Handbook of life design : from practice to theory and from theory to practice

Our lives and careers are becoming ever more unpredictable. The "life-design paradigm" described in detail in this ground-breaking handbook helps counselors and others meet people's increasing need to develop and manage their own lives and careers. Life-design interventions, suited to a wide variety of cultural settings, help individuals become actors in their own lives and careers by activating, stimulating, and developing their personal resources. This handbook first addresses life-design theory, then shows how to apply life designing to different age groups and with more at-risk people, and looks at how to train life-design counselors

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Our lives and careers are becoming ever more unpredictable. The "life-design paradigm" described in detail in this ground-breaking handbook helps counselors and others meet people's increasing need to develop and manage their own lives and careers. Life-design interventions, suited to a wide variety of cultural settings, help individuals become actors in their own lives and careers by activating, stimulating, and developing their personal resources. This handbook first addresses life-design theory, then shows how to apply life designing to different age groups and with more at-risk people, and looks at how to train life-design counselors.

The positive effects of a protean career attitude for self-initiated expatriates: Cultural adjustment as a mediator

Purpose - The authors sought to explain why and how protean career attitude might influence self-initiated expatriates' (SIEs) experiences positively. A mediation model of cultural adjustment was proposed and empirically evaluated. Design/methodology/approach - Data from 132 SIEs in Germany containing measures of protean career attitude, cultural adjustment, career satisfaction, life satisfaction, and intention to stay in the host country were analysed using path analysis with a bootstrap method. Findings - Empirical results provide support for the authors' proposed model: the positive relations between protean career attitude and the three expatriation outcomes (career satisfaction, life satisfaction and intention to stay in the host country) were mediated by positive cross-cultural adjustment of SIEs. Research limitations/implications - All data were cross-sectional from a single source. The sample size was small and included a large portion of Chinese participants. The study should be replicated with samples in other destination countries, and longitudinal research is suggested. Practical implications - By fostering both a protean career attitude in skilled SIE employees and their cultural adjustment, corporations and receiving countries could be able to retain this international workforce better in times of talent shortage. Originality/value - This study contributes to the scarce research on the conceptual relatedness of protean career attitude and SIEs, as well as to acknowledging the cultural diversity of the SIE population.

Effectiveness of career counseling and the impact of the working alliance.

This study analyzes the role of the working alliance on the life satisfaction and career decision difficulties of clients participating in career counseling in Switzerland. The study also compares these career counseling clients to a group of students who did not seek counseling, to explore the overall effectiveness of a face-to-face career counseling intervention, using a pre-post design. Results indicated that the working alliance was positively associated with clients' satisfaction with the intervention and with the final level of their life satisfaction. Working alliance was also negatively associated with the final levels of career decision difficulties. Moreover, clients' career decision difficulties significantly decreased and their life satisfaction increased throughout the intervention. These findings suggest that working alliance represents an important variable to better understand career interventions' underlying mechanisms. Moreover, face-to-face career counseling is effective considering career-specific as well as broader, life-related indicators.

Work values as predictors of entrepreneurial career intentions: A longitudinal analysis of gender effects

Purpose - Work values are an important characteristic to understand gender differences in career intentions, but how gender affects the relationship between values and career intentions is not well established. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether gender moderates the effects of work values on level and change of entrepreneurial intentions (EI). Design/methodology/approach - In total, 218 German university students were sampled regarding work values and with EI assessed three times over the course of 12 months. Data were analysed with latent growth modelling. Findings - Self-enhancement and openness to change values predicted higher levels and conservation values lower levels of EI. Gender moderated the effects of enhancement and conservation values on change in EI. Research limitations/implications - The authors relied on self-reported measures and the sample was restricted to university students. Future research needs to verify to what extent these results generalize to other samples and different career fields, such as science or nursing. Practical implications - The results imply that men and women are interested in an entrepreneurial career based on the same work values but that values have different effects for men and women regarding individual changes in EI. The results suggest that the prototypical work values of a career domain seem important regarding increasing the career intent for the gender that is underrepresented in that domain. Originality/value - The results enhance understanding of how gender affects the relation of work values and a specific career intention, such as entrepreneurship.

Life design: Un paradigma per la costruzione della vita professionale nel XXI secolo

In questo inizio di secolo, la nuova organizzazione sociale del lavoro pone una serie di domande e di sfide ai ricercatori che intendono aiutare le persone a progettare la loro vita lavorativa. Nell'era della globalizzazione anche per quanto riguarda il career counseling, abbiamo deciso di affrontare queste problematiche e di dare delle risposte che si caratterizzassero come innovative attraverso la costituzione di un forum di discussione internazionale. Si è proceduto in questo modo per evitare le difficoltà che generalmente si incontrano quando si mettono a punto dei modelli e dei metodi in un Paese e poi si esportano in altre culture con l'intento di adattarli alle stesse. Questo articolo presenta i primi risultati della collaborazione che si è registrata - un modello e dei metodi per la consulenza di orientamento. Il modello per l'intervento nell'ambito dell'approccio Life Design si caratterizza per cinque presupposti relativi al modo di vedere le persone e la loro vita lavorativa. Essi riguardano le possibilità contestuali, i processi dinamici, i progressi non-lineari, le molteplici prospettive e la presenza di pattern personali. Partendo da questi cinque presupposti abbiamo messo a punto un modello basato sull'epistemologia del costruzionismo sociale, che sostiene che la conoscenza e l'identità di un individuo sono i prodotti dell'interazione sociale e che il significato è costruito attraverso il discorso. Questo approccio fa riferimento anche alla teoria della costruzione di sé di Guichard (2005) e della costruzione della vita professionale di Savickas (2005), che descrivono le azioni utili a facilitare la progettazione del proprio futuro. Particolare attenzione viene data agli interventi nel corso dell'arco di vita, olistici, contestuali e preventivi.

