WORK ACTIVITY AND CAREER GOALS IN HOLLAND AND SCHEIN THEORIES OF VOCATIONAL PERSONALITIES AND CAREER ANCHORS

Two taxonomic theories describing the relationship between people and the world of work were investigated. Holland's and Schein's vocational and career concepts were conceived of as categories of preferential decisions about work and career goals, respectively. Ipsative scales were developed for each category set, and preferential choice data were obtained from 725 Norwegian adults. Relations within and between the two sets of categories were investigated by factor analysis. Three factors extracted from the vocational scales were in close agreement with the diagonal dimensions in Holland's hexagon model of the vocational categories. Four factors were extracted from the career scales. Both the correlations between the scales and the factor correlations indicated that the vocational and career categories are rather distinct domains. Career goals cannot be derived from assessment of vocational personalities, and vice versa. However, Holland's Enterprising and Conventional vocational categories correlated with different sets of career goal categories, those having to do with preferences for challenge and excitement, and security and vocational stability, respectively. More extensive behavioral specifications of the career anchors are needed for future research on the generality of the concepts and their interactions with other concepts in determining dimensions of people-work relationships. © 1991.