Career dynamics in India. A two-wave study of career orientations and employability of graduates
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-10-2018-0429 |
| Published date | 20 November 2019 |
| Date | 20 November 2019 |
| Pages | 825-845 |
| Author | Yehuda Baruch,A. Uday Bhaskar,Bijaya Mishra |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Global HRM |
Career dynamics in India
A two-wave study of career orientations and
employability of graduates
Yehuda Baruch
Southampton Business School, Southampton, UK
A. Uday Bhaskar
Human Resource Management and Organizational Behaviour (HROB),
Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad, India, and
Bijaya Mishra
Human Resource Management and Organizational Behaviour (HROB),
Indian Institute of Management Ranchi, Ranchi, India
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a career-orientation and employability-focused
model in the Indian context in order to understand: factors influencing employability of graduates factors
influencing expected salary gain.
Design/methodology/approach –The researchers adopted a quantitative method using a two-wave
survey with a sample of MBA graduates from two prominent business schools in India. The total sample size
for Wave I was 250, while for Wave II it was 161. The model was tested via hierarchical regression with MBA
contribution as a moderator.
Findings –Results indicate the relevance of protean career orientation (PCO) to reaching career outcomes
such as employability, with MBA contribution as a moderator.
Practical implications –The study provides a new perspective that would enhance graduates’
employability. This makes it relevant for both individuals and higher education institutions as it will help
both individuals and higher education institutions to attain competitiveness at the national level.
Originality/value –The career theory was extended to the diverse socio-cultural and economic context of
India, representing the BRICS economy.
Keywords Careers, Graduates, Quantitative, Employability
Paper type Research paper
The study of careers covers a wide body of literature, but the vast majority of empirical
studies on careers was conducted in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and
Democratic (WEIRD) countries. Such findings, however, may not be valid for the rest of the
world (Henrich et al., 2010), where the emerging economies employ about 85 percent of
the global workforce. With the blurring of boundaries in the career system, both national
and global (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996), it has become necessary to understand, within a
wider context, the role and impact of the parameters that were developed and analyzed in a
predominantly western background.
Thus, it becomes necessary to study the career orientation of young professionals in a
BRICS country like India because of the significant diversity in the social and cultural
backgrounds between India and the West (Khare, 2014; Kanungo and Mendonca, 1994).
From the cultural perspective, people management in India may differ from other countries,
for example, because of the characteristic of high power-distance (Hofstede, 1991). At the
same time, India’s socio-cultural conditioning is such that interpersonal relations play a big
role in the work culture. Accordingly, the employees, instead of being performance oriented,
are motivated more toward personal relationships (Kanungo and Mendonca, 1994).
There has also been a change in the mindsets of managers and employees in the last
Personnel Review
Vol. 49 No. 3, 2020
pp. 825-845
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0048-3486
DOI 10.1108/PR-10-2018-0429
Received 28 October 2018
Revised 5 June 2019
Accepted 4 August 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0048-3486.htm
825
Career
dynamics
in India
two decades because of the growth and success of many Indian organizations and
organizations operating out of India (Ready et al., 2008) leading to a change in the
employees’career expectations and orientations. Thus, new career orientations (for example
protean or kaleidoscope) need to be formally tested in the context of the Indian
sub-continent. However, this has not been tested thus far (for exception see Agarwala, 2008).
With India being part of the BRICS economy, in addition to becoming a fast developing hub
for the software industry, this study is not only relevant but significant as it addresses the
gap in the existing literature regarding employability and careers in a dynamic and diverse
business environment.
Reviews of prevailing career orientations (Baruch and Bozionelos, 2011; Gubler et al.,
2014) suggest that despite the proliferation of concepts and parameters in the field, only a
few are universally robust and enduring. We focus on two prominent “new career”concepts:
the Protean career model (PCM) (Hall, 1996) that has gained significant attention since the
mid-1990s and the kaleidoscope career model (KCM), which is an alternative way of thinking
about careers brought about by the seismic shift taking place in the work environment and
individual needs (Mainiero and Sullivan, 2006). It is one of the upcoming career concepts
that gain increasing attention in the career field (Baruch et al., 2015). The PCM is one “in
which the individual is in charge of the career, not the organization, and it is re-invented by
the individual periodically, as a consequence of the changing individual needs and
the environment”(Hall, 1996). The main tenets of the PCM are: psychological success, the
individual is in charge of the career not the organization, a series of identity changes and
continuous learning, from job security to employability, etc. (Hall and Mirvis, 1996).
The KCM enables the individual to understand the dynamics of career systems through the
use of the three parameters of authenticity, balance and challenge. This new perspective
enables a fresh look at career progress in current labor markets (Reis et al., 2017).
A number of studies, which are focused on the changing nature of careers, examine the
PCM and the KCM in detail (e.g. Briscoe et al., 2006, Baruch, 2014 for the former, Kirk, 2016
for the latter). Even though the boundaryless career concept has gained ground amongst
scholars, empirical studies suggest that boundaries do exist, and thus, need to be considered
when setting parameters for future career moves even within professions, due to the
context (Rodrigues et al., 2016) and resources that are already invested in the first career
(Baruch and Quick, 2007). Further, there is a need to explore career options in the industry
sectors, including the education sector in the Asia-Pacific region because of the rapid
economic growth taking place there (Cheung et al., 2018; Tan, 2017).
A two-wave study was conducted to empirically examine the role of career orientation
(protean career orientation (PCO) and kaleidoscope career orientation), the motivation to
pursue MBA, and the mental ability to dealwith career outcomes of perceived employability
and expected salary gain (ESG) with MBA contribution as a moderator and the relevance of
contemporary career theories for a developing country like India. This study will advance
understandingof career transition frominitial education to the labor market(Lipshits-Braziler
et al., 2019;Okay-Somerville and Scholarios,2017). The findings of the study offera number of
insights that willprovide a rich contextualized understanding. First, different careertheories
were tested together, in the context of India, which is the second-largest economy in the
developing world, to enable generalizability of the contemporary career theories. Thus far,
these have been tested only separately.
The findings of this study will help scholars and managers understand the issues, and
at the same time, it will make new contributions to the existing knowledge in the field.
Most career theories were developed, first, in isolation from one another, and second,
in a western context using predominantly Anglo-Saxon samples. They have rarely
been tested in the context of a racially diverse sample in a developing country like India
(Azmi and Mushtaq, 2015).
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