Representações sociais de carreira : um estudo com profissionais de diferentes idades

Abstract

This research aims to investigate and analyze the formation and structure of social representations of career for professionals of different ages in the business area. The study was carried out in a sample of 190 young professionals, from 18 to 29 years old, and 105 older professionals, from 45 years old and above, in the fields of study of Accounting Sciences, Economic Sciences and Administration. For this, a questionnaire with open questions was applied, associated with the free evocation technique, and the data were submitted to the computer programs IRAMUTEQ and OpenEvoc. Then, the analyzes were carried out based on the Social Representations Theory (SRT). It can be verified, through the results, that the possible organization of the central core and that the similarity relations showed differences between the researched groups. From the inductor term "career", emerged, on the central core, the element "stability" in the group of young professionals and the elements "realization", "responsibility" and "satisfaction" in the group of older professionals. As regards the connectedness of the elements, it is noted that "success" for young professionals is at the heart of the debate about career, while for older professionals "success" and "realization" are more significant in the structure and bring together other elements, creating segments or blocks of thoughts. Other findings showed that the construction of social thinking about careers was built by different world views. Regarding anchoring, it was identified that the elements that involved social representations of career for young professionals and older professionals were formed from the location and temporal aspects experienced by each group. Thus, the study leads to the conclusion that the career for each period of life is socially represented in a different way. In short, studies like this, encourage organizations and individuals themselves to reflect on their actions and to seek strategies to improve these relationships