11. Managing Careers. Meanings and Trends for Business Administration Students

Career is diversifying its meanings continuously. Being able to understand the main trends allows students looking for a job to develop a better professional identity and companies to adjust their practices and culture to the new context. The paper is a descriptive one, looking to see the perception of business administration bachelor students in relation to core theories and ideas regarding career. Survey and focus-group are used as research methods. The research questions are looking into conceptual positioning of the students (they favour the learning and development approach to career and dislike political perspective to career); locus of their career initiative (they assume career initiative and rely less on employers or public institutions); balance of career capitals according to Bourdieu (there is a perceived lack of economic capital first, social capital second, and cultural capital third); vocational preferences (social and entrepreneurial are slightly ahead the other ones, and conventional is the least preferred one); career stages (the majority of the students placed themselves in growth - surprising result that leads to further research) and concern regarding discrimination forms than might affect the students (age and disability being their main concern).