PSM527 Learning, Training and Development: Mary's Career Case Study

This case study delves into Mary's career trajectory, employing the kaleidoscope model as its primary framework. The analysis focuses on the interplay of challenge, balance, and authenticity in Mary's career decisions, alongside an exploration of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation factors. Mary, a dedicated nurse, initially sought opportunities to serve disadvantaged communities. Her career path involved pursuing advanced education, navigating job roles, and making personal choices such as marriage and motherhood that influenced her professional journey. The study examines how Mary's career choices reflect the components of the kaleidoscope model, with an emphasis on boundaryless career theory. It also highlights her shift from a traditional career path to one driven by her values and aspirations to contribute to the welfare of marginalized communities. The study concludes by observing Mary's successful transition into a leadership role within a non-profit organization, where she could fully realize her professional values and goals.

Running head: CAREER PATHS
CAREER PATHS
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Case Study of Mary’s Career
The current essay will develop an analytical explanation of Mary’s career with the
utilisation of the kaleidoscope model as the governing framework. This will mainly put focus
on the three important components called the challenge, balance and authenticity. Moreover,
it will also focus on another important motivation theory with the discussion of intrinsic and
extrinsic motivation factors and the ways they guide the career making decisions of Mary.
Mary Williams had always been the achiever of the highest grades in her school and
university years. She had been particularly keen about caring for people from the early ages
of her career and therefore, she had taken up the job of being a nursing professional in the
primary healthcare clinic. She particularly aimed to help the socio-economically marginalised
people in the nation and always tried to go out of her scope to help them. However, after
being an enrolled nurse in the primary healthcare clinics for one year, she was keen to take on
further challenges and completed her masters to become an expert registered nurse. However,
she was not satisfied with the job role as it was not providing her the opportunity to work
closely with the communities and try her best to promote the health of the disadvantaged
people. She had requested the authority to provide her scopes of health promotion programs
and tae on further challenges for development of conditions of the indigenous people.
However, the lack of nurses in the organisation and huge patient flow in the healthcare had
prevented her from taking further opportunities. Therefore, she was seen to seek for
resignation and try out other prospects. The authority wanted to hold her back because of her
expertise by providing more incentives and other benefits. However, she did not see any
career growths in the fields. She admitted herself into MBA studies in healthcare promotion
and management with the hope that the degree would enable her to get associated with
organisations taking large-scale projects for health promotion of different cohorts of people in
the nation. However, she met another fellow healthcare professional who had the same

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vision. They fell in love and married soon. After the completion of the two year course, Mary
found herself expecting and decided to put her aspirations for hold to make settle a family
and give time to her infant. During these years, she used to work as freelancing mode as a
project planner for different small agencies on contractual basis. After about six years, she
decided to develop to get into a partnership with BGV charity and healthcare centre. This
centre receives grant from some of the biggest governmental healthcare and finance
departments and aspires to care and send for aides to different remote as well as marginalised
communities not only for healthcare. They provided support with education, employment,
agriculture, finance and many others. She is seen to enjoy her work to the fullest. She is seen
to enjoy meeting the different communities, listen to their issues, help them overcome
barriers and work in close proximity with them.

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Fig: Mary’s career graph (Source: created by authorr)
The entire thinking and planning approach of Mary can be analysed with the help of
Kaleidoscope model of career. This model suggests that three important components
underpin the actions taken by individuals while planning and changing their career plans.
These are authenticity, balance as well as challenge (Bimrose & Hearne, 2012). Researchers
are of the opinion that certain issues pre-dominate the career decisions in lives of person at
different point of time. Each of the three components mainly serve as the the decision making
parameters which have the ability to cause a pivot in the thinking procedures about the
importance of career at the particular point of time (Mainiero & Gibson, 2017).
Challenge is one of the most important components that are usually seen to govern
the career of most women in the earlier part of lives. This component of the kaleidoscope
model refers to the need of individuals to participate in intrinsically motivating work for
growing and development of one’s skills and also to make progress in the career for the
achievement of lateral progress, linear advancement as well as skill based programs (Glass
and Cook, 2016). This component mainly refers to the need of an individual for stimulation
as well as learning and skills for growth for increasing of the personalised capabilities.
Studies have shown that challenge can be represented into a number of ways. These include
desire of the individual in climbing the career ladder as well as discovering opportunities for
retraining and developing a new skill set or new set of job tasks. It has been seen that Mary
had big aspirations of developing the condition and bringing changes to the communities of
disadvantaged people. However, her initial profession of being nursing professional was not
allowing her the the full scope of developing health promotion initiatives for the
communities. Huge work burden in the healthcare centres was not giving her the scope to
achieve her dreams. She was not being able to successfully achieve her expected career
prospective successfully (Hirschi, 2012). She was open for more challenging job roles of

