The journey underway : managing and developing careers

This paper sets out to provide a case study for others interested in developing an academic unit that deals with managing and developing careers. In order to achieve this goal, the paper reviews the progress made in implementing and teaching a unit, 'Managing and Developing Careers' (MDC) since its inception in 2003. The unit deals with career management from a stakeholder perspective and is an elective, located within the Human Resource and Organisational Development major of the Bachelor of Business and Commerce degree. It is offered by the School of Management at the University of Western Sydney (UWS). MDC is different from a conventional career development subject or program, which generally seeks to assist individuals to identify their career interests, discover their abilities and aptitudes and then obtain appropriate employment based on such a 'voyage of discovery'. Rather, it is designed to identify the determinants of the process of career management and analyse the roles of key 'players' in this process- employers, unions, employees, government and societal groups. In addition, the unit assists students to evaluate the different approaches to career management and relate such approaches to contemporary issues in the field of career management, for example, who is responsible for career management. The tasks undertaken in this paper include: (i) a review of more recent literature in the career management and development field (ii) a description of the structure, content and assessment used in this unit and (iii) an evaluation of data about the unit using structured and open response student feedback. This evaluation is used to both critique the current version of the elective and point to ways of modifying it to better suit the needs and expectations of future students. An important goal of this paper is to provide advice and guidance to other academics with an interest in career management or who are developing units in this field.