Who were the investigators and what was the aim of the study? Why does job satisfaction tend to increase with age? One hypothesis is that job satisfaction has a complex relationship to the length of time one has been in a job, and not to age per se. Satisfaction might be high in the beginning […]

What does it mean to be satisfied with one’s job or occupation? In a general sense, job satisfaction is the positive feeling that results from an appraisal of one’s work. In general, job satisfaction tends to increase gradually with age (Bernal, Snyder, & McDaniel, 1998; Sterns, Marsh, & McDaniel, 1994). The increased satisfaction has been […]

For most of us, getting a job is not enough; we would also like to move up the ladder. Promotion is a measure of how well one is doing in one’s career. How quickly occupational advancement occurs (or does not) may lead to such labels as “fast-tracker” or “dead-ender” (Kanter, 1976). Barack Obama, shown here […]

As indicated earlier, work life serves as a major source of identity, provides us with an official posi­tion, and influences lifestyle and social interac­tions; therefore, choosing an occupation is a serious matter. Although most people think occupational choice is largely the province of young adults, much of what we will consider also holds true for […]

The traditional view of work assumes that one’s job consists of a certain set of tasks that need to be performed or a work-survival-status-life paradigm (Cascio, 1995). But this view is rapidly becoming outmoded. Global competition means that workers in the United States are competing for jobs with workers in the same industries in France, […]

In the 1960s, the phrase “different strokes for dif­ferent folks” was used to get across the point that people’s motives and needs differ. Thus, work has different meanings for different people. Studs Terkel, the author of the fascinating book Working (1974), writes that work is “a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, […]

LEARNING OBJECTIVES • How do people view work? How do occupational priorities vary with age? • How do people choose their occupations? • What factors influence occupational development? • What expectations do people have about occupations? • What role do mentors play in occupational development? • What factors influence job satisfaction? What causes alienation and […]

12.1 OCCUPATIONAL CHOICE AND DEVELOPMENT The Meaning of Work • The Changing Nature of Work • Occupational Choice • Occupational Development • Job Satisfaction • How Do We Know? Periodicity and Job Satisfaction 12.2 GENDER, ETHNICITY, BIAS, AND DISCRIMINATION Gender Differences in Occupational Choice • Women and Occupational Development • Ethnicity and Occupational Development • […]

As we have seen, caring for aging parents can be both very stressful and uplifting. On the stress side, adult child caregivers can experience significant health effects from long-term stress. Stress may also be a factor in elder abuse, neglect, or exploitation. Thus, doing what is necessary to help deal with the stressful aspects is […]

Being a parent has a rather strange side when you think about it. After creating children out of love, parents spend considerable time, effort, and money preparing them to become independent and leave. For most parents, the leaving (and sometimes returning) occurs during midlife. Adult Children: Becoming Friends and the Empty Nest. Sometime during middle […]