Theme: 
“Postmodernising career development to enhance people’s ability to negotiate multiple career-related transitions”

Editor:
Jacobus Gideon (Kobus) Maree, University of Pretoria, South Africa.

Submission due date: 31 March 2020

Submission due date: 30 September 2020

Background to the special issue:
Much has been written on the extent and nature of changes in the world of work and the impact of these changes on workers’ and prospective workers’ wellbeing (Urbanaviciute, Udayar, & Rossier, 2019). These changes come at a high cost: ‘ workers increasingly experience insecurity about the continuity and stability of their employment. Such feelings of insecurity, unfortunately, can lead to more stress, poorer health, and poorer career prospects’ (Koen, 2019, n.p.). Consequently, ‘in much of the world, un- and under-employment is a major social and economic concern for policymakers, for people with jobs, and for people looking for jobs’ (Graham, M., Hjorth, I., & Lehdonvirta (2017) in ILO (2017, p. 1)). Reid and West (2016) argue that ‘[i]n the context of mass migration and unstable labor markets … traditional career guidance is no longer sufficient … the need for a paradigm shift is becoming more urgent’ (p. 573). Arulmani (2019), too, asserts that ‘More than two-thirds of the world follow occupations where work is mainly in the informal sector’ and asks: ‘Does “career” really exist in these contexts?’ (n.p.). Currently, the need for post-modernising career development (helping people navigate distinctive life phases and bolstering their attitudes, beliefs, and competencies (ABCs) to enact multiple personal and career-life roles) is at its greatest (Hartung, 2018).

Many organisations can no longer provide workers with a sense of security and ‘guarantee’ life-long contracts. Consequently, workers struggle to deal with the glacier effect of rapidly and constantly changing occupational contexts. Many of them feel traumatised by this struggle and start to believe that their work has no personal or social meaning and purpose. Inevitably, they are obliged to re-plan, re-construct, and re-design their career-lives to help them become employable and find sustainable, decent work (Rossier, Ginevra, Bollmann, & Nauta, 2017). Accordingly, career development theorists, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers are challenged to rethink and post-modernise the theory and practice of career development (Duarte, 2017; Guichard, 2013; Hartung, 2015; Maree, 2018; Savickas, 2015). Their response should contextualise, update, and innovate career counselling theory, research, practical intervention, and policymaking endeavours (Maree & Di Fabio, 2019; Ribeiro & Guilherme de Oliveira, 2018). Savickas (2019a) rightfully contends that ‘[t]he future of the profession rests on our ability to develop new models and methods to help individuals cope with the new organization of work that is becoming increasingly less predictable, regulated, stable, and orderly’ (n.p.).

People and their best interests should always be central to efforts aimed at post-modernising, contextualising, updating, and innovating career development. Likewise, self-designing and career construction (Maree, in press; Savickas, 2019a) including construction, deconstruction, reconstruction, and co-construction of career-life stories should be regarded as critical features of efforts that equip people with the skills to negotiate an increasingly insecure and unpredictable future, characterised by multiple, repeated transitions in their personal and career-lives (Briddick & Sensoy-Briddick, 2017; Savickas, 2019b).

Given the context outlined above, we must continue our dialogue on these matters until the challenge of post-modernising career development has been met satisfactorily and answered effectively. Accordingly, the principal aim of this special issue of the AJCD is to promote and maintain such dialogue.

Types of manuscripts we are looking for
We welcome proposals for innovative micro-, meso- and macro-interventions that use career development to promote and enhance people’s ability to negotiate multiple career-related transitions.
Typical questions requiring answers are the following:

• What are some of the most influential models for post-modernising career development in Global South contexts, especially, and how can these models be advanced?
• How can career development be used to post-modernise career development in Global South contexts in particular?
• Which economic systems are most suited to promote post-modernising of career development in Global South contexts?
• How can post-modernising career development be supported systemically through various levels of education in Global South contexts?
• What can the public sector, the private sector, individual people, civil society and policymakers do to promote the post-modernising of career development and enhance people’s ability to negotiate multiple career-related transitions in Global South contexts?

We welcome thought-provoking, constructive contributions from across the spectrum of research methodologies – manuscripts that deal with theoretical and practical issues and that report on research from a quantitative, a qualitative, a mixed-methods, or an integrative qualitative-quantitative perspective (Hartung & Santili, 2018; Maree, 2013, 2019).

For the current guest issue, contributing authors are requested to consider the term ‘career development’ as including associated constructs such as information provision, placement, coaching, vocational guidance, career education, psychological counselling, career guidance, career advice, career counselling, as well as life designing and healing (Savickas, 2015).

