Proactivity in career and identity styles in the world oriented towards global change

Abstract

The multi-contextual social changes, expressed in the permanent creation of the contemporary society, contribute to difficulties in the attempt to capture and unequivocally define the factors which determine them. A strictly “global” theoretical reflection refers to the complexity, heterogeneity, progressive interdependence of the world’s societies and the awareness of its totality. The complexity and temporal multidimensionality of the contemporary globalizing society (its ambiguity, ambivalence, transience, diversity) and the transformations of the socio-cultural reality which is subjected to constant fluctuations, make it difficult to grasp the description and standardization of the heterogeneity of the society which is undergoing objectivization in its actions. This fact is not without significance for the development of a new configuration of global policy, market structures and new patterns and models of careers. The issue of identity crystallizes the problem of individual career trajectories and the construction of the subject’s professional identity. In this sense, it is a narrative which has to be developed and which requires the creative contribution of the individual and their reflective approach to their own biography. Identity is shaped in the context of social and cultural influences of a reality which is subject to permanent change. The identity styles determined by the socio-cognitive processes relate to the individual preferences in the processing of information concerning the subjective “I”, in making decisions, in the selection of strategies of constructing or avoiding the crystallization of own identity and the quality of career decision-making in the world of “boundaryless careers”. In a situation where no career scenario adopted a priori provides a guarantee of success, investing in a career identified as the “property” of the subject, pursued “in one’s own case”, becomes a necessity and enforces the proactive planning, directing and management of a career.