The article delves into the multifaceted nature of career development, highlighting the influence of political ideologies, technological advances, and socio-economic factors. It argues that career adaptability and resilience are not merely individual traits but are deeply intertwined with the complex systems that individuals navigate. The Systems Theory Framework (STF) is introduced as a metatheoretical tool to map the vast, dynamic influences on career development, emphasizing the interconnectedness of personal, social, and environmental factors. The article critically examines the constructs of career adaptability and resilience, cautioning against their uncritical adoption and advocating for a systems perspective that acknowledges the broader context of social justice. It explores how systemic influences, including power, privilege, and discrimination, shape career trajectories and calls for a more holistic approach to career guidance that considers these systemic interactions. The article concludes by urging practitioners, researchers, and theorists to embrace systems thinking to advocate for the needs of individuals impacted by systemic barriers, aligning with the foundational values of social justice in career guidance.
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Abstract
Amidst constant societal, environmental and labour market changes, people are urged to be resilient and adaptable in their careers. Career guidance often portrays career resilience and adaptability as measurable traits, overlooking the privileging, discriminating, oppressing or marginalising impact of multiple systems (e.g. social, economic, political and educational) on them. The systems theory framework of career development offers a holistic view of the complex systems influencing career adaptability and resilience. This conceptual article proposes systems thinking as a perspective that links career adaptability and resilience with social justice towards more effectively addressing the needs of a diversifying population.
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Career development is widely viewed as the domain of individuals, yet it occurs in the context of complex systems of influence (Patton & McMahon, 2021; Sultana, 2023a; Super, 1990). It is not immune from the systemic influences of political ideologies, technological advances, growing inequality, climate change, the pressing need for sustainability and the consequences of power, privilege, discrimination and oppression. The field of career guidance grew out of the social reform movement that recognised that individuals may need support with their career development. As society transformed rapidly, Frank Parsons (1909) and other social reformers responded to a need to assist less fortunate people with finding work. Essentially, they recognised that individuals may need vocational guidance to imagine and construct their futures. Social justice has remained an underpinning value of career guidance to the present time.
Just as career guidance emerged at a time when individuals and societies were facing social and economic upheaval and rapid change, individuals in the twenty-first century are also facing a dynamic landscape. Increasingly, the terms career resilience and career adaptability are being promoted as desirable qualities for individuals to possess and have been readily adopted into the discourse of career guidance. However, cautions about the uncritical adoption of these terms into career guidance have been offered (Ribeiro, 2021; Sultana, 2024). For example, Ribeiro (2021) questioned the applicability of these terms in developing world contexts because of their primarily Western, middle-class orientations, and Sultana (2024) cautioned about the neoliberal implications of these terms for career guidance. Both authors draw attention to the need to consider these terms in the context of the broader systems in which they are being promoted.
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Despite growing awareness in career guidance of the importance of taking context into account when working with clients (McMahon & Abkhezr, 2024), to date career practice has largely taken a psychological individualistic approach. To inform and motivate career research and practice in moving beyond such approaches, this conceptual article proposes adopting a systems perspective grounded in the systems theory framework (Patton & McMahon, 2021) of career development through which career adaptability and career resilience could be considered systemically. Systemic consideration of career adaptability and career resilience sensitises researchers and practitioners about context-specific circumstances and systems of oppression and disadvantage that disrupt a wide range of people’s career development, and consequently, impact their career adaptability and career resilience.
Conceptual articles integrate literature (Gilson & Goldberg, 2015) and contribute new perspectives (Gilson & Goldberg, 2015; Jaakkola, 2020; Reese, 2023; Rocco et al., 2022) on a topic. By bridging multiple theoretical models and constructs, conceptual articles operate as an innovative and critical means to theory-building and advancing contemporary discourse in ways that make a field of knowledge more responsive to the needs of multiple groups of people in diverse societies and contexts. By acknowledging career development’s long-standing relationship with social justice, this conceptual article proposes that (a) career adaptability and career resilience need to be considered in the context of complex systems of influence; (b) adopting a systems perspective informed by the STF of career development offers a contextual perspective on career adaptability and career resilience enabled by systems thinking; and (c) that an STF perspective on career adaptability and career resilience facilitates a link to social justice. An overview of systems theory and the STF begins the article.
Systems theory and the systems theory framework
Individuals do not exist in isolation, and thus the construction of careers and career development occurs within the context of complex systems. The career adaptability and career resilience of individuals are mitigated by the complex systems of influences in which they live, yet the relationships between complex systems and individuals have not, as yet, been comprehensively investigated in career guidance. Systems theory offers a way of explaining and understanding the features of, and relationships within, complex systems. First proposed by Ludwig von Bertalanffy in 1934, general systems theory views a system as a “complex of elements standing in interaction” (p. 33). Single elements of a system cannot provide a complete picture of it (von Bertalanffy, 1934). Systems are dynamic, as elements of the system interact and change across time. General systems theory (von Bertalanffy, 1968) offers a way of understanding how whole systems need to be studied in the context of their parts, and parts need to be studied in the context of the whole system and the complex interaction within and between the whole system and their parts. In terms of career development, ‘parts’ such as personal traits (e.g. personality, interests or values) cannot provide a complete picture of a client’s career development or career concern.