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travelling to remote and marginalised communities and work for them. Hence, she was not
found to be satisfied with her job and was always searching for more potential opportunities.
Studies do accept that in earlier part of the career, one of the predominant career patterns for
the women is to be concerned with different goal achievement as well as challenges in their
careers. Lyons (2015) had stated supported of the fact that balance as well as authenticity do
remain active but they usually recede to the background while the woman seeks for
challenging opportunities and pursues her career interest. Mary had been also seen to
continuously thrive for challenging situations although she was balancing her present nursing
profession and later her education with her romantic life.
Balance is the second component of the model. This component mainly focuses on
the important aspects of work-family management as well as integration of the efforts on the
parts of the employees for creating a work-life intersection that adjusts attention constantly to
both the domains (Elley-Brown et al., 2018). In many cases, individuals are seen to take up
assignments that allow them to restrict work hours or slow down career progression so that
effective integration might take place between the family lives with work. Many are seen to
leave their jobs in higher level of corporate and take jobs in lower agencies to spend more
time with the family members. Several ways of rebalancing lives had been observed in
different studies like adjusting work through part time employment, opting out of the
workplace temporarily as well as taking turns with spouses, arranging different workloads so
that it comes in accordance with family requirements as well as finding ways in meeting both
demands simultaneously (Ramarajan & Reid, 2013). Therefore, it was seen that Mary’s
priorities changed when she got married and her infant was born. She wanted to care and
bring up her baby so that the baby does not lose his attachments with family members.
However, her love for her work did not let her withdraw completely. Rather, she was seen to
act as program development executive at home where she used to plan health promotion

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programs for smaller agencies who worked in communities at a smaller scale. This helped het
to have enough time with her family at the same time enjoying her work. Therefore, she was
seen to balance her work effectively. Researchers are of the opinion that in mid career,
women must cope with different issues of balance and relational demands (Sullivan et al.,
2018). This comes in the forefront. Women are also seen to wish for challenges as well as
authenticity. However, these issues are seen take on the secondary roles as different
compromises are made for balance issues (Rodrigues and Guest, 2010). Mary is also seen to
pour more focus on her baby and her marital life and had kept her aspirations on secondary
priority level.
Authenticity is the third component. This describes the need of an individual to
behave and demonstrate their attitudes in accordance with their genuine selves. This might be
in contrast to the behaviours they exhibit to survive their surroundings (Elley-Brown et al.,
2015). Studies have shown this component represents the need of the individual to be true to
herself and to her own values. This component is displayed through different behaviours
which are resonant with different personal as well as work strengths of involvement in the
activities. This would help in gaining personal pleasures, which genuinely reflect the inner
nature of the individual. It has been seen that Mary was more interested in working with
communities from a closer level that allowed her to stay with the community, develop
intervention plan for them, develop their lifestyle factors. She also wanted to develop their
living conditions through educating them and making them eligible for employments and
many others (Carraher et al., 2014). Therefore, she she got the opportunity to practice her real
values and dreams that she always wanted to achieve. She came into association and
partnership with one of the largest voluntary organisation of the nation and undertook a
travelling mode to every community and worked with them. In a way, she was successful in
ensuring her real values and true selves while becoming one of the topmost members of the