Deadline for submissions
Please e-mail proposals for articles to kobus.maree@up.ac.za. In your proposal, please include:

• the proposed title
• a brief abstract (maximum word count: 250 words)
• author names, e-mail addresses, and affiliations for contributing authors
• contact details of the corresponding author

Please submit your proposal by no later than 30 September 2020. Proposals will be considered, and you will be notified about the outcome at our earliest convenience. The submission should be made online through the journal’s website ajcd.africa (AOSIS publishes the journal). Exceptionally, a manuscript may be submitted by e-mail attachment to the Guest Editor Kobus Maree (kobus.maree@up.ac.za). Submitted manuscripts will undergo peer-review, and authors will typically receive the results of the review within six weeks after the submission of their manuscripts. The issue will be published online in a fully citable form. Hard copy publication will occur at the earliest opportunity.

List of references

Arulmani, G. (2019, September). Career guidance in transition economies: New lamps for old? Keynote address at the 43^rd International Association for Educational and Vocational Guidance Conference, Bratislava, Slovakia.

Briddick, W., & Sensoy-Briddick, H. (2017). Psychology of career adaptability, employability and resilience. In Paradigm and promise: Life design, psychology of working, and decent work (pp. 317–327). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Duarte, M. E. (2017). Sustainable decent work. Invited public lecture at University of Pretoria. Pretoria, South Africa.

Graham, M., Hjorth, I., & Lehdonvirta, V. (2017). Digital labour and development: impacts of global digital labour platforms and the gig economy on worker livelihoods. Transfer, 23(2), 135-162. doi: 10.1177/1024258916687250

Guichard, J. (2013, November). Career guidance, education, and dialogues for a fair and sustainable human development. Inaugural conference of the UNESCO chair of Lifelong guidance and counseling, University of Wroclaw, Poland.

Hartung, P. J. (2015). Life design in childhood: Antecedents and advancement. In L. Nota, & J. Rossier (Eds.), Handbook of life design: From practice to theory, and from theory to practice (pp. 89–101). Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe.

Hartung, P. J. (2018, July). Life design: A unifying paradigm for international Counseling Psychology. Paper prepared for Division 16. Presidential Address at the 29th International Congress of Applied Psychology. Montréal, Quebec, Canada.

Hartung, P. J., & Santili, S. (2018). My Career Story: Description and initial validity evidence. Journal of Career Assessment, 26(2), 308–321

International Labor Organization (ILO). (2017). World employment social outlook: Trends 2017. Geneva, Switzerland: International Labor Office.

Koen, J. (2019, September). The future of job security: where do we start? Keynote address at the 43^rd International Association for Educational and Vocational Guidance Conference, Bratislava, Slovakia.

Maree, J. G. (2013). Counselling for career construction. Connecting life themes to construct life portraits: Turning pain into hope. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense.

Maree, J. G. (2018). Using life design counseling for career construction to facilitate sustainable employability and decent work in a developing country context. In V. Cohen-Scali, J. Pouyaud, M. Podgórny, V. Drabik-Podgórny, G. Aisenson, J-L. Bernaud, I. Moumoula., J. Guichard (Eds.). Interventions in career design and education (pp. 195–214). New York, NY: Springer.

Maree, J. G. (2019). Contextualisation as a determining factor for career counselling throughout the world. In J. A. Athanasou & H. N. Perera (Eds.). International handbook of career guidance (2nd ed.; pp. 555–578). New York: Springer.

Maree, J. G. (in press). Innovating counseling for self- and career construction: Connecting conscious knowledge with subconscious insight. New York, NY: Springer

Maree, J. G., & Di Fabio, A. (2019). Integrating personal and career counseling to promote sustainable development and change. Personality and Individual differences, 10(11). doi:10.3390/su10114176

Reid, H., & West, L. (2016). Negotiating professional and personal biographies in a liquid world: Creating space for reflexive innovation in career counselling. British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, 44, 562–575. https://doi.org/10.1080/03069885.2016.1145014

Ribeiro, M. A., & Guilherme de Oliveira, S. F. (2018). Impacts of a group-based career counseling model for unskilled adults in crisis: A case study. In A. Di Fabio & J.-L. Bernaud (Eds.), Narrative interventions in post-modern guidance and career counseling (pp. 87–118). Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98300-4_6

Rossier, J., Ginevra, M. C., Bollmann, G., & Nauta, L. (2017). The importance of career adaptability, career resilience, and employability in designing a successful life. In J. G. Maree (Ed.), Handbook of career adaptability, employability, and resilience. (pp. 65–84). New York, NY: Springer.

Savickas, M. L. (2015). Career counselling paradigms: Guiding, developing, and designing. In P. Hartung, M. Savickas, & W. B. Walsh (Eds.), APA handbook of career intervention, Volume 1: Foundations (pp. 129–143). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Savickas, M. L. (2019a, September). Designing a self and constructing a career in post-traditional societies. Keynote address at the 43^rd international association for educational and vocational guidance Conference, Bratislava, Slovakia.

Savickas, M. L. (2019b). Career Counseling. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Urbanaviciute, I., Udayar, S., & Rossier, J. (2019). Career adaptability and employee well-being over a two-year period: Investigating cross-lagged effects and their boundary conditions. Journal of Vocational Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2018.10.013

Yours sincerely,
Kobus Maree
Editor-in-Chief