Career development occurs throughout life in complex familial, social, historical, cultural, geographic and socio-political systems (Brown & Lent, 2020; Patton & McMahon, 2021; Super, 1990; Vondracek et al., 1986), and therefore is an inherently complex lifelong systemic phenomenon. Osipow (1983) was one of the first career theorists to recognise the potential contribution of systems theory to conceptualising the complexity of career development. He believed that through systems theory:
elements of the social, personal, and economic situation within which individuals operate may be more explicitly analyzed, and the relationships of the larger systems to one another may be more clearly understood than in the traditional approaches to behavior, which tend to emphasize only one major segment of the individual or the environment (Osipow, 1983, p. 320).
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For example, Super’s life-span life-space model (Super, 1990) depicts the complexity of career development in his archway of career determinants as well as in his life-career rainbow. Super refers to the ‘theatres’, that is, contexts in which career development occurs and acknowledges the process of career development through a series of stages across the lifespan. Similarly, the complexity of career development was portrayed in the developmental–contextual model of Vondracek et al. (1986) and in the systems theory framework (Patton & McMahon, 2021) of career development. By recognising both the contexts of career development and its progress across time, these authors acknowledged the content and process of career development, that is, its systemic nature.
Systems theory framework (STF)
Despite the potential utility of systems theory to career development being recognised (e.g. Osipow, 1983), it was not specifically introduced as a theoretical contribution until 1995 when the systems theory framework (STF) of career development was first published (McMahon & Patton, 1995). Since that time, the STF (see Figure 1) and its applications to practice and research have been comprehensively described (Patton & McMahon, 1999, 2006, 2014, 2021) and continue to contribute to the field. By valuing the contributions of all career theories that explain in detail various elements of career development, the STF is a metatheoretical framework that synthesises the systems perspective of career development (Blustein, 2006). Subsequent to the publication of the STF, systems theory influenced the chaos theory of careers (CTC; Pryor & Bright, 2011) and also underpinned the living systems theory of vocational behaviour and development (Vondracek et al., 2014).
The STF of career development, the theoretical focus of this article, is a systems map of the vast, complex and dynamic influences and intersecting systems that influence career development through temporal, contextual and cultural connectedness (see Figure 1). The STF recognises the uniqueness of individuals in relation to their contexts and cultures, that is, in the context of a complex system of recursively interconnected influences. Included in the STF are examples of an extensive, but not exhaustive, array of content and process influences on career development. The content influences are represented in a series of concentric circles. The centre of the STF constitutes the individual system and a broad range of intrapersonal influences on career development, some of which (e.g. interests, personality, values) have been comprehensively described in career theory, as well as others (e.g. ethnicity, sexual orientation) that have been afforded less attention. Interconnecting with the individual system are the influences of the individual’s social system including family, peers, education institutions, workplaces, community groups and media. The individual and the social systems are located within the context of the environmental–societal system of influences that include geographical location, employment market, political decisions, historical trends, socioeconomic circumstances and globalisation. The influences represented in these three interconnected systems are the content influences of career development.
In career theory, the content influences of the individual system and their impact on career development have been afforded greater attention than those of the social and environmental–societal, which have received more attention from fields such as sociology, geography and economics. The metatheoretical properties of the STF also accommodate a multi-disciplinary perspective by recognising the depth of understanding offered by other disciplines (e.g. sociology, labour market economics) about the impact of social and environmental–societal influences on the career development of individuals.
The STF incorporates three process influences. As reflected by the dotted lines on the STF (see Figure 1), processes of interaction exist within and between influences, and this is termed recursiveness. The temporal nature of career development is represented in the STF by an outer circle depicting the process influence of change over time through the interconnections between past, present and future time. Recognising the influence of unpredictable events such as accidents and human-induced and natural disasters on career development, the STF incorporates the influence of chance, the third of the three process influences, represented by lightning flashes. Although the individual is depicted in the centre of the STF, the STF emphasises a context-resonant perspective that accommodates career development in cultures that are individual in their orientation, as well as in family and community-oriented cultures. For example, in cultures that are more family and community-oriented, the social and environmental–societal systems may be given priority over the individual system.