Life designing: A paradigm for career construction in the 21st century

At the beginning of the 21st century, a new social arrangement of work poses a series of questions and challenges to scholars who aim to help people develop their working lives. Given the globalization of career counseling, we decided to address these issues and then to formulate potentially innovative responses in an international forum. We used this approach to avoid the difficulties of creating models and methods in one country and then trying to export them to other countries where they would be adapted for use. This article presents the initial outcome of this collaboration, a counseling model and methods. The life-designing model for career intervention endorses five presuppositions about people and their work lives: contextual possibilities, dynamic processes, non-linear progression, multiple perspectives, and personal patterns. Thinking from these five presuppositions, we have crafted a contextualized model based on the epistemology of social constructionism, particularly recognizing that an individual's knowledge and identity are the product of social interaction and that meaning is co-constructed through discourse. The life-design framework for counseling implements the theories of self-constructing [Guichard, J. (2005). Life-long self-construction. International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, 5, 111-124] and career construction [Savickas, M. L. (2005). The theory and practice of career construction. In S. D. Brown & R. W. Lent (Eds.), Career development and counselling: putting theory and research to work (pp. 42-70). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley] that describe vocational behavior and its development. Thus, the framework is structured to be life-long, holistic, contextual, and preventive.

Validation of an Adapted French Form of the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale in four Francophone Countries

This study presents the validation of a French version of the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale in four Francophone countries. The aim was to re-analyze the item selection and then compare this newly developed French-language form with the international form 2.0. Exploratory factor analysis was used as a tool for item selection, and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) verified the structure of the CAAS French-language form. Measurement equivalence across the four countries was tested using multi-group CFA. Adults and adolescents (N=1,707) participated from Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. Items chosen for the final version of the CAAS French-language form are different to those in the CAAS international form 2.0 and provide an improvement in terms of reliability. The factor structure is replicable across country, age, and gender. Strong evidence for metric invariance and partial evidence for scalar invariance of the CAAS French-language form across countries is given. The CAAS French-language and CAAS international form 2.0 can be used in a combined form of 31 items. The CAAS French-language form will certainly be interesting for practitioners using interventions based on the life design paradigm or aiming at increasing career adapt-ability.

Exploring the path through which career adaptability increases job satisfaction and lowers work stress : the role of affect

The construct of career adaptability, or the ability to successfully manage one's career development and challenges, predicts several important outcomes; however, little is known about the mechanisms contributing to its positive effects. The present study investigated the impact of career adaptability on job satisfaction and work stress, as mediated by individuals' affective states. Using a representative sample of 1671 individuals employed in Switzerland we hypothesized that, over time, career adaptability amplifies job satisfaction and attenuates work stress, through higher positive affect and lower negative affect, respectively. The data resulted from the first three waves of a longitudinal project on professional paths conducted in Switzerland. For each wave, participants completed a survey. Results of the 3-wave cross-lagged longitudinal model show that employees with higher career adaptability at Time 1 indeed experienced at Time 3 higher job satisfaction and lower work stress than those with lower career adaptability. The effect of career adaptability on job satisfaction and work stress was accounted for by negative affect: Individuals higher on career adaptability experienced less negative affect, which led to lower levels of stress and higher levels of job satisfaction, beyond previous levels of job satisfaction and work stress. Overall results support the conception of career adaptability as a self-regulatory resource that may promote a virtuous cycle in which individuals' evaluations of their resources to cope with the environment (i.e., career adaptability) shape their affective states, which in turn influence the evaluations of their job.

Hope as a Resource for Career Exploration : Examining Incremental and Cross-Lagged Effects

Hope is believed to be beneficial for vocational pursuits, but the question of how and why hope is related to pivotal career development variables remains largely unaddressed. In a series of three studies,we investigated the relationship between hope and career exploration. Study 1 examined at-risk adolescents (N = 228) in Switzerland and showed that hope explains variance in career exploration beyond the significant effects of generalized self-efficacy beliefs and perceived social support. Study 2 found the same result among a group (N=223) of first-year students at a Swiss university with a measure of state hope. Study 3 applied a one-year cross-lagged design with a diverse group of students (N = 266) at a German university to investigate the mutual effects of dispositional hope and career exploration over time. Although both variables were found to be related within and over time, we could not confirm lagged effects in either direction. The results suggest that hope is significantly correlated with career exploration because both are related to personality and social-contextual variables.

Rational design of an organometallic glutathione transferase inhibitor.

Double trouble: A hybrid organic-inorganic (organometallic) inhibitor was designed to target glutathione transferases. The metal center is used to direct protein binding, while the organic moiety acts as the active-site inhibitor (see picture). The mechanism of inhibition was studied using a range of biophysical and biochemical methods.

Using active learning for monitoring networks design: The example of wind power plants sites evaluation

Locating new wind farms is of crucial importance for energy policies of the next decade. To select the new location, an accurate picture of the wind fields is necessary. However, characterizing wind fields is a difficult task, since the phenomenon is highly nonlinear and related to complex topographical features. In this paper, we propose both a nonparametric model to estimate wind speed at different time instants and a procedure to discover underrepresented topographic conditions, where new measuring stations could be added. Compared to space filling techniques, this last approach privileges optimization of the output space, thus locating new potential measuring sites through the uncertainty of the model itself.