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organisation she had always wanted to work with on leadership role. Researchers are of the
opinion that in the late careers, women mainly become free from balance issues and in this
situations, the cause of authenticity arise. Studies have indeed accepted that women wish for
challenge but remain concerned for balance (Knowles, 2017). However, the kaleidoscope was
seen to shift towards women’s choices and desires in each of the domain as dictated by the
patterns of her life.
Another important theory that can be incorporated here for analysing Mary’s career is
the boundaryless carer theory. Traditionally, careers used to be conceptualised in terms of the
relationships that the employee shared with the organisation. Careers were found to be linear
and mainly occurred within the stable hierarchal organisational structures. This helped
employees to develop an “organisational career” where job mobility was low but security was
high. The boundaryless career in the present generation described the modern thinking
procedures of employees where they travel their career paths that are discontinuous and go
beyond the boundary of a single firm (Arthur & Rousseau, 2001). The term boundaryless
career mainly provides a new perspective that interlinks boundaries of organisations and
occupations with other part of the lives of the people. The authors have described
employment as an entity that is under the person’s control thereby having career agency. The
boundaryless career is thereby portrayed as the entity as something out there that still needs
to be discovered (Bravo et al., 2017). In case of Mary, it was seen that she was not satisfied
with the scope and the boundary that her nursing profession was offering her. She wanted to
go beyond the role responsibilities of caring for each people with a superficial consultation
and want to work beyond the boundaries. Therefore, she left the job and joined the MBA in
order to manage projects aimed at better healthcare and life development of disadvantaged
communities. She was seen to explore her boundaries throughout and so she joined the
charitable organisation that was different in working system to that of the healthcare centres

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she worked. Thus, it described how her career crossed boundaries to reach a fulfilling stage
that satisfied her in her life.
Another important theory that can be applied is the protean theory that mainly
describes the career that is driven by individual preferences and not by organisation (Hall,
1996). This concept was proposed by Douglas T. The most central feature of this form of
career is that the person who is the protean would always put psychological success as well as
self0fulfilment above every concerns and norms (Water et al., 2015). Mary was found to be
never satisfied with the exposure and the scope that the profession of nursing was providing
her. She was neither being able to achieve psychological success and could not feel self-
fulfilment. Hence, she was seen to have a protean career where she left the job and seek for
carrer in the voluntary organisations where she can fulfil her aspirations to work on a broader
level with disadvantaged communities.
Another important theory can be seen to be well established which can help in
understanding the career planning and career development of every individuals in their
lifestyle. This theory states the importance of intrinsic motivation. This form of motivation
states the situations when the motivation stimuli of individuals are seen to come from within.
The individuals are seen to develop the desire for performing a specific task because the
outcomes are seen to be in accordance with the belief system (Deci & Ryan, 1985). This form
of motivational stimuli is also seen to fulfil a desire or aspiration and therefore huge
importance remain attached with them. Another form of motivation is called the extrinsic
motivation. This mainly means that the motivational stimuli come from outside factors
(Savickas & Porfeli, 2012). This mainly means that the desires of the individual to perform
his or her responsibilities come from outside sources. The most debated extrinsic
motivational stimuli are money. Besides, employee award, benefits and package, bonuses as
well as organised activities act as extrinsic motivational stimuli. Researchers are of the

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opinion that extrinsic stimuli result in temporary impacts on the motivation on the individuals
(Yates & Cahill, 2018). Therefore, individuals who are influenced by extrinsic motivational
stimuli might not be able to maintain a consistency in the performance when stimuli are
withdrawn. However, such is not the case in case of intrinsic motivation. In case of Mary, it
is seen that she was influence by her internal motivational stimuli. She had aspired to treat
and develop the marginalised community, as her dream to develop a safer and egalitarian
world had been the main driver of her motivation. Since, this was her intrinsic motivation, the
impact of it remained consistent throughout her career path and she tried to achieve all the
objectives to reach to her goals. Even her last working organisation where she worked as a
registered nurse tried to provide her extrinsic motivational incentives; it could not bribe her to
change her life vision and mission. Hence, this explains her career approach significantly.
From the above discussion, it becomes clear that every working individual has
different courses of career paths. The choosing of careers as well as career changing and
development are governed by different factors in different individuals’ life. With the help of
kaleidoscope model, the different phases of the career decisions can be analysed. On case of
women, the initial career paths are seen to be lead by challenged whereas females prefer to
balance their life in the middle part of their careers giving more focus to relations and
families. However, towards the later part of the careers, they focus on maintaining
authenticity while developing career opportunities. Intrinsic as well as extrinsic motivational
stimuli are also seen to be driving factors for women regarding their career decisions.

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