Systems thinking and systems maps
Taking a systems perspective of career development necessarily involves applying the discipline of systems thinking which ‘places equal emphasis on identifying and describing the interactions between objects in the system, as it does the objects themselves’ (Lim et al., 2018, p. 22). Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes and parts and reflecting on the patterns and interrelationships within and between them (Palmberg et al., 2017; Qudrat-Allah, 2023; Sexton, 2012). Systems, by their very nature, are complex, as evidenced by the STF, and concomitantly, systems thinking is also complex. Being able to visualise or ‘see’ the system therefore is critical to systems thinking and can be aided by diagrams and maps (Patton & McMahon, 2021). Systems maps, such as the STF, are holistic diagrams of a phenomenon (Király et al., 2016) that draw attention to the parts – sub-systems – of the whole system and their interconnectedness. Common examples of systems maps include maps of public transport (e.g., the London underground map), diagrams of the systems of the human body, supply chain diagrams and domestic electrical wiring diagrams.
The STF, as a metatheory, takes a pluralistic view of theory, including those of other disciplines, such as sociology, which pay greater attention to how power, privilege, discrimination and oppression manifest in complex systems. It remains curious that in career guidance, a field that holds social justice as its underpinning value, factors that profoundly influence power, privilege, discrimination and oppression have seldom been researched or theorised. Thus, comprehensively mapping the social reality of career development through its complex and dynamic pluralistic perspective, the STF provides an opportunity to consider the systemic interaction between social justice and the constructs of career resilience and career adaptability, and the influence of complex systems on such interaction.
A systems perspective of social justice and career guidance
Career guidance was borne out of the social reform movement of the late 1800s and early 1900s at a time of rapid societal change. Since that time, a commitment to social justice has underpinned career guidance (Arthur & Collins, 2014, p. 172) with a view to advancing society (O’Brien, 2001) by assisting people with their learning and work concerns. Social justice is ‘an articulation of what individuals, groups and societies believe is morally and politically right’ (Hooley et al., 2018, p. 4) and therefore, definitions of social justice vary and people have different ideas about what exactly it is. Commonly associated with words such as equity, equality and fairness, in the present context of pressing issues such as climate change and the need for sustainable development, social justice ‘implies a world where the distribution of resources is equal and ecologically sustainable, where every member is physically and psychologically safe, acknowledged and respected’ (Nota et al., 2020, p. 54). Unfortunately, society is once again at a time of rapid change that is seeing a growing divide where:
rights have been challenged, curtailed, and even eroded, under the onslaught of neoliberal economic fundamentalism that puts profit before people, dramatically deepening the gap between the “haves” and “have nots.” New forms of exploitation have emerged, impacting not only incomes but also one’s experience of work (Sultana, 2023b, p. 110).
The unique cultural and contextual systems of individuals can privilege, oppress, marginalise or discriminate (McMahon, 2023). History is rife with examples of systems of privilege, power, oppression and discrimination. Any system of influence could privilege, oppress or discriminate and have lasting impacts on the career development of an individual by advantaging or disadvantaging them. For example, the influence of workplaces, a social system, could privilege, discriminate or oppress workers through employment policies, conditions and wage structures. Socio-economic disadvantage, an environmental–societal system influence, has previously been more a focus for sociologists, who have highlighted its impact on individuals (Archer et al., 2023; Flouri et al., 2017; Roberts, 2012). Ethnicity, race and culture have resulted in privilege, discrimination and oppression for many people throughout history and continue to do so (McMahon, 2023). Political decisions based on neo-liberalism have perpetuated a growing divide between the rich and the poor in countries around the world and have resulted in diminishing job quality, declining real wages and reduced job security for many individuals (Blustein & Flores, 2023).
The intra-personal influence of gender has, throughout history, seen women disadvantaged in education and labour markets in most countries to the extent that gender equality is one of the United Nations’ 2030 Goals for Sustainable Development (United Nations, 2015). The chance event of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has exacerbated inequalities in countries around the world. In an example of the temporal interconnectedness between past, present and future and change over time, climate change, the most pressing issue of our time that is bringing with it natural disasters that are profoundly influencing the lives and livelihoods of individuals and communities, has emanated from the unsustainable practices of the past and present, and their influences will be felt well into the future. The influence of climate change interconnected with geographic location is seeing areas of the world being made unliveable as a result of rising sea levels and desertification and a consequent new wave of migrants will be forcibly displaced and necessarily have to relocate (Cattaneo et al., 2019). An individual’s career development, therefore, is set within a dynamic system that can privilege, oppress or discriminate. In reflecting on ‘the institution of work and removing structural barriers that limit all workers from accessing dignified work’, Blustein and Flores (2023) concluded that ‘we need to think systemically and move beyond change at the individual level’ (p. 265). Similarly, Beqiraj and Ferrari (2023) observed that:
given the profound influence of political, institutional, and socio-economic factors in shaping the lives and careers of As&R [asylum seekers and refugees], limited integration of such insights within personal agency-based models is likely to lead to an imbalance in counselling interventions towards individual resources and adaptive capacities, placing the responsibility on the individual for the difficulties that derive from complex dynamic systemic influences (p. 22).
