice age was challenged by James Croll, who painstakingly worked out the changes in the elliptical orbit of the Earth, and from these proposed multiple ice ages. As a bookend to the decade Evans published his fact-rich volume on ancient stone implements. The path of deep history was now set in stone.

From Shock to Shift–A Qualitative Analysis of Accounts in Mid-Career About Changes in the Career Path

Career shocks are the norm, not the exception. Yet, much of research and counseling on career-development holds unrealistic assumptions of a makeable career. Little is understood about the role of shocks on the career path and how the interplay of individual reactions to shocks shapes careers. The purpose of this study is to provide understanding of responses to different attributes of career shocks and career shocks as antecedents to career and job change. A qualitative approach was chosen and data were obtained from 25 semi-structured interviews with a sample of mid-career individuals who had experienced shocks in their work lives. The analysis was 2-fold and aimed at unearthing of individual responses to shocks and the question of the role of shocks on changes in the career path. Firstly, the analysis of career shocks revealed a pattern of distinct agentic responses in relation to shocks of different attributes. Secondly, from the analysis of shock attributes and corresponding responses over time career changer profiles emerged which differ in regard to career change behavior and magnitude of changes in the career (e.g., major career changes into another field). A process model which depicts how post-shock careers are shaped distinctively in relation to different shock attributes and corresponding responses is presented. This study underlines the importance of understanding the unplannable in career development and shows a variety of options for individuals to develop their careers despite shocks. Limitation stems from the investigation of a sample limited to mid-career individuals. The findings provide a new conceptual lens to theorize and conduct research on career shocks and career changes and facilitate the development of coping strategies for career shocks. The originality lies in the investigation of the momentum of career shocks on career paths with detail to different attributes of career shocks and how they impact the career path.

Overview of medical malpractice in neurosurgery

Annually, 20% of all practicing neurosurgeons in the United States are faced with medical malpractice litigation. The average indemnity paid in a closed neurosurgical civil claim is $439,146, the highest of all medical specialties. The majority of claims result from dissatisfaction following spinal surgery, although claims after cranial surgery tend to be costlier. On a societal scale, the increasing prevalence of medical malpractice claims is a catalyst for the practice of defensive medicine, resulting in record-level healthcare costs. Outside of the obvious financial strains, malpractice claims have also been linked to professional disenchantment and career changes for afflicted physicians. Unfortunately, neurosurgical residents receive minimal practical education regarding these matters and are often unprepared and vulnerable to these setbacks in the earlier stages of their careers. In this article, the authors aim to provide neurosurgical residents and junior attendings with an introductory guide to the fundamentals of medical malpractice lawsuits and the implications for neurosurgeons as an adjunct to more formal residency education.

Reflections on growing leadership capacity through formal training and mid-career peer connections

In this commentary, two alumni of the 2018 Society of Behavioral Medicine Mid-Career Leadership Institute reflect on their experiences in the year-long program. Each was at different stages of their career and went into the program for different reasons. One was seeking purpose and direction after being promoted to Associate Professor. The other had been awarded full professorship and was contemplating a career move into administration. Assigned to the same learning community within the institute, they stayed in touch through monthly peer-mentoring calls over the course of the year. These calls both reinforced what they learned during the leadership institute and provided a forum for brainstorming how to maximize their career opportunities and traverse their distinct career challenges. Both have since gone through significant career changes, thanks to the validation, inspiration, and support provided by the leadership institute. Both continue to reap the benefits from participating in the leadership institute as they navigate the new and exciting landscape of their changing careers.

Teacher Wage Penalty and Decrease in Teacher Quality: Evidence from Career-Changers

This paper examines the relation between teacher pay and teacher quality through the career dynamics of teachers and non-teachers. I find that public school teachers earn considerably less than their comparable college graduates in the non-teaching sector. By tracking wage differentials before and after career changes, I find evidence of positive selection, in which high-paid teachers are more likely to move to non-teaching occupations, and of negative selection, in which low-paid non-teachers tend to move to the teaching sector. These selection patterns, which ultimately contribute to a decrease in teacher quality, are more significant in union-unfriendly states.