The paper develops the metaphorical concept of the “concertina” career to describe ways in which academic staff, across a diversifying workforce, modulate their interactions with institutional career ...frameworks, which tend to be unilinear and to be characterised by detailed progression criteria and milestones. In doing this, they are guided by Internal career scripts, providing an additional dimension to the dichotomy of boundaried and boundaryless careers found in the literature. Drawing on a longitudinal study between 2017 and 2020, of forty-nine mid-career academic staff across eight UK universities, consideration is given to individuals’ spatial movements, for instance, between academic activities, and professional and personal commitments; and the manipulation of timescales to accelerate or decelerate career progress in relation to opportunities and constraints. The study shows ways in which the spatial parameters of a career are being stretched in order to accommodate new forms of academic work supplementing disciplinary activity, such as online learning, employability initiatives and public engagement, as well as work-life considerations. In addition, individuals are adapting timescales to accommodate professional activities such as health practice or community outreach, as well as personal commitments such as caring responsibilities. Thus, in the concertina career, individuals expand and contract activity, as well as extending and compressing timescales. As a result, it is concluded that institutional career models do not entirely reflect the reality of career-making by individuals, which is likely to involve detours (therefore a spatial dimension) and a disruption of assumed timelines (therefore a temporal dimension).
Given the intricate and competitive global academic landscape and Chinese female PhDs' critical situation of being marginalized and otherized, this study aims to examine the academic career ...decision‐making experiences of three unmarried and childless Chinese female PhD graduates. Collaborative autoethnography is employed to delve into the three authors' experiences and reflections regarding the influential factors impacting their job‐seeking and decision‐making process as recent graduates, who earned their PhD degrees in 2022 from three popular destinations for international students in East Asia, namely Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan. Research findings indicate that various contextual and individual factors have shaped the authors' decision‐making and diverse career options were adopted to strike a ‘happy medium’ between long‐term career aspirations and increased competition for academic positions. This study provides implications for policymakers and university administrators to attract highly skilled female international professionals and overseas‐educated Chinese female PhDs considering a professional career in academia.
•Investigates the barriers experienced by Italian women in accounting academia.•Links a theory of patriarchy to explain this persistence in Italian accounting academia.•First study in accounting ...academia gender research using a phenomenographic approach.•Contributes research on women’s barriers to career advancement and structural change.•First study of barriers to career progression for Italian female accounting academics.
There are fewer women in the upper echelons of accounting academia in Italy than in other European countries, and fewer female full professors than in other disciplines at Italian universities. The purpose of this research is to investigate the barriers experienced by Italian women in accounting academia and contributes withsuggestions to alleviate these. The paper adopts a phenomenographic approach to identify the ways in which a group of 24 Italian women, at different hierarchical levels, experienced barriers to their academic careers. The study identifies different categories of barriers that combine to prevent female perspectives and progression within accounting academia. Underpinning these barriers is a patriarchal culture that has a significant influence on women’s careers in academia. Thepatriarchal structure in both the workplace and society, engendersdifficulties in maintaining work-life balance, and shapesmale and female roles in the academic workplace.
The paper contributes to the literature on gender in the academic accounting discipline, exploring women’s experiences of accounting academia, linkingfindings of a persistence of patriarchy, and arguing for a more feminist academic organisation. This is the first research in this area to use a phenomenographic method to investigate the barriers to career progression for Italian female academics in accounting and in examining the experience of women at different career levels, including those who have left accounting academia. The paper contributes to research on women’s barriers to career advancement, bringing new insights to the understanding of the gender gap in accounting academia and in making suggestions for structural change.
Based on the data of 1882 Chinese doctoral students in social science fields, this study examined the initial placement of PhD holders in the academic labor market. Findings indicate the research ...network of doctorate holders is significantly related to their academic career identity attainment. There was an inverted U-shape curve between the research network scale and the probability of pursuing an academic career. Those occupying more structural hole locations were more likely to choose an academic career. However, neither the scale nor location of the research network could guarantee a faculty position in a prestigious university or department. No significant correlation was found between the research network and academic career status attainment.