Systems thinking is therefore essential for understanding the complex and constraining circumstances of individuals; it can aid reflection on social justice. Systems thinking is also essential for solving complex systems problems (Bartlett et al., 2020; Cyril, 2024; Lim et al., 2018; Palmberg et al., 2017; Sanneh, 2018; Voulvoulis et al., 2022) and can be learned as a skill to help people ‘develop capacities to become agents for systemic change’ (Bartlett et al., 2020, p. 71; Marcos-Sánchez et al., 2022; Palmberg et al., 2017). Systems thinking invites practitioners to reflect on the relationships between different systems that influence an individual’s career development, and who, other than the individual themselves, may contribute to change (e.g. families, employers and policy-makers) to support the individual.
Systems thinking is an important consideration in an era when theoretical discourse and career practice are being increasingly influenced by philosophies that promote individual agency in career construction. The discourse that emphasises career self-management in the face of challenges and adversities highlights attention to constructs such as employability, career adaptability and career resilience and promotes a heightened focus on the individual’s responsibility for maintaining and improving them. Assuming that individuals are solely responsible for constructing their careers tends to ignore circumstances where systemic influences are oppressive or discriminatory; such an assumption does not sit comfortably with the social justice foundation of career guidance. A systems approach is more likely to achieve socially just outcomes for individuals; ‘social justice is more likely to be achieved when macro-level interventions (such as policies) are augmented by micro- and meso-level interventions in supporting students who are struggling to survive financially in higher education’ (Firfirey & Cornelissen, 2010, p. 1001). It is against this background of the STF and the systems of privilege, power, oppression, marginalisation and discrimination portrayed within it, as well as career guidance’s long-held core value of social justice, that constructs of career adaptability and career resilience are now considered.
Career adaptability and career resilience
The concomitant occurrence of an exponentially changing, globalising and technologically advancing twenty-first-century world of work with the historically individualising and psychologising approach of career guidance has led to the emergence and widespread acceptance of constructs such as career resilience and career adaptability. As the dominant individualistic discourse in career guidance perpetuates an over-emphasis on the individual as the sole subject responsible for successfully and sustainably navigating the labour market, the systemic, dynamic and interconnected process of career development is underestimated. Such underestimation compromises the link between career guidance and its social justice values. This is exemplified through the widespread adoption of the constructs of career resilience and career adaptability in career guidance.
Career resilience
Resilience has long been an important construct in psychology, but has been afforded less attention in career guidance, where it has been associated with career motivation, career commitment, career self-management, career success and career change behaviors (Bimrose & Hearne, 2012; Lyons et al., 2015). Career resilience has been described as ‘an essential skill for the 21st century’ (Cascio, 2007, p. 552), ‘a strategic imperative for the future of work and learning’ (Lengelle et al., 2017, p. 42) and a measure of proactive behaviour towards effective career self-management (Pouyaud et al., 2017). While resilience is broadly considered as ‘the ability to adapt to change, even when the circumstances are discouraging or disruptive’ (London, 1997, p. 34), career resilience is defined as a person’s ability to bounce back, perhaps even stronger, from adverse career circumstances and experiences by demonstrating a high degree of adaptability, flexibility, self-confidence and competence (Luthans et al., 2006). As an ability to navigate challenging career situations and adapt successfully to adversities (Rossier et al., 2017), career resilience has been deemed necessary to ‘flourish and be successful in today’s turbulent career era’ (Peeters et al., 2022, p. 373).
Despite such descriptions, in an integrative literature review of career resilience, Mishra and McDonald (2017) concluded that there is limited agreement and some ambiguity about how career resilience has been defined and operationalised. For example, definitions position career resilience as an ‘ability’, that is, a personal trait that can be measured (e.g. Abu-Tineh, 2011), a desirable outcome (e.g. Van Vuuren & Fourie, 2000) and as a process in definitions such as ‘a process of development occurring over time, through person-environment interactions’ (Mansfield et al., 2012, p. 365) and ‘a dynamic process encompassing positive adaptation within the context of significant adversity’ (Luthar et al., 2000, p. 543). Viewing career resilience not as a trait but more as a process of learning, Lengelle et al. (2017) claim that it is ‘the result of a dynamic socially imbedded conversation aimed at the development of a career identity’ (p. 42) involving both internal and external dialogue. This variance in definitions and explanations highlights that career resilience is both a ‘complex and complicated’ (Mishra & McDonald, 2017, p. 23) construct. Essentially, career resilience comprises two key elements, specifically (1) adversity at work which compromises performance or wellbeing and (2) positive adaptation (Hartmann et al., 2020; Mishra & McDonald, 2017). Mishra and McDonald (2017) suggest as a third element that career resilience is not a point-in-time event but rather an unfolding process across a career.
