High-skilled female immigrants: career strategies and experiences

© 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to uncover career-related issues that high-skilled female immigrants face and their strategies for rebuilding their careers upon migration for a diverse range of reasons including following a spouse, furthering education and self-initiated expatriation. Design/methodology/approach: Using grounded theory to explore this topic, the authors performed 14 in-depth interviews with female immigrants that fit pre-determined inclusion criteria for high-skilled (e.g. educated, gainfully and professionally employed). The study context of immigration is the USA, and the authors performed interviews with high-skilled immigrants from Turkey – an underrepresented nation in the US migrant population. Findings: Content analysis of in-depth interviews revealed five primary theoretical themes that captured the career experiences of these individuals: non-linear career entry, career orientation, strong commitment and will to succeed, socialization patterns at work and support network. Integrating these findings with theories on adult learning, the authors developed an experiential learning model of career reconstruction among high-skilled immigrants. Originality/value: This study contributes to the global mobility literature by developing an experiential learning theory of careers and taking a gendered perspective to the career experiences of high-skilled female immigrants. It answers the questions: what are the individual and situation factors associated with career success among high-skilled female immigrants? and what is the process that high-skilled immigrants go through to rebuild their careers

Work and Nonwork Support for Employee Development

We develop a model that enhances our understanding of how different supports for development motivate employees to pursue self-development. After collecting data from 418 employees with different backgrounds and using structural equation modeling and bootstrap analysis, we found that work support and nonwork support for development made unique contributions to employee self-development. The relationship between non-work support for development and employee self- development is mediated by self-efficacy and career motivation. The relationship between work support for development and employee self-development is mediated by career motivation. This research expands the support for development from work environment to a broader social environment and clarifies how both work and nonwork supportive environment is positively related to employee self- development. Finally, we discussed practical implications for personnel selection and career development in organizations