Abstract How one individual characterises another successful individual varies widely. At a time when work–life balance and the use of metrics are key concerns within the academic landscape, Early ...Career Academics (ECAs) are voicing particular worries about the opacity with which we discuss and define success in academia, which influences recruitment and progression in unseen ways. Drawing on the results of a survey of 92 geomorphologists, earth and environmental scientists (96% from Europe or North America) and textual analysis of 54 job advertisements for early career positions at UK institutions spanning 2010–2021, we posit that there is a divergence between the perceptions, expectations and realities of academic success and that this has widened over the last decade. We find limited evidence of gendered differences in how academics define success, in stark contrast to employment and promotion outcomes within universities. We also find notable differences in how individual, more senior academics value publications and grant capture, which is at odds with advice usually given to ECAs. This mismatch is reinforced by the steady rise in the total number of essential job criteria listed on job advertisements for early career positions. Strong applicants are expected to excel in more areas than a decade ago. We put forward a series of recommendations implementable at local levels (e.g., research groups, learned society committees, departments) to help ensure markers of success are defined, valued and implemented in more appropriate and consistent ways. These include: the necessity of establishing clear guidelines for recruitment, promotion and awards, and ensuring these are visible and accessible; greater transparency around the weightings given to different criteria in a job advert; and a call to the community to reflect on how our individual markers of success match our career advice and the decisions taken by hiring or promotion panels we sit on.
Given the shortage of STEM workers, it is important to examine the factors associated with students’ academic career intentions. However, the mechanism through which subjective norms influence ...academic career intentions has not been determined. Our study empirically tests a model identifying science identity as an intervening variable in this relationship. In a longitudinal survey study of master’s and doctoral students from 17 research institutes in China, we found that science identity mediated the relationship between subjective norms and academic career intentions. In addition, creative self-efficacy, valuable to academic careers, moderated the relationship between science identity and academic career intentions.
While inequalities in scholarly productivity have long existed, the long-term implications on productivity due to the COVID-19 pandemic are not well documented. Using data from a survey of policing ...scholars, we conduct a mixed-methods analysis to determine the differential impacts of the pandemic on scholarly productivity, focusing on the intersectional effects by gender, childcare responsibilities, academic rank, and teaching load. Findings suggest that the effects of the pandemic were not evenly experienced by criminal justice and criminology researchers with the effects of productivity influenced by gender, rank and childcare responsibilities. We specifically discuss the longer-term implications of the pandemic on academic careers.
Being a parent has long been associated with gender disparities in academia. However, details of the mechanisms by which parenthood and gender influence academic career achievement and progression ...are not fully understood. Here, using data from a survey of 7,764 academics in North America and publication data from the Web of Science, we analyze gender differences in parenthood and academic achievements and explore the influence of work-family conflict and partner support on these gender gaps. Our results suggest that gender gaps in academic achievement are, in fact, “parenthood gender gaps.” Specifically, we found significant gender gaps in most of the measures of academic achievement (both objective and subjective) in the parent group but not in the non-parent group. Mothers are more likely than fathers to experience higher levels of work-family conflict and to receive lower levels of partner support, contributing significantly to the gender gaps in academic achievement for the parent group. We also discuss possible interventions and actions for reducing gender gaps in academia.
Career insecurity is a central topic in career research because many career paths are characterized by high levels of uncertainty. In academia, individuals face not only high levels of insecurity in ...the early career phase but also the responsibility of managing their careers by themselves. Building on the motivational theory of life-span development and the social cognitive theory of self-regulation, this longitudinal study investigates the relationship between perceived career insecurity, work-related self-management, and occupational self-efficacy beliefs based on a sample of 3118 PhD students and PhD holders. We employed the random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) to separate between-person effects from within-person effects across eight measurement points (6-month time intervals). At the between-person level, career insecurity was negatively correlated with self-management and self-efficacy. At the within-person level, (a) increases in self-management and self-efficacy predicted decreases in subsequent career insecurity, and (b) increases in career insecurity predicted decreases in subsequent self-management and self-efficacy. Mediation analyses showed self-management to reduce career insecurity via increases in self-efficacy.
•Eight-wave longitudinal study with 3118 young scientists•Self-management, self-efficacy, and career insecurity relate at the within level.•Increases in self-management/self-efficacy predict decreases in career insecurity.•Increases in career insecurity predict decreases in self-management/self-efficacy.•Self-management reduces career insecurity via increases in self-efficacy.
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