On the basis of their literature review, Mishra and McDonald (2017) concluded that career resilience is ‘a complex phenomenon, involving an interaction between characteristics of the individual and the context’ (p. 10) and subsequently defined it as ‘a developmental process of persisting, adapting, and/or flourishing in one’s career despite challenges, changing events, and disruptions over time’ (p. 10–11). Rutter (2006) suggests that viewing resilience as a process rather than a fixed ability allows for it to alter and vary depending on the type of setback experienced. ‘Process’ definitions, more than ‘ability’ definitions, offer greater acknowledgement of context and factors that could facilitate career resilience (Masten, 2018; Mishra & McDonald, 2017; Rutter, 2006).
Resilience can be nurtured and developed across a career through a range of internal and external protective factors (Dyer & McGuiness, 1996; Turner & Holdsworth, 2023). Protective factors are ‘attributes in individuals, families, or communities that assist individuals to manage stressful events more effectively and mitigate or eliminate risks’ (Turner & Holdsworth, 2023, p. 807). Internal factors are psychological and biological factors intrinsic to individuals that can be developed across time, such as ‘emotional intelligence, reflective ability, empathy, social competencies, goal setting, maintaining perspective, and staying healthy’ (Turner & Holdsworth, 2023, p. 807). External factors that promote resilience include social and environmental support from sources such as families, schools, friends and colleagues, and communities and access to resources. Workplaces also can cultivate protective factors such as ‘a safe and supportive environment that promotes positive relationships between workers which encourage opportunities for development, growth and success’ (Turner & Holdsworth, 2023, p. 807). Resilience, therefore, is situationally variable and best understood in context (Dyer & McGuiness, 1996). Assuming a holistic and dynamic view of career resilience positions it as a systemic construct and suggests that viewing it solely as a personal fixed trait could be limiting, dismissing the ‘dynamic interactions involving many processes across and between systems’ (Masten, 2018, p. 16).
Career adaptability
Career resilience and career adaptability may seem closely related but may be distinguished because career adaptability is a more proactive construct, whereas career resilience is more of a personal trait (Peeters et al., 2022). For example, career resilience is ‘the capacity to continue making progress toward your current career goals with the resources and strategies you have already developed … [whereas career adaptability] involves reformulating your goals and/or strategies to adapt to new work and career realities’ (Seibert et al., 2016, p. 245). Career adaptability was first proposed as a construct in career development more than four decades ago (Super & Knasel, 1981). It attracted attention at the end of the twentieth century when Super’s (1990) theory was repositioned as career construction theory (Savickas, 1997, 2020) and career adaptability was defined as ‘the readiness to cope with the predictable tasks of preparing for and participating in the work role and with the unpredictable adjustments prompted by changes in work and working conditions’ (Savickas, 1997, p. 254). More recently, career adaptability was highlighted as a positive response to disruptive work circumstances, self-regulation and a necessary resource for successfully navigating the complex labour market of the twenty-first century (e.g. Chan & Mai, 2015; Creed et al., 2009; Johnston et al., 2016; Rudolph et al., 2017). Gradually, career adaptability was elevated to one of the top skills among the myriad important skills and competencies necessary for individuals to make career transitions into and through the labour markets of economically developed countries (Deloitte, 2021). For example, an individual is said to be career adaptable if they recognise their need to change jobs, seek assistance, if necessary, investigate possible options and apply for other positions (Savickas, 2020).
Career adaptability was originally explained through the four dimensions of concern, control, curiosity and confidence (Savickas, 2020). A fifth dimension of cooperation was considered (Savickas, 2008), however, despite its relevance for people from collectivist and non-western cultural backgrounds (Nye et al., 2017; Prasad, 2021), this dimension remains less emphasised, less researched and consequently, not included in widely used career adaptability measures (e.g. Career Adapt-Abilities Scale; Porfeli & Savickas, 2012).
While proposing career adaptability, Savickas (1997) relied on two fundamental functionalist questions: What do people do? and Why do they do it? By proposing that ‘learning and decision-making are components of adaptation’ (p. 253), adaptation was considered as the answer to the first question. However, potential answers to the second question, which draw attention to the context of career development, remain less attended to. Highlighting the construct of career adaptability without attending to answers for the second question perpetuates the career guidance discourse that views the individual as detached from their contexts and cultures. At a time when the field of career guidance is searching for more answers to sustain its significant and central role in responding to the range of work-related problems faced by a whole gamut of people other than those of a middle-class Western background (Blustein, 2006; Ribeiro, 2021; Sultana, 2023a, 2024), adding a third question to these two questions could be worthwhile: How do people do it?. It is in the process of responding to this third question that systemic and relational perspectives on career guidance (Blustein, 2006; Patton & McMahon, 2021) highlight the multiplicity and diversity of contexts and processes through which all people develop careers and navigate the world of work.
For example, people with refugee backgrounds are often forced to make numerous career transitions throughout their migration journeys due to the involuntary nature of their journey, often because of conflict emanating from systems of power, oppression or discrimination in their home countries. Forcible displacement challenges the pre-migration career plans of young refugees who encounter multiple contextual, cultural and developmental transitions throughout their migration journey that may last a decade or more before they are finally resettled in another country (Abkhezr et al., 2018). During the migration journey, they encounter a multitude of systems of influence including international aid agencies and resettlement agencies. Although young refugees have to constantly adapt to their circumstances, their career plans and decisions journey with them through time, contexts and culture (of the home country, neighbouring countries, refugee camps, etc.) and transform after exposure to various systems of influence. Once resettled, refugees are exposed to a range of new systems of influence such as the labour market, education and social security systems, and unfortunately, a range of new systems of oppression and discrimination (e.g. racism, classism; Beqiraj & Ferrari, 2023). Additionally, when we consider that many people’s career development (often with collectivist cultural backgrounds) is tied to their familial and communal contexts (Arulmani, 2024), the social and environmental–societal systems precede the individual system. For these people, career decision-making and planning are embedded and tied to familial and relational considerations. Thus, the present individualistic conceptualisations of career adaptability as an individual ability or resource may be insensitive to their circumstances. Reflecting on the ever-changing scene of systemic influences on the career development of a young person with a refugee background who is now resettled in a Western country provides an example of the recursive systemic interaction between both content and process influences on career development as depicted in the STF (Abkhezr et al., 2021). In attending to such nuanced diversities and multiplicities of experience, a need for considering ‘how’ people develop careers is prioritised. To do this, the STF offers a contextual, that is, systemic, consideration of constructs such as career adaptability and career resilience.
Considering career adaptability and career resilience through a systems perspective
Career adaptability and career resilience have been primarily conceptualised in career guidance as measurable personal traits. From a systems perspective, conceptualising career adaptability and career resilience as more than personal traits may be possible, and indeed, essential. To individualise these constructs is to ignore the challenges of the systems of power, privilege, discrimination, marginalisation and oppression that influence them and feed into the policy discourse of neo-liberal thinking about individual responsibility (Bimrose & Hearne, 2012; Hooley et al., 2018). Terms such as career resilience and career adaptability may become problematic if they ‘encourage us to view systemic problems as if they were shortcomings of individuals’ (Sultana, 2024, p. 4). In a neo-liberal context that dismisses the systemic nature of people's challenges, the assumption of greater personal responsibility without adequate social and systemic support is normalised (Sultana, 2011). Career guidance practices that emphasise individual agency and place responsibility on the individual, while ignoring the systems of influence, adopt the same approach as the oppressive systems that fuel inequality and disadvantage. Agency is constrained and compromised by systemic structural inequities (Theron, 2017) and the wellbeing of adolescents and young adults is compromised by systemic oppression and marginalisation (Castro et al., 2022). It is curious that in a field founded in social justice, the marginalisation of people through oppression has not been comprehensively addressed.
The perspective of the STF enacted through systems thinking can remind practitioners and researchers of the systems of power, privilege, oppression and discrimination that can expand or limit people’s opportunities and require systems interventions such as advocacy. For example, the climate migrants, asylum seekers and refugees previously mentioned will need more than personal career resilience and adaptability to successfully resettle. Systemic discrimination by some employers requiring newcomers to countries to have local work experience limits their employment opportunities by devaluing their existing qualifications, skills and knowledge, resulting in many newcomers engaging in menial occupations, such as precarious gig work, that in turn impacts their wellbeing and their standard of living (Abkhezr & McMahon, 2024; Peticca-Harris et al., 2020 ). Underutilisation of talent and potential in this way is a problem for businesses and governments (Andresen & Stapf, 2023), especially in times of labour shortages. A further example of the pernicious effects of privilege and oppression is reflected in the relationship between social mobility, social origin and socio-economic status; for example, young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds, from migrant families and girls ‘face more barriers than others in achieving their goals when they embark on their working lives’ (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], 2024b, p. 3). Such inequalities are unjustified (Andresen & Stapf, 2023) and ‘career guidance has a key role to play in challenging social inequalities and supporting social mobility’ (OECD, 2024a, p. 1). Assisting individuals to develop career resilience and adaptability, however, is insufficient to counteract social and systemic inequality. A systems perspective suggests that education authorities and schools have a role to play in ensuring that appropriate career guidance systems are in place to support these young people (OECD, 2024a, 2024b). Such systems could incorporate support for parents and families and building community and employer connections (OECD, 2024a, 2024b). A systems perspective also suggests that there is a role for policy-makers to play in providing macro-level support, for example, funding for career development research and practice such as targeted and tailored career guidance services in schools, higher education and vocational education, and programs for various groups.
A critical stance of considering the constructs of career resilience and career adaptability systemically has implications for career guidance theory, research and practice. For example, the constructs of career resilience and career adaptability have emerged in a largely Western and middle class discipline in a society that is becoming increasingly unequal as a result of ‘structurally imposed constraints such as poverty, lack of opportunity, and systemically induced inequality’ (Hooley et al., 2018, p. 15). In the context of complex, dynamic systems of influence that fuel inequality, career choice as the central tenet of career guidance has been questioned (Hooley et al., 2018), as has the very notion of career which has been described as ‘deeply embedded in a sociocultural framework that is relevant to only a minority of individuals around the globe’ (Blustein, 2006, p. 3). Moreover, in an era of neo-liberal economics, a sole focus of career resilience and career adaptability as an individual ‘ability’ de-emphasises the important role that policy-makers, organisations, education authorities and communities (as a web of interconnected systems) can play in providing support and enabling mechanisms. Against this background of career guidance’s foundational value of social justice and critique about its central tenets, critical reflection is also warranted on the implications for career theory, practice and research of taking a systems perspective on the contemporary constructs of career adaptability and career resilience.
Implications and conclusion
Through the STF’s depiction of the complex and dynamic interaction between systems of influence (see Figure 1; Patton & McMahon, 2021), systems thinking suggests that emphasising individual agency to construct futures and remain career resilient and career adaptable at the neglect of an individual’s systems of influences is reductionist and may be inconsistent with the social justice foundations of career guidance. Proposing a systems perspective on career adaptability and career resilience could see them viewed in the contexts of complex systems of influence as interactive processes between individuals and their environments or as personal traits recursively interconnected with a broad range of systems of influence. For example, Li et al. (2023) found that social support from parents, peers and important others ‘is a very important factor for increasing career adaptability’ (p. 330), and Haenggli and Hirschi (2023) found that career adaptability can be ‘systematically promoted by career interventions’ (p. 229). Adopting a systems perspective informed by the STF of career development offers a contextual view of career adaptability and career resilience and facilitates a link to social justice.
In terms of career theory, critiques about the constructs of career adaptability and career resilience have led to suggestions regarding the revision of career theory (Blustein, 2017; Ribeiro, 2021) that evidences systems thinking, even though it is not specifically mentioned. For example, Blustein (2017) claimed that the constructs of career adaptability and career resilience ‘can be productively viewed from a contextual perspective’ (p. 449) and that these constructs, along with that of employability, make a ‘compelling case for a shifting paradigm’ (p. 449) in career guidance. Indeed, the psychology of working theory proposed by Blustein and his colleagues draws on disciplines beyond psychology including sociology and economics that take into account the influence of social and environmental–societal influences and systems of privilege, oppression and discrimination. Without specifically mentioning systems theory, the contribution of Blustein and his colleagues evidences systems thinking and close links to social justice.
Ribeiro (2021) highlighted the profound contrasts between the social and work contexts of economically developed countries, where the constructs of career adaptability and career resilience originally emerged, and less economically developed countries of the world. Work and career development in the former is characterised by ‘development, stability, safety and social protection’ (p. 397), whereas the latter is a context filled with ‘social inequalities, instability, precarious working conditions, and a lack of social protection’ (p. 398). Ribeiro (2021) emphasised that:
it is not the person who has sole control over having more or less career adaptability or career resilience, because those constructs are impacted by the relationships that are established between the person and the context, including what is offered by the state or by the third sector in the programmatic dimension, in other words, access to public policies on education, health, work, human rights and housing, and social welfare programs (p. 410).
This relational view of career adaptability and career resilience is systemic in nature and demonstrates that beyond individual change, other actors and participants (e.g. state, policy, education system) should also consider change and transformation. Ribeiro (2021) advocated a communitarian approach that includes a range of participants such as individuals, practitioners and community members to bring about change through a co-construction process at contextual and program levels, as well as at the individual level.
In terms of career practice, understanding how to think systemically is a critical skill for practitioners to learn and to encourage their clients to use. For example, a systems perspective has been used as an organising framework for the development of career interventions for refugees and asylum seekers (Beqiraj & Ferrari, 2023). Career practitioners who ‘embrace a systemic approach to resilience not only help shift the focus from the individual to the social’ (Sultana, 2024, p. 4) but also enable conditions for individual actions to occur through systemic changes. Indeed, career practitioners, as well as theorists and researchers, have also been urged to develop their critical consciousness (Cadenas & McWhirter, 2022; Diemer, 2023) because it is consistent with the social justice values of career guidance (Cadenas & McWhirter, 2022). Critical consciousness necessitates systems thinking and comprises the dimensions of critical reflection on inequalities, critical motivation to act on inequalities and critical action (Cadenas & McWhirter, 2022). Critical consciousness may afford some protection to the wellbeing of adolescents and young adults, which is challenged by systemic oppression (Castro et al., 2022). Proposing a systems perspective, as evident in the STF (Patton & McMahon, 2021), provides a useful visual mechanism for critical reflection to name systems of oppression, discrimination and disadvantage; examine the nature of their influence; and consider relevant intervention at a systems level. Systems maps such as the STF could be used in practice to help clients understand the systemic and structural constraints that are at play in their careers. Raising the critical consciousness of clients has been advocated as a useful intervention in socially just practice (e.g. Duffy et al., 2016; Hooley et al., 2018).
Systems thinking invites career practitioners to consider not only interventions with individuals, but also systemic interventions with communities (e.g. Blustein, 2017; Ribeiro, 2021; Theron, 2017) with a view to enhancing the resilience and adaptability of those communities, which in turn may benefit individuals. This suggests an expanded role for career practitioners to include advocacy and outreach with broader systems of influence (e.g. families, communities, employers, support agencies, policy-makers). However, career practitioners have been trained to work with individuals, and ‘moving from the individual to the context’ may not be easy for many (Blustein, 2017, p. 450). Preparing practitioners to embrace a systems perspective may also be challenging for training providers. In considering this expanded role, however, Sultana (2018) cautions about the need to be realistic about what practitioners can do and what needs to be addressed at a political level.
According to Maree (2017), the purposes of career guidance are to enhance clients’ career adaptability, help them become employable and acquire career resilience. Therefore, beyond assessing career adaptability by using a scale (e.g. Career Adapt-Abilities Scale; Porfeli & Savickas, 2012), career adaptability stories can also be reconstructed through qualitative exploration that relies on qualitative, systemic and narrative career assessment instruments (Robertson & Abkhezr, 2024) to assist clients in constructing their careers. Career resilience can be learned (Peeters et al., 2022), which also suggests a role for career practitioners (Lengelle et al., 2017). Indeed, a range of psychological and behavioural strategies have been identified that can foster career resilience and career adaptability (Seibert et al., 2016). While these practices focus on assisting individuals to develop their career adaptability and career resilience, it must be noted that a focus on career adaptability and career resilience at the neglect of the systems of influence needs to be mitigated by due reflection on the ‘darker side’ of promoting resilience, that is, its neoliberal connotations of self-responsibility without due recognition of systemic barriers.
While the term ‘context’ is widely used in career guidance, it is descriptive in nature, whereas the term system directly refers to a recursive interaction between parts and wholes, that is, individuals and their environments. Systems theory offers a theoretical foundation for understanding contextual interaction and could be drawn on more widely in career guidance because it takes account of the recursive process between individuals and their environments and thus offers greater explanatory power than the descriptor ‘context’. Moreover, systems theory, operationalised through systems maps and systems thinking, offers strategies and techniques to researchers and practitioners in an era of increasing complexity and change.
In terms of career research, researchers are encouraged to place increased emphasis on investigating influences from the social and environmental–societal system. For example, the growing research base related to the career development of migrants and refugees in their new countries is beginning to draw attention to systems of discrimination and oppression they face, and consequently, could be used to propose social justice interventions (Beqiraj & Ferrari, 2023; Fejes et al., 2022). Career researchers could also partner with other disciplines such as social science or sociology that have a history of investigating systems influences on people’s careers and advocating for social justice. Navigating work and the labour market of the twenty-first century occurs in complex systems and ‘conventional disciplinary, reductionist, and compartmentalised approaches’ (Liu et al., 2015, p. 963), such as those currently emphasised by career guidance, may be insufficient to address transdisciplinary issues such as work, employment and social justice.
Although a limitation of this article is its conceptual nature, in the context of an increasingly unequal world, it nonetheless highlights the need for career guidance to embrace perspectives in addition to its traditionally individualistic focus. The underpinning propositions of this article suggest an alternative perspective through which to view career resilience and career adaptability, specifically a systems perspective informed by the STF and enabled by systems thinking. A systems perspective on career adaptability and career resilience facilitates a link to social justice. Systems thinking suggests that career practitioners, researchers, theorists and the profession of career guidance itself may play a greater role in advocating systemically for the needs of the clients they serve, as well as for the services they offer to people impacted by systems of discrimination and oppression. This would be consistent with the social justice foundation of career guidance. In conclusion, career researchers, theorists and practitioners are encouraged to think critically about the implications of ‘new’ constructs such as career resilience and career adaptability that are introduced to the field; systems thinking provides a mechanism for so doing.
Declarations
Conflict of interest
On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.
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